gourmandonline

Just came back from lunch here. Completely stuffed for $15 pp. A bit of history about this place - SinMa is short for “Singapore Malaysia”, so this is a good place to try Singaporean/Malaysian dishes, the “Mamak” dishes (Malaysian-Muslim) and Nyonya dishes (Chinese-Malaysian). SinMa has been around Kingsford for a few years, which is a good sign considering the high turnover of restaurants in this area. You have to be very good and competitive to survive here.

Decor is not great - very basic with tables covered in plastic. Menu is long and extensive, providing a good variety of hawker-style dishes as well as other dishes like Singaporean Chilli Crab. Service could be a lot friendlier, but what they lack in service and ambience was made up by the food. You order and pay at the counter and sit down to wait for your food. They also have a glass counter where you can order 3 dishes+rice for $8.20. We ordered …

• Curry puffs ($1.50 each) which were very good - fresh, crisp, very yummy spicy curry fillings.
• Rice with 3 choices of dish (pork stew in sweet soy sauce and star anise, curry and sambal chicken) - recommend the pork stew
• Mamak nasi goreng (approx $9) - very tasty, not too oily and the best dish out of all
• Singaporean fried bee hoon (approx $9) - fried rice noodle, not as good as the nasi goreng but quite good
• Ikan bakar - grilled stingray with sambal, a bit too salty and fish was a bit tough
• Sambal baby octopus ($15) - on the specials board. This dish is different to the other sambal dishes I’ve tried. I was expecting sweet sambal sauce, but this was very salty and oily. Octopus was chewy, disappointing.
• Fried turnip cake - Turnip cake with beansprouts, egg and prawns. Very tasty.
• Ice kacang ($4.80) - My friend said it was a tad too sweet. Otherwise pretty good, better than the one at QVB she said.

The point is .. go for the single dishes like nasi goreng, mee goreng, char kway tiao etc. Overall all the dishes were nice except for the sambal baby octopus. A Malaysian friend of mine frequents this place every time she comes to Sydney. She recommends the nasi lemak, curry laksa, Loh Mee, prawn mee, hokkien mee, fried turnip cake and chilli crab. Definitely worth trying