Leading with the stomach

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Coming back to Sydney after three years away makes me feel like a tourist in my home city.  As a result, I was looking for ways to explore new areas of Sydney and what better way is there than through culinary explorations of all of its ethnic enclaves.  Oh, and I love eating!

So every month since September, I’ve been organising a group of intrepid food lovers that were willing to travel further west than the CBD in search for a feed.

September food tour – Indian in Harris Park

I asked an Indian colleague where I could find the best and most authentic Indian curry in Sydney.  He immediately responded “It has to be Harris Park”, and I blurted out, “where the heck is Harris Park?”.  It turns out that it is right next to Parramatta, and walking around  the main section of Marion Street we passed Indian sweet shops, grocery stores with Bollywood movie posters stuck on the windows, and many Indian restaurants.

My colleague’s recommendation of the Copper Chimney didn’t disappoint.  Our table of 12 shared several delicious starters, including samosas and tandoori chicken, and a vast array of meat and vegetable curries, such as goat saagwala, lamb rogan josh and curry chicken.  All the curries were relatively mild as I had completely forgotten my colleague’s comment that they make everything mild to cater for us piss-weak non-Indians with sensitive stomachs, and we should specifically request for a spicier dish.

[Photo courtesy of NicCooks.com]

It was a definitely worthwhile trek out west for an Indian feed, and if I was in the area I’d drop by for a curry.  Unfortunately I don’t think they would home deliver the 45-minute drive to Balmain.

October food tour – Vietnamese in Cabramatta

When you mention “Cabramatta” to a Sydneysider, their first thought will be “Vietnamese”, shortly followed by “violent shootings”.  Yes, Cabramatta has been notorious in the past for gun crimes and drug dealing, but hey, if you want to experience Vietnamese food in the heart of Little Vietnam, Cabra is where you go.

I read some good reviews of Tan Viet, who specialise in crispy chicken.  Our group of 14 piled into the restaurant to the curious gazes of the locals, with some people trying out the crispy chicken specialty, and others settling for noodles.  The food came extraordinarily quickly, piled with fresh herb flavours and a waft of pungent fish sauce.  And we didn’t see anything dodgy in the Cabra streets on our early Sunday evening at all!

November food tour – Italian in Haberfield

I debated whether an Italian night out was worthwhile, since the well-known fare of pasta and pizza is pretty pedestrian in adventure terms, however I challenged everyone to order something that they wouldn’t normally eat at an Italian restaurant.  Leichhardt is more traditionally and commercially known as Little Italy in Sydney, however Haberfield has probably taken over the mantle.

A few friends had recommended Dolcissimo in Haberfield for fabulous food, although one had pre-warned me about “the worst service in the world”.  With those low expectations, the ten of us were pleased to have our food arrive within an hour of ordering!  I never cook veal at home, so I ordered the scallopine di vitello all a pizzaiolla, which was cooked perfectly tender and served with a lovely olive and caper tomato sauce.  For dessert, I couldn’t resist a canolo with a creamy ricotta filling, and I am not kidding you when I say that I have been dreaming of canoli almost every day since!

December food tour – Lebanese in Lakemba

Ever since I went to Lebanon in January, I have been slightly obsessed with Lebanese food.  The smoky grilled meats, creamy hummus and baba ganoush, fresh tabouleh and fattoush, and the acceptable (actually, expected) practice of eating with your hands – bliss! And oh, that garlic sauce!

Three unrelated friends of mine recommended Jasmins restaurant in Lakemba, which is home to one of the largest mosques in Australia.  Despite having been warned that there would be a lot of food and there was very little chance of finishing everything, I was completely out of the running after going too hard too early when the bread first came out, with plates of that delicious, light and fluffy garlic sauce, as well as sliced tomato, mint, onion and olives.  By the time our 13 respective mixed plates came, piled with an assortment of lamb shish kebab, smoky grilled chicken, lamb shwarma, kebbe and felafel (not to mention the hummus, fuhl and tabouleh), we were almost full!  Everything was delicious, especially the grilled chicken and kebbe, and I think we all polished off almost every dollop of garlic sauce served to our table.

But wow, what a feast, and I discovered that Lakemba is actually only a 25 minute drive from home, so I can definitely see Jasmins becoming a regular eatery of mine.

The new year will bring lots of new food adventures, with plans for Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, and Croatian to name a few!  So much eating to do.

The adjustment period

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Almost every single Australian that heads to the UK intends to return Down Under.  Some return after their one-year working holiday, pulling beers at their local pub and then blowing all the money they earned on a shitty flatshare in Shepherd’s Bush and a few Contiki tours.  For others, they end up settling into British life and staying longer than they had initially planned, until they get sick of the weather, and of moaning constantly about how things are better in Australia.

I was one of the latter antipodeans, and returned after three-and-a-bit years away.  Having been back in Australia for nine months now, all I can do is reminisce fondly about is how life was better in London.  Sure the weather was a bit crap, and people always mocked me for saying “thongs”, and “DAH-tah” instead of “DAY-tah”, but it’s only after coming back that I’ve realised in what an expensive, isolated, and history-deprived country we live.  Grocery shopping is a depressing experience when you realise that everything costs twice as much as the UK.  On my second day back in the country, my brother took me to a cafe where an almond croissant cost $5.50 and all I could think about was how it would only cost me £1.70 (less than $3!) in Paul.  Jumping in a plane for 2 hours will get you from London to Barcelona for a weekend city break, but doesn’t even get you from Sydney to Auckland.  And in the UK, you can visit cities that were formerly Norse kingdoms, and ancient Pagan stone circles.  In Australia, we have a some cave drawings in remote parts of the country, and Heritage-listed buildings that are only 100 years old.

Before you all tell me to bugger off back to Engerland, there are of course upsides to living in Australia.  It goes without saying that the weather is rather more pleasant, we have proper beaches, and we have great Asian food.  Our economy is still putting along rather nicely, and incomes are a damn sight better than they are in troubled UK economy.  The newspapers don’t just contain headlines about which married footballer was caught with his pants down with some seedy WAG wannabe.  And our transport system doesn’t grind to a halt from dumpings of snow:

Snow in London

Snow in London

It has taken me a little time to adjust back to Sydney life, but things are going well.  I have a new job and a new car, I’m back living in my little Balmain flat, and I have quite a few travel plans in the pipeline.  So all in all, life is good!  How are you guys going?

Is this thing on?

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I am still alive here on the interweb…just.

This blog is testament to my short attention span. I have the same problem when I decide to go on a fitness kick – I join a gym, go for two weeks, rapidly lose interest, and then struggle to extricate myself from the contract with the gym whilst battling my guilt for, once again, being a quitter.

PS I’m back in Australia!

Autumn delights

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There is a definite chill in the air – winter is definitely knocking on the door here.  The disturbing thing is that the temperature has already dropped to what is a pretty bloody freezing temperature for me already, and it is only going to get worse!  It’s only October!!!  Scary.

It hasn’t helped the I have just spent a week diving in the Red Sea in gorgeous blue sky days and temperatures of around 32-35C every day.  We had some amazing conditions and saw hammerheads, oceanic white tips and even a dugong.  Read this amazing hammerhead dive!

I also had a couple of trips to Germany during September – a trip to Berlin and then my first Oktoberfest!  I went to Berlin with my mate Rob to visit Simone.  We all volunteered together at ARCAS in Guatemala, and both Rob and I lost our respective World Cup bets with Simone (Germany trounced both England Australia…boo) so we flew to Berlin to buy her beers.

Simone was a great host and tour guide, and took us around the sites of Potsdam, Checkpoint Charlie, the East Side Gallery, the Brandenburg Gate and the Bundestag.

Oktoberfest was a fun few days of excessive volumes of beer and pork.  The beer tents were enormous, the beer was free flowing, the music was fun (albeit a bit repetitive!), although after a few days I was so blocked up from the diet of meat and potatoes and I went hunting for a Chinese restaurant where I could be guaranteed a serving of vegetables!

I’ve just started a new job with a wine company, so it’s nice to be earning money again.  I even get free wine!

Now to work out what to do and where to go for Christmas holidays!

When’s the next trip?

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Has it really been almost 5 months since my travels ceased and I was plunged back into routine London life??  Back to the familiarity of the local language, being able to throw toilet paper into the toilet, and more dining variety than beans and rice.  However, it was also back to paying a day’s travel budget for a bottle of beer, customer service without a smile, and being packed onto the London Underground like sardines.

What has happened since I’ve been back?

  • Managed to snag a job back at Expedia for a few months
  • Saw Muse rock out Wembley Stadium (quite possibly the best concert ever!) and Pendulum at the Wembley Arena
  • Bathing was forgone for a few days while I indulged my inner hippie at Glastonbury festival
  • Drove a Lamborghini Gallardo and a Ferrari 360 Spider around a race track, which was quite a scary and unnerving experience
  • Met Merv Hughes outside Moet & Chandon champagne house in Epernay – he is big bloke
  • Met Heston Blumenthal after an extravagant lunch at the Fat Duck
  • Didn’t see much from the top of Mt Snowdon in Wales through the rain and fog
  • Saw some great comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe
  • Enjoyed the music and colours of the Notting Hill Carnival.

I am currently a lady of leisure while I look for a new job, the lifestyle of which involves sleeping in, sightseeing around the free sights of London, and baking cupcakes!

Beach hopping

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After spending a few days in Tegucigalpa shopping for a replacement watch (a “Casio” watch for only $5), a new digital camera, contact lenses and other essential traveller items whilst avoiding being robbed again walking around the dodgy parts of town, I was picked up by members of the local World Vision office and taken to the steamy town of Choluteca, where my sponsor child Danny lives.

Danny is 7 years old and lives with his parents and 3 brothers in a house that World Vision sponsorship money helped to build.  I was taken around his community and shown the amazing work that they have been doing – building wells for drinking water, building a community centre,  installing water pipes to take away grey water, building more secure housing for the people, planting trees to stop erosion in the area, and promoting young people as mentors to encourage leadership in the community.  I definitely felt that my sponsorship money has made a world of difference already to the lives of the people in the area, so peeps, if you don’t already sponsor a child through World Vision…do it!

Leaving Honduras, I headed to the colonial town of Leon in Nicaragua.  After spending so much time in Tegucigalpa, it was such a relief to actually be in a traveller town where there are more eating options than just eggs, chicken, beans and rice!  Just to have fruit, yoghurt and granola for a healthy breakfast was like heaven!

I signed up for an afternoon of volcano boarding, which I thought wouldn’t be that daunting having had snowboarded a bit and also sandboarded in Peru.  With much excitement and a wee bit of trepidation, our group were dropped off at the bottom of the active volcano, Cerro Negro, and we had to hike about 45 minutes up gravelly volcanic rock and sand to the top.  It was only from the top looking down towards the foot of the volcano that the steepness really hit me, along with the images of having my skin sandpapered away by the abrasive volcanic sand if I wiped out. Ugh!

In the end, I managed to make it all the way down the mountain with all my limbs intact through some wise use of braking.  Much better result than the girl I had seen wandering around my hostel with a cast from a broken wrist!

From one colonial town to another, I bussed to the gorgeous town of Granada, which suits on the shores of Lake Nicaragua.  All the planets were aligned clearly because there just happened to be an Irish pub, O’Shea’s, in town in time for St Patrick’s Day!

From Granada, I made a few little excursions such as to the Laguna de Apoyo – a beautiful crater lake, Isla de Ometepe – where the largest volcano Concepcion erupted and spewed ash everywhere before my eyes, and the little islands just outside of Granada on the lake – where we saw spider monkeys.

Ed sadly left to go back to Australia, but I was not to be alone still – I went to Managua to pick up my mate Cheryl-Lee from the airport and also met up with our friend Jakkii.  We then headed to the beachside town of San Juan del Sur, not far from the Costa Rican border.  This place is well known for its surfing, and with that laid back vibe, it unsurprisingly was quite a good little party town too.  Jakkii and I got a ride to one of the local surf beaches, Playa El Remanso, but the surf wasn’t really happening and the sun was scorching hot, so we just retreated to the shade and cooled off with swims and cheap beer!  Still, it was nice to be reunited with the Pacific Ocean for the first time in over a year.  The beaches are still nicer in Australia though!

We sampled the San Juan del Sur night life at the local bar, Iguanas, which was packed with both locals, surfers and backpackers.  Cuba Libres for only $1 – you can imagine how that night turned out.  However it much worse for some – Blain was chased down the road by the bouncers of the club, tripped over and had a fight with the ground.  Sadly the ground won and he was nursing some nasty looking cuts the next day!

The border crossing into Costa Rica the next day was painful, which was not made any better by the searing heat and the lack of sleep.  It took us three hours to cross the border, then the bus driver from the border tried to rip us off, but after 14 hours of travelling we finally made it to the beachside town of Montezuma.

Everyone had warned us about how expensive Costa Rica was, and after 4 and a half months of cheap travelling, it was still a shock.  I kept converting everything from Costa Rican colones back to Nicaraguan cordobas and then back to Guatemalan quetzales and continually being outraged at how extortionately expensive things were!  Still, Montezuma is a really nice laid back place with a beautiful beach and a nice waterfall.  I climbed up some rocks on the side of the waterfall to make a 4m high jump into the pool below, but was so focussed on trying to jump out far enough so that I wouldn’t break my neck on the rocks that I didn’t actually pull my legs in enough and landed with a very ungraceful and painful slap on my thighs.  Oops!

We spent the Easter weekend chilling out on the Caribbean beach of Puerto Viejo, which had a nice vibe, even with the abundance of cliche reggae music blaring out everywhere.  There is a black sand beach here, creatively named Playa Negra.

The beach hopping has been quite a welcome way to deal with the intense heat here in Central America.  It’s so hot that I’m actually half looking forward to returning back to London and basking in some cold!