Dining review: Manly Momo Bar
Two food trends pop up in a new hole in the wall Manly venue and customers love them.
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Hmmm, something different for lunch. But it seems everyone has had the same idea. The pre-noon line at Manly’s newest hole-in-the-wall eatery is long.
So what’s all the fuss about? With only dumplings and trendy poke bowls on the menu, Manly Momo Bar has created quite a stir.
New-to-hospitality Damien Dellala and his Nepalese wife Archana have teamed up with Manly resident Simon Terry.
The trio have gutted Terry’s Market Place barber shop, tapped into Archana’s heritage and done their due diligence.
from pierogies in Poland to gyozas in Japan, many cultures have dumplings. In Nepal, the popular street food are called momos. Last year, the Dellalas tested the market with a pop-up Momo Bar and just three types of dumplings. Now they’re back with a permanent central Manly base, five dumplings dishes and a selection of on-trend Hawaiian-Japanese salad bowls.
Memos and poke. And since the bar opened at the end of March, locals can’t get enough of them. Eight weeks in and the kitchen is filling almost 10,000 dumplings a week. The dough’s not made on-site, however the gluten-free dough is, and so are Archana’s meat and vegetarian fillings.
At first glance the menu is a bit daunting. Luckily the staffer behind the counter helps two first-time lunchers deal with fusion confusion. She suggests the mix and match momo bowl with its choice of two fillings and three side sauces, and an Aloha bowl.
This rainbow salad bowl starts with a base and a protein, which you pick, then it’s topped with five ingredients — edamame beans, seaweed salad, pickled ginger, coriander, red onions and carrot, two homemade sauces, roasted sesame and shoyu sauce, and fried shallots for extra crunch.
Alternatively, you can build your own, but the instructions aren’t that obvious at first.
The Aloha has become a fave since opening we’re told, but we fancy one packed with more heat.
The Volcano bowl obliges, with edamame beans, carrot, radish, cucumber and tokibo, a liberal sprinkling of red and green chillies, spicy mayo, spicy shoyu sauce and crunchy wasabi peas giving our choice of raw salmon pieces and shredded mixed cabbage a heat surge.
It’s pretty dish — no wonder Instagrammers have twitchy fingers — hashtag hold the boring lettuce. And it’s packed with plenty of crunch, texture and flavour, once you dig up the sauce from the bottom of the bowl.
Our Manly-style pork and vegie momos come with garlic yoghurt topping, tomato and sesame paste and paprika butter. A bowl of 10 plump, tasty parcels is nice way of doing lunch, even if the teen at the table didn’t rate the earthiness of the traditional accompaniment, achaar.
They are let down though by lukewarm chicken broth.
On a cold winter’s day a steaming bowl of dumpling soup would be sensational.
Manly Momo Bar
28 Market Place, Manly
Phone: 0472 666 672
Open: Daily 11am to 9pm
Go for: Aloha bowl with choice of base and protein, five toppings, shoyu sauce and fried shallots, from $15.90; bowl of 10 momos in broth from $13.50
Coffee: No
BYO: Yes, $5 a table corkage
Bottom line: $32.90 for two
Or try this: Hamro Aangan for momos
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