I was speaking to my brother in Northern Ireland recently and he said he was at a new Thai restaurant in Belfast and wondered if we had such exotic eateries in Sydney. I know Belfast isn’t the most cosmopolitan city in the world, until the 1990s it was strange to see a non-white or Asian face in the street. (A little known fact is that Ireland as a whole has such significant Chinese communities that more people speak Mandarin and Cantonese than Gaelic). After a year travelling through South East Asia and the Eastern coast of Australia, I have eaten extremely well and sampled the delights of phad thai, crunchy grilled crickets and chillied noodles cooked by hawkers on Kho San Road in Bangkok, like so many westerners experiencing SE Asia . I attended a Laotian cookery college and learnt the secrets of lab and lahksa. In multicultural Balmain I enjoyed better Vietnamese food than I had in Ho Chi Minh, so my brother’s question frustrated me.
Sydney truly is one of the major multicultural centres of the world. A proper melting pot of humanity, only slightly below London and New York from my experience. Sydney’s Chinatown is a great night out with authentic dishes cooked to order, not thrown together and re-heated, which I was disappointed with at other European Chinatowns. One of the real treats I discovered was a chain called BBQ King who do the most incredible aromatic Peking duck with thin pancakes and a finger-licking good hoi sin sauce which is very more-ish. You can’t call yourself a beer connoisseur without trying Lucky Beer or Tsing Tao. Both top drops.
It’s not just Asian food that is flourishing. Sydney has a selection of great Portuguese and Spanish restaurants, a thriving Italian scene, seafood which is second to none, decent Mexican cantinas, lively West Indian cafes offering jerk chicken, goat and all sorts of “mystery meats” with reggae and Red Stripe at all hours of the day. One of my favourite places in the city is a short walk from the Rocks, one of the oldest areas of the city, above Circular Quay, near the city side foot of the Harbour Bridge . It’s a huge cavernous Belgian beer hall offering supreme garlic mussels with numerous boutique beers – everything from old stalwarts like Stella Artois through to Flemish raspberry beers and chocolate ales (which aren’t as nice as they sound).
Having said all this, I’d swap it all for an Ulster Fry, the Northern Irish dish of choice – a heart attack on a place and a nutritionist’s worst nightmare. The ingredients of the perfect Ulster Fry, or regional grill as the Belfast International Airport call it, is a source of great debate which divides the nation. In my opinion, it should be streaky bacon, pork sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms, wheaten bread, potato bread and the unique soda farl – a floury bread made with baking soda, rather than yeast, which seems to sop up the flavour (and coagulated fat!) all fried in butter. It is best served with toasted Veda bread, another unique breadstuff made from malted wheat. Maybe it’s no coincidence I have lost 15 kilos since moving to the other side of the planet – far from temptation!
