After our visit to Warra Warra last month, Claire alerted us to the existence of Salero Kito Padang next door. It promises Melbourne's only West Sumatran cuisine, with a range of cheap and seemingly authentic dishes. The setting is pretty basic - bare wood tables, bright lights and a food-courty vibe. Food-wise it's all bain marie dishes (aside from a few specials) and the veggie options are pretty limited. We basically sampled them all. All of the veggie dishes except for the egg seemed vegan and the curries looked gluten-free, but there was no labelling.
From the bain marie the deal is three dishes and rice for $12 or two and rice for $11. We went all in and filled up our plates.
Cindy kicked off with a spicy egg, a corn fritters and the silverbeet curry on rice. The spicy egg was really spicy, a hard boiled and battered egg with a spoon of explosive chilli sauce. The silverbeet curry packed a decent kick as well, and the coconutty sauce soaked its way through the rice pretty effectively. The corn fritter was the star of the show - a salty, savoury delight of crisply fried corn and veggie chunks.
I had the silverbeet curry as well, alongside the jackfruit curry and some fried soybean. The fried soybean is basically deep-fried tempeh, which is about as delicious as it sounds. It would have been great to have some chilli sauce to smear on top, but there wasn't any on the table and I was too lazy to ask. The jackfruit curry was interesting - a long way from our experiments with jackfruit - it was mildly spicy and soft, without a huge amount of its own flavour.
We couldn't resist ordering some of the more intriguing drinks from the fridge - these were super sweet but had a decent burst of floral tea flavour under all the sugar.
We couldn't resist ordering some of the more intriguing drinks from the fridge - these were super sweet but had a decent burst of floral tea flavour under all the sugar.
I'm glad we tried Salero Kito Padang, but it's not really a place aimed at vegetarians - the meat-eaters have a lot more to choose from. Still, it's cheap and offers something a bit different to the usual - it's a rare restaurant that offers deep-fried tempeh.
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There a handful of positive reviews out there about Salero Kito Padang's sister establishment in Malvern - see Tea and Cupcake, In Melbourne and Udang Kering.
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Salero Kito Padang Restaurant
18/235 Bourke St, Melbourne (in the Tivoli Arcade)
9639 7268
menu
http://www.salerokito.com.au/
Accessibility: There's a smooth entryway and a reasonably spacious interior. Ordering and payment happens at a low-ish counter. We didn't visit the toilets, they're presumably located somewhere in the arcade.
The food looks good - I'm particularly drawn to Cindy's plate, yum.
ReplyDeleteYou have a good eye, leaf - that corn fritter was really something. :-)
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