Not your usual cake

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The Usual Joint, 32 Furlong Road, Sunshine North.

Consider The Sauce has a liking for short menus.

Compact, succinct, brief.

The Usual Joint, however, takes tight to new heights.

Sure, at this friendly, spacious, new Sunshine North cafe you can get a range of sangers and there’s a display cabinet of rolls and even lasagna.

And there’s marvellous sweets – more on those later.

But they appear to have settled into a  groove of offering just a single lunch-time made-to-order meal – and even then only at weekends.

That’s cool – we can roll with that.

I’m told these meals have and will run to the likes of pho and curries.

But at the first of two visits, CTS enjoys …

 

 

… a lovely serve of won ton noodles for $12.

It’s a simple and soulful, and packed with fine ingredients: A single, plump dumpling, a wafer, a fat prawn, pork both sliced and minced – and good, hot broth.

 

 

At our subsequent visit, we enjoy the wagyu sliders ($15).

Now, we be no great fans of sliders – they often seem too fussy to us.

But these wow with panache.

A big part of the winningness is down to the accessories – cornichons, shoestring fries and a tub of super rich and fabulously yummy Japanese-style potato salad.

But the sliders themselves are no slouches, either.

The rolls are stuffed with well-cooked beef, mushies, beetroot, tomato, lettuce and bacon.

They eat bigger than they look.

And the ingredients, particularly the beetroot, convey a likeness to a regular Aussie burger – only better.

 

 

But there is much more going on at The Usual Joint than the single-offering savoury roster.

The place has quickly become a community focal point, with a happy crowd hitting the place to eat, meet and sup on a range of specialty teas and coffees.

The punters are mostly of the young and Asian variety.

I’m tempted to call them young, Asian and hip – but that might give them big heads and stuff.

As well, there is a very sexy range of sweets.

The highlights in that regard are the crepe cakes.

 

 

Oh boy, these are so good – multiple layers of tender crepes soaked through with your flavour of choice.

Keenly priced at $8, they’re quite filling and superbly inhabit our favourite dessert niche – that of decadence without being sickly sweet.

We love the pandan (above) most of all, but also enjoy …

 

 

… the Thai milk tea and …

 

 

… the matcha.

Our crepe cake slices are matched with excellent cafe lattes.

Best bet is to “like” The Usual Joint on Facebook so you’ll know what’s cooking in terms of those hot meals.

 

51 thoughts on “Not your usual cake”

  2. We liked the salted caramel crepe in Jinda Thai restaurant in Abbotsford,their cream is little denser compared to traditional French mille. Lovely take on Thai cuisine of 20 layers French cake

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    • Hi James! Good to hear from you! Well, no – Furlong Road is not food hot, really. The little strip that houses the above cafe has a couple of Viet/Chinese places where you can get banh mi and bain marie stuff. Further up, in Cairnlea, there’s definitely some good food to be had at Cairnlea Shopping Centre – including a very good, new Viet/Chinese place.

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  6. Hi Kenny! I see … how about Berkshire Rd? (Since La Morenita moved?) North Sunshine is a mystery to me – Ballarat Rd is a big psychological divide!

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  7. Hussen ,You and your colleagues celebrated with 1000 sambusa when mr Griffith good food guide come out,what has changed?now the Age is evil aha!

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    • Yeah, but it was very small. We don’t mind heading to Deer Park – better parking, too, and meals proper rather than just them great sandwiches. And the more CTS’ inner west readers resist interest in the outer west, the more and more I will feel duty bound to keep covering it!

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      • Like many of your readers commented earlier,here how I see,we open food columns& read outside west activity,now & then the Somali eats or the premises or even the Latin may appear on their short list column which really very unfortunate.The parking,food & people of the west is wonderful.makes me support west more with their actions!

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      • James that article is 2016,not sure if they won 2017 though.nevertheless you are right for them minority cuisine is unattractive,couldn’t be more poor judgment

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      • James if I don’t want be around Bush about it,most of the Age’swork relating to the west are followed staf from consider the sauce,if u pay close attention it’s all clear,but biggest concern is their lack of interest of minority cuisine,it’s too giant to be fixed this problem&it’s problem that comes up to the service in multicultural west regularly

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  15. Well Kenny said they did,so they must have 2017.not a clever journalism following up CTS or any other media outlets work.The all knower the Age is not so all knower after all

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    • Hussen we recently moved to Flemington,Vietnamese,Malaysian,Somali any many more are all in our doorstep and love it.they missed a lot not us if they show no interest on these cuisine hussen.It’s eye opening for me,as I lived Fitzroy many years!

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      • James this” I care about Victoria’s diverse eateries but I minority cuisines are not too cool” doesn’t wish-wash with hussen,they can tell this beautiful rehearsed phrase to unlearned masses of this matter

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