There’s this awesome laksa place on Hunter Street in the city, or at least everyone tells me it’s awesome, so I really want to try it. So I walked to Hunter Street last Sunday, keen to try get my Malaysian fix, but when I got there at half past one the place was closed and showed no signs of having been open at all that day. I looked carefully around the door and didn’t see opening hours posted anywhere. At least I got my walk in the sun, I now know they’re not open on Sundays, and I didn’t get a half-arsed weekend effort that isn’t representative of their weekday performance as happens at some eateries. I’ll try again on a Saturday, but failing that, it might have to wait for a day off. Is “laksa craving” as a valid medical condition for a sick leave form?
So having failed to get my laksa fix, I decided to finally have lunch at Tiger Bakers. Just walking in, the place felt far too hipster for me. The guy behind the bar was wearing a singlet, with his facial hair trimmed to look like five days’ growth, and his hair that says “I put a lot of effort into trying to look like I just rolled out of bed”. Oh yes, and it’s a bar – it’s so edgy, serving primarily as a coffee shop and restaurant, but in the form of a bar. The atmosphere is a bit of a let-down, too: if you sit well inside, it’s a bit stuffy and oppressive, but if you sit somewhere with fresh air and sunlight, you’ve got people smoking at that legally-just-outside counter messing with your ability to smell the food and coffee.
I got the barbecue lamb sandwich, and it tried pretty hard with crusty “Turkish-style” bread, lots of fancy salad leaves, tender spiced lamb, hummus and tzatziki. Although the hummus taste a bit flat, the everything else in the sandwich was done pretty well. The thing that ruined it was the chips they served with it. They were over-seasoned with that strong, artificial-tasting, MSG-loaded stuff. It conflicted terribly with the wholesome flavours of the sandwich, and it was the flavour that stuck with me after I left. All in all it was a disappointment, especially considering the good things I’ve heard about the place.