Papparich is a decent place to eat when you need a quick meal that’s not fast food. The food is consistent and tasty and the prices are reasonable.
2014
A branch of the famous Papparich opened on Broadway last month. A couple of us in the office were keen to try it out, so we found the time (after the glorious string of public holidays that came with Easter Friday, Easter Monday, and Anzac Day) to try it out last week finally. PapaRich serves Malaysian food, and my only prior experience with Malaysian food was from Mamak. Mamak is famed for the crazy long queues you find outside their branches I’m not a big fan of Malaysian food, mostly because of my low tolerance of chilli, but having eaten there, even I understand the hype for someone who loves Malaysian food. So, you see, PappaRich has quite high expectations to live up to.
PapaRich has one of the most extensive menus I have seen, in terms of both actual dishes and drinks. Suffice to say, we all spent quite a while pouring over the menu.
I ended up ordering the Pappa Chicken Rice with Steamed Chicken, which is described as “a Malaysian favourite that comes complete with tender boiled chicken, fragrant chicken rice, chicken soup, bean sprouts and a combination of chilli, ginger and dark soya sauce for dipping”.
I’d ordered this dish because I had conveniently forgot that I had once laughed at D’s brother for eating boiled chicken breast – I’d imagined it to be flavourless. It looked like a safe option, without the chilli of the other dishes. Turns out though, that the chicken, whilst not dry, was still squeaky – really, chicken breast does not stop being squeaky even if you change how you cook it. Aside from that, there wasn’t really much taste to the chicken (so I was right about boiled chicken breast being flavourless), and relied heavily on the dipping sauces. The chilli sauce was very spicy, but I didn’t think the dark soya sauce did much to add flavour.
The chicken aside, the chicken rice was very fragrant. It tasted like the rice was cooked in chicken soup rather than water, which was interesting. It did taste a bit too salty, though – I’d have preferred the chicken flavour to be more subtle. The bean sprouts were also on a bed of soya sauce – I’d have preferred the bean sprouts to be less flavoured, and hence made the dish more ‘fresh’. The same goes for the bed of cucumber underneath the chicken and the tomato on top of the chicken – if they’d put it to the side, the vegetables would’ve stayed cool, and made the dish more ‘fresh’. On that note, I guess that’s why I prefer Vietnamese food.
My impression of the dish is polarised: some flavours were too strong, while others were barely there.
But onto the drink! I had my eye on quite a few drinks on their menu, but ended up choosing the lychee soda. It was slightly carbonated and distinctly lychee flavoured. The mint leaves added an interesting twist to the drink. I’m not a fan of mint drinks when it involves grinding up mint leaves, but the leaves gave a more subtle refreshing taste. And the two lychees floating around? I’m positive that they’re canned but they tasted all right, so it didn’t detract from what was otherwise a decent drink.
PappaRich is located at 5/185 Broadway, Ultimo NSW 2007.
2016
I go for Roti canai with Curry Chicken ($13.90). The addition of chicken makes it easier to order as a main than as something to share. The roti is less soft and fluffy than the ones at Mamak, but still have a beautiful eggy flavour without being too dense like a naan. The curries are lentil and sambal. I’m always more of a fan of the lentil curries, which are pleasantly mild, than the sambal, which has a pleasant sweetness to it before the heat becomes overwhelming for my sensitive tongue. The chicken was a tad too overdone, but I really only ordered the chicken for my protein fix, so I didn’t mind.
D gets the Roti Canai with Tandoori Chicken ($14.90). D immensely enjoys this dish. He finds the roti fluffy enough for his liking – he’s particularly sensitive to doughy foods. The chicken was pleasantly warm and looked much juicier than my pieces of chicken, probably from being left on the bone. With his higher tolerance for spicy foods, he enjoyed the heat of the sambal.
N tries the Curry Laksa ($13.90), with hokkien noodles in spicy coconut curry soup with chicken slices, beancurd skin, bean sprouts, eggplant and fish cake. N quite enjoyed her laksa and counts it among the best she’s had – the soup had a higher ratio of coconut milk to shrimp paste, and noodles weren’t rice noodles as commonly used, and the eggplant was a new and tasty addition.
T goes for the Pappa Prawn Mee ($13.90) with flour noodles in an anchovy based soup served with minced chicken, fried anchovies, mushrooms, spinach and topped with half boiled egg and pan mee soup chilli on the side. A quick taste of the pan mee soup chilli with a chopstick alerts T that its heat is off the charts, so he goes without. He enjoys the resulting prawn noodle soup.
And the drinks! D orders the Mango Mania ($6.90) with ice blended mango with whole (canned) lychees, lychee jelly cubes and watermelon balls. The drink was refreshing with lots of tasty additions. I particularly enjoyed the lychee jelly cubes – they had a good bite.
I try the Open Sesame ($7.50), ice blended black sesame with soya milk and sesame ice cream. This is one strong hit of black sesame, which isn’t something I usually find with black sesame drinks. The use of soy milk enhances the nuttiness of the black sesame and is perfect for people with lactose intolerance. It’s not too sweet and I enjoy the the grit from the ground black sesame.
T tries the Ribena Melon ($6.90) with ice blended ribena and watermelon with watermelon balls and lychee jellies. I couldn’t taste the watermelon over the Ribena, but it was evident in the gritty texture. And N goes for the tropical lime with ice blended lychee and lime with vanilla ice cream. The taste of lychee wasn’t evident, likely overpowered by the lime, and the vanilla ice cream left a not entirely comfortable creamy sensation to what is usually a frappe.
On a later visit to the store in Macquarie Park, I try the Matcha Rocks ($7.50) with ice blended green tea and red bean paste and green tea ice cream. I’d have enjoyed a stronger matcha taste, which was barely detectable here against the richness of the red bean paste. D tries the Red Bean ($5.90) with ice blended red bean and more red bean paste. The two drinks tasted rather similar, with the former being more creamy.
And with dessert to finish off, I have the Hainan Toasted Bread with Butter & Kaya ($5.50). I love thick-cut toast for the fluffy innards hidden beneath the crunchy exterior, but the toast here was much too old or dried out to have any fluffiness. It also came out cold so the butter had no opportunity to melt into the toast. The kaya, though, was beautifully smooth and fragrant.
2017
This is the Dry Koay Teow Soup with Steamed Chicken ($14.90). It’s ‘thin flat rice noodles served with tasty sweet sauce, red chilli and a serve of steamed chicken’.
The noodles are smooth and slippery with a sweet soy like sauce. The chillis provide some heat to spice up the noodles.
Unfortunately for me, I’m always stuck with squeaky chicken breast when I eat steamed chicken at restaurants. This time it’s no exception even though T’s serving of steamed chicken was deliciously smooth and juicy thigh. The coriander added an enjoyable herby flavour to the soy in the chicken.
On the earlier visit, I was really after the Pappa Wat Tan Hor ($14.90) or wok-fried combination thick flat rice noodles with egg gravy, prawns, fish cake, chicken slices, choy sum and fried shallots. The larger portion saw me opting to share with D at a later visit to Macquarie Park.
The dish is fragrant with wok hei much like you’d expect from Cantonese cuisine. Add a dash of soy sauce and the provided pickled chillis, the dish ticks the five basic tastes and is immensely enjoyable with its vast array of ingredients. That said, the slipperiness of the egg gravy means it’s not the easiest dish to eat with chopsticks – a spoon will assist.
We’re not sure if we’d tried the Roti Telur ($8.90) before so we give it a go. Roti telur is roti canai with egg throughout the bread. Here, it’s served with dhal and sambal. The roti telur has a delicious eggy flavour, although it’s masked by the dhal and sambal. It’s also denser than the roti canai whose fluffy texture makes it both a convenient and tasty vehicle for dipping into sauces, whereas the roti telur is better appreciated on its own.
This is the Roti Canai with Tandoori Chicken ($14.90) with raita, sambal and a wedge of lime. The roti at PappaRich has a delicious crispiness to the edge with a fragrant and fluffy construction, which is in stark contrast to the ones from Indian or Sri Lankan restaurants. The tandoori chicken is pleasantly spicy, but cooled with the yoghurt speckled with carrot and cucumber, while the sambal is enjoyably sweet with a healthy heat developing in the finish.
For drinks, T has the Kopi ($4.20), a Malaysian style coffee. The milk and sweetness of the coffee masks any bitter notes in the coffee. I’d have preferred a richer coffee flavour.
I try the Pappa Cham ($4.20), a coffee and milk tea. While I could taste a fragrant milk tea, I could not detect any hint of coffee. Perhaps they forgot?
And N goes for their Red Bean ($4.90) with ice blended red bean and more red bean paste. We’re surprised that we had to mix the soy milk with the red bean ourselves as the menu showed a pre-blended drink. Nonetheless, N enjoyed the mellow red bean flavour but not the prominent soy milk flavour in the finish.
Coffee and tea aren’t an option for the caffeine-sensitive at dinner, so this is the Coconut Paradise ($7.50). The flavour came through as coconut milk, although it’s pleasantly mellow in the background with the sweeter flavours of young coconut flesh and juice coming through more prominently. We’re convinced they must use real young coconut given the price.
And finally, this is the Lychee Grass Jelly ($5.90). I’d been curious about this for a long time, but opted for other drinks as the picture in the menu showed crushed ice without a proper desscription. We were pleasantly surprised to find that it’s a lychee blended ice, like a slushie. The grass jelly and the fruit added delicious pops of texture and flavour, but what surprised us most pleasantly was the change in flavour from the lime juice.
The interior of the different stores is also much the same, with Macquarie Park (above) being brighter with white walls and white stone tabletops. Consistency is important and PappaRich delivered on flavour, portion sizes, customer service and decor.
2018
I usually go for the roti or noodle dishes, but this time, I try their Jasmine Rice with Red Chicken & Sambal Eggplant ($14.90), which comes with pappadum and sliced cucumber.
This is a very comforting sort of dish – the red chicken was deep fried and slathered in a sweet, tomato-based sauce, while the eggplant was also lightly battered and deep-fried, retaining its tender innards. The cucumber added freshness and the pappadum brought the element of crunch. That said, the sambal accompanying the eggplant was not spicy at all, for sambal. It was enjoyable, but not what I expected.
This here is Barley Grass Jelly. The drink is sweetened barley water with grass jelly. The barley adds a chewy interest to the mellow sweetness of the barley water, while the grass jelly brought a soft slipperiness. That said, the flavour in the grass jelly isn’t particularly pronounced with minimal flavour and barely distinguishable from the similarly coloured coffee jelly that they also serve. Grass jelly flavour aside, the drink was an enjoyable mix of textures – perfect for those looking for something not too sweet.
2019
This is the Ipoh Koay Teow Soup with Prawns & Chicken Slices ($15.90), described as ‘thin flat rice noodles in freshly boiled chicken and prawn head broth, topped with prawns, chicken slices, chives, red chilli and bean sprouts’.
This was a rather ordinary dish. The noodles were smooth but the abundance of beansprouts interfered with almost every bite. While the broth delivered a prawn head flavour through the chicken, it also sorely needed the chilli vinegar to add interest. Otherwise, the toppings were disappointing with each prawn sliced in half to give the appearance of more and the chicken breast was squeaky.
This is the Roti Kaya ($9.50), described as ‘roti canai with kaya (coconut jam) throughout the bread’.
The roti kaya was a pleasant surprise after unimpressive encounters with the version from Mamak. Here, the roti is buttery, flaky and crispy with just enough kaya to add a sweet coconut and pandan flavour without overwhelming the roti. We’d return for these.
PappaRich introduced a nasi lemak burger for the month of July in 2019, so we took the opportunity to try nasi lemak proper for comparison after receiving a 30% UberEats coupon.
This is the Nasi Lemak ($14.90 in store, $18.30 with UberEats) and our first taste of this dish. We’re pleasantly surprised by the harmony of flavours with the coconut rice adding just a hint of sweetness to the rice that complemented well with the fishy spiciness of the sambal and the savoury fried chicken,anchovies and peanuts. We would’ve enjoyed some more flavour with the chicken itself, though.
And this is the Nasi Lemak Burger ($14.90 in store, $16.90 with UberEats). It sandwiches PappaRich’s signature fried chicken, peanuts, sambal, anchovies, cucumber and a fried egg between two soft milk buns, as well as replaces the standard burger accompaniment of chips with a side of fried chicken skin.
The flavours of this burger were a pleasant and tasty surprise, being a convenient format for getting a bite — albeit a messy one — of everything that comes with nasi lemak. That said, the combined flavours do not immediately recall nasi lemak, tasting more like just a Malaysian inspired burger, which is perhaps because the individual flavour of each ingredient is a major part of enjoying a nasi lemak. Critically, coconut is also missing from the burger, which could’ve been incorporated as part of either the bun or the crumb for the fried chicken.
2022
PappaRich fell off our radar after their portion sizes shrank on every subsequent visit. However, we don’t mind visiting when someone else is paying as the flavour of their food is generally consistent.
Hokkien Fried Beef Hor Fun with Gravy ($18.50). It is described as ‘wok-fried beef in thick flat rice noodles with choy sum, ginger, spring onion and soy gravy. Green chilli pickle served on the side’.
This was much like our favourite wat tan hor but with soy, rather than egg, based gravy that gave the noodles a deeper savoury flavour while allowing the smoky wok hei from the noodles to came through. Sadly, the noodle portion was so meagre that it was swallowed up by the gravy in the relatively shallow 3 cm deep plate. The four slices of beef could’ve been more plentiful and tender, and the single slice of ginger (about 8 x 3 x 0.5 cm in size) was odd. A larger portion would have us return for this dish as a variation on our favourite.
This is the Garlic Naan with Curry Chicken ($13.90, +$5.90 for additional naan). With their roti being a firm favourite, it was an easy decision to try their new addition of the naan, which was covered in a generous amount of butter and fresh garlic. While the thicker edges gave the initial impression of being doughy, the naan grew on me by the second bite and did a marvellous job of mopping up the sauce. The curry was well-spiced and soaked into the melt-in-your-mouth pieces of boneless chicken, but it did not carry much heat.
This is only one of many new additions to the menu, so we’ll be back.
PappaRich is located at Shop 2185A, Westfield Parramatta, 159-175 Church St, Parramatta NSW 2150.