It was an early start to the day after a night interrupted by the cries of a teething Mia. After another couple of hours playing with the kids we said goodbye and made our way to Cabramatta, heroin capital of Australia (amongst other things).
It wasn’t the heroin that we were interested in, but rather the awesome/authentic Vietnamese/Chinese food. We could see from the moment we drove through that this was a rather serious Vietnamese/Chinese area. Our friend, May, was able to get an early mark from work, so we met her and another friend, Shilay, for a food crawl (think pub crawl, but between restaurants/food stalls).
We got there early, so killed time walking around salivating at all the food that was available. We were recommended to visit a special Pork Roll restaurant called Vinata (doesn’t sound very Vietnamese to me), so we obliged and grabbed a roll to share. Firstly, it was only $4! Secondly, soo good! The bread was perfect, the sauce was amazing, the pork was full of flavour and the salad was super fresh. I haven’t had many to compare to, but I do agree that this was very, very good (and certainly better than whatever else you could buy from Subway for $4).
May was held up, so we started early at a yum cha restaurant. Again, everything tasted so fresh, even though it had probably been circulating around the tables for a little while (we were right at the end of lunch). I always order too much at yum cha, and fell into the same trap again today – but it was totally worth the discomfort.
May arrived and we did some more food shopping, buying some take-away dishes from a small shop in an arcade. They made the dishes fresh, and again, delicious. Risa was like a kid in a candy store – so much cheap seafood. She bought a single abalone for a snack ($3.50) – though, the shop keepers seemed a little confused that she wanted to eat it then/there.
A little more shopping for food for dinner – steamed fish, prawn rolls, mussels.
Sydney is significantly bigger than Brisbane, so the 25km drive from Cabramatta to Kirribilli during peak hour took a little bit of time, but much less than I’d been expecting, probably because we were going the opposite way to the traffic. Still, I don’t ever want to get used to being in that daily.
It was lucky that dinner was quite late, as it gave us all time to have some appetite back. May’s steamed baby snapper was just divine, as were the mussels and prawn rolls.
It was such a fun day in Cabramatta, much better than any other Chinatown we’ve been to in Australia. At times it was hard to believe that we were still in Sydney. Also, the place seemed fairly clean/safe (at least while we were there) – not some seething sess pit of junkies like it’s been made out in movies.
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