PappaRich

Rocked up for dinner with my Girl. The place wasn’t particularly pumping. Asked the General Manager for a booth seat. To my surprise he wouldn’t comply, insisting that I needed four people to get a booth seat. What a huge knob! Have you never heard of the hospitality maxim, «Customer is always right»??

This is my third visit to this particular venue. And I keep coming back! It is now my goto Malaysian place followed closely by Jimmy’s Recipe at The Galleries.
Chicken chop with curry sauce — fricken incredible! Juicy on inside and crispy on outside. The most perfect concoction of curry goodness slipped right on top. Nothing goes soggy, all the way through the experience! Rice has a beautifully tangy spice mixed through it (probably some cardamom in there somewhere).
Chicken laksa — right up there with Tamesek at Parramatta and The Malaya at King Street Wharf. Not dumbed down in any way.
Roti Canai — not as good as Mamak’s, but a worthy contender… and the dhal and curry sauce is better!
Try the Tropical Lime drinks (back page of menu) … lychee ice magicness with a scoop of quality vanilla ice cream on top!
This place would have to be best Malaysian in Sydney I reckon!

Lots of vegetarian and vegan options. I’m not an expert of of Malaysian food but it’s very tasty. I loved that almost every dish had a veg or vegan option to choose from (some gluten free as well).
If you’re looking for lots of options this is a good place to go.

Came here a couple of months ago with a mate for dinner. I had a good impression of the place with a great selection of drinks which I would’ve rated highly for the creativity and taste. The food and ambience is average but pleasant though the dishes are just a fancier version of what you can probably get for half price and just as good down the road in Chinatown. Everything was mediocre and fine with a really chillaxed, casual atmosphere.
However, when it came to paying and I presented my Entertainment Book voucher, the Maitre D/​Female Manager came to explain that my «Buy one main get one main free» meant that I couldn’t claim one of the main dishes. We ordered x2 drinks, x2 main meals and x1 entrée and she comes and tells me that I could only redeem a crappy little piece of bread. It doesn’t even make sense. We give her more business by buying the entrée but in the end it bites us in the bum because if we had not added it on, we probably would’ve been able to redeem the «real» main dish.
I tried to explain this to her but she was being really rude and treating us like second class citizens for bringing in the voucher (even though it cost me $ 75 to get these vouchers). She kept arguing with me saying that their bread is classified as a main meal. Hah! I stopped arguing when I realised she was just going to say whatever nonsensical thing to prevent us from redeeming this meal even if it meant throwing obvious lies around. «Roti is a main meal». LOL I just left it and vowed never to revisit.
To top it off, when I left, she avoided eye contact when I was paying at the till and did not even say thank you. The staff will probably know who you are because I noticed you were yelling at all your staff, bossing them around all night. Shame on you lady for letting your restaurant down with your arrogance.

I came into Pappa Rich with high hopes after witnessing the epic lines for this place. Some of them were met but I was not wowed. For starters, the ordering system is awesome. I love being able to write up your own order on a pad and handing it to the waitress at the touch of a button. Very efficient. However, our order came a bit backwards with satay arriving at the end of the meal. Even though they let us know that would happen, it still seems a bit unprofessional of the kitchen. My nasi lamek with beef rendang was generally delicious. they got every bit but the beef right. The coconut rice was good, nice ratio of ikan bilis and peanuts. The sambal was delicious. But the beef rendang was more fatty than spicy. There was very little in the sauce that made it seem special. This is particularly surprising given that the satay sauce was awesome. It’s worth another visit to find their best dish but the menu overall seems a little hit and miss.

I have been to this restaurant several times. Some stuffs are extremely rude, especially the cashier. It seems like he is going to rob me when I was paying for the bill. Also the food is below the average level, I will never come to this place again

I went to the franchise in Canberra and was more impressed there than here. Perhaps that’s because I was used to the nature of service by the time I tried this one.
However, both have very similar service times — damn fast.
The food is tasty and it’s very filling. I’ll definitely avoid anything with anchovies in it next time though as it was my first time with Malay cuisine and what anchovies mean to Malay food. Doesn’t gel well with me, too used to how the Italians do them instead.
Have to agree with a bit pricey. The food is good, but it feels like it should be less expensive than what it is. Perhaps I’m used to less expensive Vietnamese places.

It’s busy no doubt about that! Tip: arrive around 6-​ish to avoid lining up.
It’s busy yet you can talk without having to shout or missing half the conversation. Suitable for families, groups and date night.
Prompt professional service, food is fresh and authentic Malay as you’ll get outside of Malaysia.
Everything on the menu is excellent and you really can’t go wrong with whatever you go with except the dim sums — save these for yum Cha. These were miniature in size and watery.

Terrible service where the customer comes last!
Ordered roti with chicken curry and OIL was served as the dipping sauce. When I asked for the actual curry dip, they gave me a 50 cent size small saucer of curry that’s usually used to serve cut chilli.
Asked the manager to assist and she said she MUST take my whole plate back to the kitchen to add more curry dip, saying if she brings curry dip out to the table I will be charged 2 dollars!
By the time my plate returned to the table my guest had finished eating and my food was cold.
How ridiculous that their operational processes comes first and the customer experience last. No wonder Mamak still has the queues and not Paparich.

Meh.
It’s nothing special, and to add insult it’s one of those «cash only» unless minimum amount places, and also a bit pricey. I understand that cash only places should be cheap because you’re probably not paying taxes.
Either it needs to be cheaper or it needs to do cards — properly.
A 3 star effort I guess.
With a long queue this place is only a 2 star rating at best.
Also, I felt a bit sick afterwards so thats another star gone.
You’re better off just going to Mamak or Hawker. At least you know you’re paying for quality. Or nearby, would be Malacca Straits. Or maybe just having some alcohol in your system first.

Popped into PappaRich with my husband on my way home from work because I wanted to compare the raita here against mamak. Again, there is a massive line outside but it’s really deceiving because it’s very fast.
Menu looks like the typical Malaysian flair with noodles, chicken, laksas and my favourite… The drinks page! You have a ton to choose from and tonight was a regular coffee kind of day. They do not mess around, I wanted to TALK ABOUT SOME STUFF when I had finished my cup. Hahhaha.
Now, compared to mamak this place comes in second. The dipping curries just weren’t as rich, but I think the flakiness of the dough was excellent. Will be back to try laksa soon.

Papa rich is not exactly flawed… the service is not bad and the food is exactly as it is advertised, tasting it is suppose to consistently. Trouble is, it’s not terribly memorable either… similar to their chatswood bigger sister, it is a bit too well measured and safe in terms of flavour.
Having said that, it is great for ‘meh days’ where you don’t need amazing food to save your day but don’t want to be disappointed either cos that would make it a bad day! I can’t say I’ll get papa-​rich-​cravings often but I’ll definitely be back! (on meh days)

Ok, this place is where I go to get away from the university food outlets.
It’s got a large selection of yummy dishes, and an even larger variety of drinks.
The food is Malaysian, mixed with the style you get in smaller cafes around Newtown, etc.
The roti is a bit of a hit and miss– once it was cooked to perfection, while the other time it seemed to have been left out for a little too long.
That said, the flavour is pleasant, and many of the dishes are spicy (excellent).
Generally any dish with chicken in it is a good one.
As a few of the other reviewers have pointed out, the service is very average.
Overall however, this PappaRich is a pleasant and reliable outlet to have in a convenient location.

For a place with such long queues at night, this place is ridiculously mediocre.
I mean, MEDIOCRE.
We arrived around lunchtime (come during lunch, no wait) and were seated promptly… though a queue formed shortly after we sat down. Why? I don’t understand? Do Sydneysiders love lining up for mediocre Malaysian food, a la Mamak?
When you sit down you write in your order on a piece of paper and then buzz the waiter/​waitress. The menu is pretty extensive… but with roti on the first few pages you have to try the roti right?
I ordered the roti and the laksa, gf ordered another noodle dish.
Roti was OK, not the softest or flakiest but the dipping sauces were incredible. Roti is better at Mamak but the sauces are better here.
The laksa has great addons (eggplant!) but the broth is pretty bland. It tasted alright initially, but after a few bites the broth was just bland and tasteless.
I definitely would probably come back for the roti, but I wouldn’t wait longer than 10 minutes in line… not worth it.

I ordered biryani with beef rendang and sambal prawns with small chicken curry on the side.
Well, overall the dish is good but don’t have a wow factor that want you up come back for more.
For my personal taste, the green cardamom is overpowering on biryani, but saying that might be the recipes that chef agree to that taste.
Curry chicken used a lot of white pepper that burnt your tongue after you taste this dish.
Sambal prawn lack of richness, sweet and spicy as sambal should be.
However the freshness of the drink, the sweetness of lychee and coconut jelly with a little acidity from the mango purée is a drink that you must try!

The frequent queues not quite around the block told us something good might be going on inside this joint. However, after packing in with the throng tonight we were left with that pivotal question, where was the taste? Malaysian food should be deliciously rich and spicy. This food was unanimously bland. The sambal prawns had a freshly thawed glug about them. The biryani could have come out of a packet. The chicken satays were so thin that on the walk home I tried to calculate how many hundred could they churn out per chook? We did like the variety of non alcoholic drinks although one would need to be at least moderately tanked before they could find the food here, barely passable…

It’s pretty exciting going to a bustling new restaurant the first weekend that it’s open. We were super excited, being huge fans of Malacca Straits up the road (also Malaysian) and had been waiting for Pappa to open for months now.
But ultimately I was pretty disappointed. Their much touted roti was too fluffy and pastry-​like for my tastes. Two of our meals (both roti based in neat little compartmentalised dishes weee!) were average, but the Biryani red chicken was delicious.
Perhaps I’ll go again and get more like the red chicken and in which case I’ll have to upgrade my score, but with only ¹⁄₃ being flavoursome, this is all it’ll get for now.
Lovely staff and very attentive service however.