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29
Oct 02
Tue

Restaurants and Ice Cream

The Nepalese Kitchen is an old joint on Crown St, which was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday night. Nepal, although nestled in between two great culinary cultures of China and India, has a – perhaps surprisingly – bland offering of cuisine. I suspect the nation’s poverty may play a role in this. Nonetheless, the fare at the restaurant was nothing spectacular, quite similar to that in Nepal, although in Australian prices. You can’t really compare prices between nations, but for the purposes of curiousity, the Dal-Bhat-Takari (basically the national dish, consisting of lentils, rice and some curry) costs A$15. The exact same dish in Nepal costs as low as 50 rupees in local prices (tourists may pay double though), or, roughly A$1.20. I can’t really recommend this restaurant, because at these prices, Nepalese cuisine is just not special enough.

Next to the Theatre Royal, near the corner of King and Pitt Sts is Gelatissimo. It is the only Sydney ice creamery which I can say is comparable to the experience I had with ice-cream in Italy. “Gelato” is the Italian word for ice cream, and the suffix “-issimo” basically means “more”, like in prestissimo. And more ice-cream they give indeed. The psychadelic display of ice-cream is presented sumptuously, each flavour bulging out of its tub, sprinkled with bits of fruit and whatnot on top. Naturally, it all tastes delicious. It’s better than the trendy Double Bay French Riviera and easily rivals the Bondi ice-creameries (so Kev says, I haven’t tried the ones at Bondi myself). The thing that puts this joint above all those other popular (primarily Asian) hang-outs of Passionflower and Y2K is the value. Plain and simple. $5 will get you three flavours. $5 will get you one scoop in Passionflower. But the real key is, they serve ice-cream by paving it with a sort of spade, not a scoop. My gf’s sister works at New Zealand Ice Cream and she was taught to scoop ice-cream for customers so that the ball that is formed is hollow inside. You can’t pull that trick with a paver, so you really do get your money’s worth. Mmmm… lemon sorbet…

This post has 8 comments

1.  Cynthia

I was severly disappointed with my Gelatissimo experience. They have Gelatissimo in Melbourne and for $3 you get 2 flavours and humongous servings so when I found out it was in Sydney, and King St right by my work, you can imagine how extatic I was. I walked in, noticed the manager was Korean and thought I impressed him with my Korean greetings and told him I’d be here everyday, he should give me a “frequent-comer” card to stamp or something. No reply, just a blank look on his face. I had brought a group of 10 friends and thought he’d give us a discount. No. Looked at the prices, $3 for 1 flavour, 2 flavours would be $4. And to eat in, an extra $1. It’s an ice-cream shop for crying out loud. Not impressed. All that was forgivable though until I got my miniscule serving of gelato. When the girl handed it over to me I didn’t even take it off her, I was like, “Where’s the icecream?” Her answer, “I pused it down into the cone.” I told her, “So what, pile it on.” She didn’t, I was disgusted. You’d think people would know what service is in this country.

2.  r2

i dont know what your talking about, you sound like a bit of a scrooge, gelatissimo is a business, how can you expect them to give discounts to every person walking in the store demanding discounts… i go regularly to gelatissimo, it may be a bit on the dear side of an iced dessert, but its well worth it.

3.  Deepak Bista

I am surprised in your comment that Nepalese cuisine in Sydney reflects the poverty of Nepal and specially it looks like you have been to Nepal. It seems that you did not explore much about Nepali food properly. Traditionally, our banquet (bhoj) consists of 84 different dishes. You cannot expect to that many dishes to be served where fish and chips with some tin tomato sauce is enough! Perhaps, next time you visit Nepali restaurant talk to people for special meal.

4.  Deepak Bista

When you visit Adelaide next time make sure you pay a visit to Sagarmatha Nepali Restaurant. This is the first authentic Nepalese Restaurant in Adelaide, Australia. It serves authentic nepalese cuisine as well as some popular south asian regional dishes.

It tries to promote Nepal through may different ways and of course cuisine being obvious. It organises exihibiton of Nepalese arts and crafts. Currently, Sagarmatha exihibiting the Thank Paintings alsong with singing bowls from Nepal.

It has won many prestigious awards including Small Business Award 2005/

5.  MelbIsTheBest

Gelatissimo is good ?

Surely you are wrong!

Melbourne has a much better gelati. The location is http://miettas.com/Australia/Victoria/Carlton/Il_Dolce_Freddo.html. It is also cheaper by far. I have trekked down to so many Sydney’s gelati in Norton st and Victoria St, Darlinghurst and I am yet to find any joint that kind offer the same level of texture, flavour AND depth of flavour.

This joint isn’t franchised yet so that really makes the difference. You can’t expect a franchised product ( and hence more mass-produced) to taste better than non-franchised product, do you ?

6.  kt

where is gelatissimo in melbourne?

7.  Deepak Bista

I thought I should write the woebsite of a Nepalese (Nepali) restaurant in Adelaide as well. their website is

http://www.sagarmatha.com.au

8.  Ros

WTF is going on with this comment thread??

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