My Kind of Breakfast

I’m sure by now you would agree with me that dining out in Sydney is not cheap. Almost every meal costs about AUD$10 per dish, and that is in a food court. In a restaurant or cafe, prices would most certainly be more than that. Which is why I was extremely excited when I found out that I could have a nice and satisfying breakfast for less than AUD$10 each! Located in Carlingford Village, North and South Gourmet doesn’t look like a very appealing restaurant from the outside. If not for the decent crowd we saw inside, we wouldn’t have gone in to try. And boy, were we glad we did!

My ideal breakfast

Serving breakfast until 11am, North and South Gourmet had a continuous stream of customers heading in and out of the restaurant in the morning. Once we were seated, we were handed a menu filled with a mixture of English and Chinese characters, detailing the different set menus available for breakfast. We almost couldn’t believe it when we saw that the set meals were priced at $6.50 each, including a drink! That’s probably the cheapest meal we found so far in a cafe or restaurant. Without further ado, we ordered a set meal each, which came with a bowl of congee, a choice of noodles or you tiao or cheong fun and a hot drink.

Pork and Century Egg Congee

Both of us ordered the Pork and Century Egg Congee, which came in a few minutes. The congee was piping hot and smooth, just how we liked it. There was also a decent amount of lean pork and century egg bits inside which gave the congee much flavour. Our little gripe would be that the lean pork was a tad too salty, but I suppose it was deliberate to sort of flavour the congee at the same time.

Decent amount of century egg and pork slices

The You Tiao or Chinese crullers that came with one of our sets were hot, freshly fried, crispy on the outside and fluffy inside. A plate of you tiao on its own would have cost about $3-4 elsewhere, so we were overjoyed that these were included in the set. I mean, a meal of congee would not be complete without you tiao, don’t you agree?

You Tiao / Chinese crullers

For our second set, we opted to order the Fried Soy Sauce Noodles. These looked exactly like the noodles we used to have in Hong Kong. In fact, this complete meal really reminded me of our breakfast at Hong Kong, where noodles and congee always went together. Ah, memories! The noodles were plain and simple but that’s how they’re supposed to be – nothing fancy and nothing special. But that’s how I like them to be!

Fried Soy Sauce noodles

Set 1 – Congee + noodles + drink (AUD$6.50)

Set 2: Congee + you tiao + drink (AUD$6.50)

Finally for drinks, Saucer had the hot Milk Tea, which turned out to be quite strong and fragrant, while I had the Soya Bean, which was not too bad. In fact, we initially thought we would be charged extra for drinks since these were listed as Chinese characters in the menu (which we couldn’t read) next to a $1 sign, but apparently they’re part of the set. There’s a only a surcharge of $1 if we had opted for cold drinks.

Milk tea

Soya bean

Overall, we thought the breakfast sets here were definitely good value for money, all things considered. The environment was not overly crowded that you would feel rushed to finish your meal, which was perfect for a relaxing family outing during the weekends. Needless to say, we’d definitely be back whenever we’re craving for something hot and comfy in the morning, or whenever we felt like eating congee!