Archway into Chinatown Sydney
The Area Around Dixon Street and Haymarket
Chinatown Sydney is located at the Haymarket end of the main part of Sydney, between Darling Harbour, Pyrmont and Central Railway Station.
The two main streets of Sydney’s Chinatown district are Dixon Street and Sussex Street, both of which are filled with excellent Chinese restaurants, grocery shops and shopping arcades (malls) with offices and residential premises above.
And like all good shopping malls, the ones in Chinatown Sydney have Asian food stalls which create wonderful Eastern dishes of every kind, at very modest prices.
For example, a gigantic bowl of noodles and wun tun soup, with green vegetables — or a dish with rice, meat, vegetables and soup — or a plate of rice with beef and black bean sauce — will each cost you around $10-$12 (Australian currency) in Chinatown.
You can eat Chinese, Mongolian, Malaysian, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian and other Asian delights, including many wonderful desserts, fruits and jellies in the restaurants and the food halls in Sydney’s Chinatown area.
Like Chinatowns all over the planet you can just wander aimlessly through and enjoy the sights, the sounds and the smells of all that fabulous food being cooked in a hundred different ways in Chinatown Sydney.
You can even go and have a ‘Yum Cha’ lunch in in several Chinese restaurants. Yum Cha is a Chinese phrase for ‘drink tea’. This is where they give you just a pot of Chinese tea (or other beverage of your choice). And then you pick out the dishes you fancy from the wide selection which the waiters and waitresses bring round on trolleys and trays and parade in front of you and the other diners at the restaurant.
The dishes include a wide variety of meat, fish and vegetable foods, which are often steamed in small bamboo tubs which are placed on your table. Many are in the form of dumplings. Some are deep dried. And then there are the steamed pork buns called Cha Siu Bao (pronounced like Char Soo Bow). They are filled with delicious Cantonese barbecued pork, or Cha Siu and have a square of paper stuck to the bottom. You should remove the paper; don’t eat it. And feel free to use your fingers to eat this dish. It’s far too tricky with chopsticks!
One of my absolute favourite Yum Cha deserts is Mango Pudding which is a bowl of chilled egg-custard with pureed mango fruit in it. May I say it’s just Heavenly? It’s on the menu at the excellent Marigold Restaurant. Another favorite Chinese dessert is the sweet egg tart that’s called darn tart in Chinese. (Darn means egg in the Cantonese dialect, and I guess they borrowed the word ‘tart’ from the English word.)
Another favorite Chinese dish is stewed chickens feet. This tends to horrify Westerners who have never seen them before, but we do have our own strange foods in different parts of the European world, such as pig’s trotters in England.
Yum Cha dishes are small and reasonably-priced, so get into the spirit of Chinese Yum Cha and be prepared to try several different selections until you’ve had your fill. And you don’t have to speak Chinese to order. Just beckon the waiter (server) and point with your fingers. They’ll bring the dish over to your table and serve it to you. You can also order off a regular menu if you prefer, but that would spoil the fun!
Of course, if you’d prefer western type food or good old Aussie tucker, there are several excellent pubs (called ‘hotels’ in Australia) in Chinatown Sydney where you can enjoy an icy cold beverage and a hearty meal at the counter or bistro.
Image via Wikipedia
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