Devon By Night, Surry Hills

After creating a successful brunch joint, Devon Cafe has now opened their shop for dinner under the name Devon By Night. The shop opens nightly from 6PM and serves a variety of Asian inspired cuisines.

A friend came up with an idea to go visit this place and since this place is pretty famous for its brunch, we all agreed to try out the night version. Three of us arrived around 7 on a Thursday night and there were only 2 people sitting in the front part of the shop (fyi, the shop has the front and back side where kitchen is located in the middle).

Anyways, we were seated at a shared table and not long after that the seats started to fill up. A few more people came in and a staff told them that the place was fully booked (apparently the back side was for people who had already made a reservation).

Here are the dishes that we ordered:

Chinese egg custard, shitake, fungus, yellow needle flower,

chinese fried bread, and perigord black truffle ($29)

This menu was my personal choice. I was a bit curious to see how much of truffle they were going to spare and they clearly did not disappoint. This dish plus a bowl of steamed rice and my tummy was as happy as a clam.

 

 KJI fried chicken - korean style chicken wings

with go chujang and peanut sauce ($15)

There were 5 pieces of crispy chicken wings in this dish. Personally, I think the fried chicken was just average.

 Aunty Yulia's short ribs - beef short ribs slow cooked in Indonesian sweet soy

 with spicy tomato and basil relish ($28)

The photo might not look as convincing (blame the lighting. lol), but this dish was my personal fave. The meat was very tender and seasoned with sweet soy sauce which totally tasted awesome. The greens on the side also helped me feel less guilty (as a result of having too much meat). Well.. kind of :p

Chargrilled jumbo prawns with Penang hokkien mee flavours ($29)

Apparently my friend was still hungry so we decided to order the prawns. There were 5 of them and all cooked perfectly.

Matcha fondant with white chocolate ice cream ($13)

For the desserts (notice the 's' here), we had a special which was a fondue. This dish was a hit. I liked the overall texture and also the white chocolate ice cream balanced the bitterness from the matcha.

 Fried ice cream bao's ($7)

And last but not least, we ordered a fried ice cream. This was particularly hard to share (imagine trying to split this to 3 equal sizes?). Honestly I am not a big fan of fried ice cream and I still remain the same even after having this. I just felt this dish was just so so and a tad overpriced for the size and taste.

To summarise, I quite enjoyed the food served here. However, it would be super nice if the food comes out quicker. In our experience, we had to wait for about half an hour to 40 mins between the entrée and main. The price was on a higher end but it's more because of the overall concept. Speaking about ambiance, the place is not that big and I like it that they don't try to gain more profits and overcrowd the place with more tables/chairs.

Food: ★★★★☆
Price: ★★★☆☆
Ambiance: ★★★★☆
Service: ★★☆☆☆