The Good Kitchen, Hurstville

The Hong Kong cafe is where cost and efficiency are valued over décor and conversational niceties. Expect your order to be taken within two minutes of being handed the menu and your food to arrive shortly after.

For my Eat This! column in the July issue of Time Out Sydney, I headed to Hurstville where comfort food equals pan-fried spam, condensed milk on toast and the calorific glory that is French toast with peanut butter.

Eat this...

French Toast with peanut butter

WHAT IS IT?
It's the sort of snack that would make Elvis go weak at the knees. Two slices of soft white bread are slapped together with peanut butter, dipped in egg and then pan-fried to a rich golden hue. It’s a little oily, especially with the extra dab of butter on top, but the insides are soft, fluffy and deliciously eggy ($3.60).


French toast with peanut butter $3.60

WHERE DO I GET IT?
The Good Kitchen, a busy Hong Kong café (or cha chaan teng) serving Hong Kong-style Western cuisine. It’s always chaotic during weekends, jammed with families and couples chattering loudly around tables or booth seating.


Baked Portuguese pork chops with spaghetti $8.80

WHAT ELSE?
Steak with pepper sauce on rice ($12.50) and baked Portuguese pork chops with spaghetti ($8.80) are a glorious mishmash of east and west. Au gratin is the order of the day, with pork chops and spaghetti swaddled beneath a thick blanket of cheesy white sauce, grilled until brown on the edges.

The comprehensive menu runs through the usual suspects of stir-fries, congees and hotpots. Fried glutinous rice ($13) is a satisfying mix of sticky rice with slivers of omelette, mushroom, shallots and lap cheong pork sausage. Dig into the garlic chives with pork blood and pork skin ($10.80). It’s one way to increase your iron levels.


Fried glutinous rice $13


Baked Portuguese pork chops with spaghetti $8.80


Pork hocks in hot pot $11.80


Lunch meat and egg sandwich $4


Condensed milk and butter toast $2

ANY DRINKS?
Absolutely. Instant coffee mixed with tea ($2.70) is a Hong Kong favourite, or curl up with a cup of hot Ovaltine or Horlicks. Hot lemon Coke ($3) is worth ordering, a bubbling elixir of soft drink boiled with fresh lemons.


Hot coffee mixed with milk tea in Hong Kong style $2.70


Lemon coke hot $3




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The Good Kitchen

171 Forest Road, Hurstville Sydney

Tel: +61 (02) 9579 1688

Opening hours

Monday to Friday 10am-10pm

Saturday and Sunday 9am-10pm

This article appears in the July 2011 issue of Time Out Sydney in my monthly Food & Drink column Eat This!  


More Time Out Sydney reviews:
Akash Pacific Cuisine, Liverpool (Fiji Indian cuisine)
ATL Marantha, Kensington (Indonesian fried chicken with edible bones)
Balkan Oven, Rockdale (Macedonian burek)
Durban Dish, Baulkham Hills (South African cuisine)
Hijazi's Falafel, Arncliffe (Lebanese breakfast)
Island Dreams Cafe, Lakemba (Christmas Islands cuisine)
Kambozza, Parramatta (Burmese cuisine)
La Paula, Fairfield (Chilean empanadas, lomitos and sweets)
Sea Sweet, Parramatta (Lebanese sweet kashta cheese burger)
Sizzling Fillo, Lidcombe (Filipino pork hock crackling)
Tehran, Granville (Persian cuisine)
Tuong Lai, Cabramatta (Vietnamese sugar cane prawns)