Sangcuary

Cafe$

Ah, Sydney’s boulevard of broken dreams. Parramatta Road is not the easiest place to start a business, but despite six hurtling lanes of traffic and the serious lack of parking, some places have made it work. Others are pulling queues out the door.

There’s Derrel’s in Camperdown, a late-night curry canteen serving an English-style chip butty drenched in butter chicken gravy. There’s the Lady Hampshire, a pub with thrice-fried potato wedges and a sprawling beer garden where you can barely hear the trucks go past. And then there’s the strip’s biggest success story: Pantry Story, a delightful Indonesian bakery run by husband-and-wife-team Hari Wibowo and Mutiara Sucipto, where locals gather on the pavement each morning for crinkle-topped pandan cookies and rendang curry hand pies. If the crowd has looked even bigger on your commute lately, that’s because they’ve just opened a sandwich shop next door.

It’s called Sangcuary, a mash-up of the pair’s childhood nicknames, Sangcu and Ary, and a nod to both “sandwich” and “sanctuary”. It’s a fitting name too. Step inside and you’ll find a calming, neutral-toned space with paper lanterns and a Kit-Cat Klock, styled to feel like a home kitchen.

Wibowo and Sucipto scooped up the venue when it first hit the market six months ago. “We got a very good price on the site because it’s Parramatta Road, and it’s not that busy around here,” says Sucipto. They initially ran it as a cold kitchen to laminate their honey butter croissants and kaya custard buns for Pantry Store next door. It was only after several requests for sandwiches that Sucipto decided to start testing some out.

As the lead baker and chef, she’s created with nine different sandwich combinations. So far, it’s the oxtail dip that has stolen the limelight, an Indonesian riff on the French dip, the broth borrowed from sop buntut, an aromatic oxtail soup. Paper-thin ruffles of house-smoked roast beef, melty provolone and caramelised onion are packed into Pantry Story’s own focaccia, ready for dunking in a peppery, clove-y oxtail jus. It’s a juicy, meaty mouthful that holds together nicely, and might just be the most delicious thing on the whole 18km strip.

Less showy but just as tasty is the gado gado, named after the traditional Indonesian salad that translates as “mix mix”. Here it’s made on tofu and tempeh, tumbled with cabbage and egg and swathed in a creamy cashew nut dressing, with a shower of crispy onions on top. The best part is what it’s wrapped in, a blistered disc of spring onion pancake split down the middle. “The spring onion pancake kind-of puffs up when you cook it, and I realised I could stuff it like a pita pocket,” Sucipto says.

Rounding out the top three is Hari’s Mum’s Signature Pork, an Indo B&E roll. Sucipto’s version uses grilled pork belly slabs in a satay sauce, built on a sweet-soy base laced with lime leaf, coriander and candlenut, the recipe passed down from Wibowo’s late mother. “Every time I smell it, it reminds me of my mum,” Wibowo says. “This was her variation, and it actually works really well as a sandwich.”

It’s rich and fatty enough that you’ll need something to cut through it, like the sinus-clearing Badak, a North Sumatran sarsaparilla that tastes like a mix of Dr Pepper and Mentos (thankfully, without the explosion of foam).

Sandwiches come in the ice-cream variety too. One recreates Wibowo and Sucipto’s wedding cake, built on a slice of chocolate cake layered with dark chocolate gelato and hazelnut praline, like a frozen Ferrero Rocher. The other is croissant flavoured, made on yesterday’s pastries soaked in milk, churned, then frozen into a honey-malt block. Both come wrapped in brown paper sealed with cute stickers to take away. Good dessert options are scarce around here, so grab a couple for the road.

Three Indonesian sandwich spots to try

Sandwhich

Sandwhich? There’s no easy choices on this new South-East Asian sandwich shop that sells an immaculate crispy chicken namban roll and kimcheese sourdough toastie, alongside specialty cold foam coffees.

9/60 Applebee Street, St Peters, instagram.com/sandwhichsydney

The Greedy Civet

This Camperdown cafe takes Indonesian classics and gives them the Australian brunch treatment. Sandwich Watch star, the rendang toastie, comes loaded with beef shin, mozzarella and pickled eschalot, and buzzes with warm spices.

18-22 Purkis Street, Camperdown, instagram.com/greedycivet

Ada’s Affair

Another Sandwich Watch favourite, this time it’s all about babi galing (Balinese suckling pig). The signature sanger is stacked with salty-sweet roast pork, sliced cucumber and sambal with a drizzle of hot honey on toasted focaccia.

144B Glebe Point Road, Glebe, instagram.com/adasaffair

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

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