Sarawak Hawker Cuisine, Willetton, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

As much as we love trying new restaurants and visiting unexplored areas in unassuming suburbs, Alissa and I also keep a selection of local restaurants on rotation as regulars for the nights we can't be bothered to cook or drive any great distance away from home. Kai has always been our most visited go-to, however our restaurant of choice for the Singapore/Malaysian Hawker niche has been in a state of flux over the two years. Initially, we used to go to Bull Creek Hawker until we discovered Kitchen Inn, however we felt that the standard of food and service dropped significantly after Kitchen Inn moved to a bigger premises. Thankfully, a tip off lead us to Ah Mei Cafe, which became a fortnightly favourite for their handmade Bakmie Special noodles. Unfortunately, we found that Ah Mei was recently sold and the new owners no longer offer the handmade noodles we used to know and love. Having recently picked up the Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide, I read about a recently opened Hawker restaurant in Willetton that specialised in Kolo Mee and Chicken Rice. Both amongst our personal favourite dishes, Alissa and I decided we had to given this new restaurant a try. What started as a single visit has ended up being more than a few occasions, even bringing my parents along to get their opinion last weekend.

Ah Mei Cafe, Canning Vale, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Back in June, Alissa and I dined at Formosa Vegetarian Eating House in Kardinya. During the meal, a regular of the restaurant recommended a dish for us to try. From this chance encounter he later got in touch with me after seeing the Formosa blog post appear on Urbanspoon, eventually sending me an email with a list of places to check out. His good leads resulted in satisfying dinners at Bateman Eating House and Silver Sushi, as well as a few we have yet to get around to. As much a fan of noodles as I am, he sent us a second round of leads in October, informing us that we had to try the Bakmie noodles and Chicken Rice at Ah Mei Cafe.

G'Fun Cafe, O'Connor, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

When talking about cheap eats, I think there's a distinction to be made between Cheap Eats and Super Cheap Eats. The Melbourne and Sydney Good Food Guide supplement for Cheap Eats draws the line at $30, and a place like Pinchos is a good example of that kind of restaurant; $30 for tapas is really good value (with drinks on top of that). At G'Fun in O'Connor, you can get an appetizer/snack, a main meal and a drink, and still get change from $10. And if you're not that hungry you can get change from a fiver just for a main meal. That's got to be one of the biggest bargains in town.























Located in what used to be an Italian Restaurant in the South St row of shops as a McDonald's and a Red Rooster, the oddly named G'Fun Cafe has been a regular haunt for my family, especially when my father and I used to work just 5 minutes away. Lunch run orders for up to 10 people were not unheard of since at prices this low its a pretty easy sell, and we still offhandedly refer to it simply as 'Cheap Chinese'. G'Fun is owned by a fairly enterprising family who have worked out that there is a profit to be made if you open up near a university and offer no-frills meals for dirt cheap prices. I used to frequent their older store in Nedlands during my UWA art school days, and recently discovered it has since been rebranded under the G'Fun name.

The interior is an odd, spartan combination of standard cafe tables and decor that seems like it came free with the store when it transitioned from Italian restaurant to feeding bargain hunters and hungry student masses.

Obviously too expensive to pull out, the old pizza oven remains, though I'm sure it has not been used for years now. Though keeping elements of the old store, G'Fun have recently renovated their counter space by moving the hot display cabinets closer to the kitchen and moving the condiment station further away - all good and logical moves to make the busy weekday lunchtime service as fluid as possible. Alissa and I came on a lazy Sunday afternoon, hence the emptiness in the photos above.

Usually we would get one or the other, but for the benefit of demonstration Alissa and I ordered two items each from their small snack selection - Stuffed Crab Claws and Spring Rolls. Both are fairly standard examples of the dishes that are probably frozen bulk buys quickly fried up for sale. Which is not to say we didn't enjoy them; the Crab meat (and probably filler) is sweet and deliciously tender, though having been in the food warmer lacks the crispness that it would have hot and fresh out of a fryer. The spring rolls are also tasty, but again suffer from a lack of crispness.

Being the noodle fiend that I am, I decided that the Dry Noodles with Roast Chicken was the way to go. The noodles were fairly standard for this type of dish, with the roast chicken being quite juicy in spite of being a piece of breast meat. The addition of some greenery helped make the dish have the semblance of healthiness and I enjoyed it for what it is and is something of a regular order for me. You're not going to be mistaking this for the handmade noodles of Kitchen Inn anytime soon, however when you're looking at paying around $6 (including a 50c dine in surcharge you can simply avoid by ordering it to go) you can't really complain.

For a point of difference, Alissa went with their Chicken Rice with Barbecue Chicken. Interestingly enough, G'Fun don't serve any pork dishes and thus make their char siu out of chicken. I've never quite understood why they do this since they make a beef curry and teriyaki fish, however I'd have to assume they must get some kind of amazing deal on bulk chicken due to the amount of food they sell during peak times, or they have religious views that preclude dining on swine. Their signage refers to their chicken rice as 'famous', and while this might be justified by G'Fun being renowned for being cheap, its definitely not the best chicken rice I've had. Chicken rice made the legit Hainanese way has a stronger, fattier flavour to the rice and a characteristic oiliness. This chicken rice is probably healthier, and has enough of the chicken flavour in the rice to be tasty by itself without any sauce. The char siu style chicken actually tastes fairly similar to real char siu, with a nice sweetness and the blackened edges signs of that smokey barbecue touch. As with the noodles, this is not going to be replacing your favourite chicken rice stall anytime soon but for $5 ($4.50 takeaway) its almost absurdly cheap.

The Verdict: Good
Okay, so its not the most exciting place to eat, but it fulfills the same role as Taka's Kitchen does for Japanese food by providing tasty Chinese at highly affordable rock bottom prices. This is not the kind of thing that is worth driving long distances for, but if you're living in the Melville area and are looking for a bargain you could do a lot worse than G'Fun Cafe. A word of warning though; Alissa and I have repeatedly made the mistake of driving to G'Fun for a weekend dinner only to find the place closed; they only do a lunch service on Saturdays and Sundays, and their opening hours are always a little off-kilter around public holidays.

Hometown's Kitchen, Parkwood, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

My work colleagues always seem a little bemused when I talk passionately about food, or predictably respond with 'dinner plans' when I'm asked what I'm doing this weekend. For some its the fact that I'm 'mad' enough to pay fine dining prices for a meal, while others think of food in such utilitarian concepts that even just using Urbanspoon to find good places to eat nearby is a strange, alien concept. Still, as much as they think me a little odd, they can be quite supportive. Knowing I'm always on the lookout for new places to try, one colleague handed me a menu to a Malaysian Chinese restaurant called Hometown's Kitchen, located in the middle of suburbia in Parkwood. He hadn't eaten there himself, but  he grabbed a pamphlet as a hot tip for me to follow up on since they claimed to have the best Laksa in Perth according to SBS. I don't go out for Laksa very much as my mother makes a killer version of the dish that is far better than most I've tried, but such a major claim as 'Best Laksa in Perth' had to be investigated.

The restaurant is a fairly large, deep space with the middle and left side of the room filled with large round tables...

...while the right side is populated with two-seater tables. Note the funky green chairs.

We ended up visiting Hometown's Kitchen twice before writing this post, and on both occasions we went with a starter of Chinese-style Salt and Pepper Squid. A dish commonly found  in Chinese 'Combination Plate' eateries either hard and dry from being in a food warmer, or soggy and lacking crispness due to sweating from being covered in a food warmer, Home Town's version was delightfully crunchy and fresh tasting, with a nice saltiness. One thing I find with badly made Salt and Pepper Squid is that it can be outrageously oily, but thankfully this version did not suffer from this problem. The garlic, chilli and spring onions tossed with the squid was addictively tasty, leading Alissa to ask; 'why is it so nice?'

For our first visit, we decided to go with a bowl of the Laksa each. There are a lot of really weak Laksa's in Perth with a feeble yellow colour and watery consistency, so its was heartening to see Hometown Kitchen's version was a fiery orange-red. Tasting the Laksa gravy, I was happy to find that it was indeed a very good, very hot Laksa; having a good balance of coconut and prawniness, and brimming with prawns, chicken and sliced fish cake. Though I consider the thick Laksa mee to be the most authentic noodles, as a fan of yellow mee I was happy with the yellow mee and bee hoon combination served. What I did think was missing from the dish was a decent garnish of daun kesum, something I have fond memories of my father liberally piling onto his bowl. I mean, its use is so synonymous with this dish that its even known simply as laksa leaf, so its omission was a little disappointing. 

We were pretty full by this stage, so we decided to share a Red Bean Pancake with Ice Cream for dessert. This was excellent; better than a similar dish we had eaten when we went for Xiao Long Bao in Singapore. The pancake was nice and crispy on the outside but had that nice chewy texture on the inside, with a lovely red bean filling on the inside. As with the Salt and Pepper Squid, it wasn't super oily tasting either. Served here with a simple but effective scoop of vanilla ice cream, Alissa and I were both very satisfied with our meal.

So much so, we decided to come back for a second visit to try their main dishes. For our entree we again had the Salt and Pepper Squid, with the first main being a sizzling plate of Spicy Pork Belly from their 'Hometown's Special' menu. This was reminiscent of the Pork Spare Ribs in House Black Vinegar Sauce that we had at Monogamous Chinese in Hong Kong, though less vinegary. The pork belly slices were deliciously unctuous as expected, and we both liked the thick, treacly sauce and the abundance of dried whole chillis in the dish. It was a nice enough dish, however it was a little heavy-handed in the onion department; a typical Chinese restaurant bulking technique that I'm not a huge fan of. In the end, Alissa and I agreed that while we liked this dish, the Pork Spare Ribs from Monogamous Chinese was a better variation on this basic idea.

Alissa and I are fanatical about Sizzling Tofu with Chicken and Salted Fish, so we decided to try the Beancurd-Tofu, a dish of Japanese tofu served with spicy chicken mince with homemade sauce. As with everything we've had here, Hometown did not hold back on the chilli content, making for another hot dish. As with the previous dish, there was a lot to recommend it - the tofu had a nice crispy outer coating that gave way as soon as you even moved it, and the chicken mince was tasty - but in comparison to the usual Sizzling Tofu with Chicken and Salted Fish we had to admit it just was not as good.

I was pretty full by this stage, however Alissa was feeling greedy for dessert and wanted to try the cold Bobo Cha Cha as she had not had it before, and has a deep-seated fear of missing out on something that could be amazing. I'm not a fan of Bobo Cha Cha so didn't try any of it, however as much as Alissa liked it she said she would have preferred the Chendol that would have been her second choice.

The Verdict: Very Good
I'm not sure if I would call Hometown's Kitchen's Laksa the best in Perth as I haven't ever had a bowl that I find quite as satisfying as what my mother makes, however it definitely is one of the better Laksas in town - especially when you consider how many place serve up terrible, watery versions of this dish. Their Red Bean Pancake and Salt and Pepper Squid were amongst the best versions of each dish that we've had, however while the main dishes we ordered during our second visit were very good and satisfying in their own right, they were simply outclassed by similar dishes Alissa and I have had elsewhere. Still, in spite of these lesser dishes, there was enough good here for us to come back with a larger group to try something else from the extensive menu, as well as a repeat of our first Salt and Pepper Squid, Curry Laksa and Red Bean Pancake meal.