Sydney City Guide -- Glebe

GLEBE :: SYDNEY :: NEW SOUTH WALES

AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING RACIST I HAVE DISCOVERED SOMETHING LATELY: ALL THE GOOD AUSTRALIAN FOOD BLOGS ARE WRITTEN BY ASIANS. To be more precise, Malay Asians (Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, etc.) Now I don't know whether or not Malaysians or Singaporeans invented food blogging but it is definitely a majorly popular pastime there (just as everyone under the age of 50 in Reykjavik Iceland wants to be in a rock band, every young man or woman in Kuala Lumpur wants to be a food blogger. So it seems to me.) When I was living in my share house in Tokyo (2000-2007) an overweight Japanese gent (Matsumoto-san) who loved to cook in our grubby graveside kitchen told me: "Anglo-Saxons don't understand food." I took it as a slur at the time but I could see where he was coming -- Australia has yet to develop a cuisine of its own to rival those of its northern neighbours, and in part it boils down to the tepid acquired Anglo-Saxon taste in food! Meat and three veg, the veg boiled beyond blandness. Vegemite is fine but it is nothing to base a culture upon. Kangaroo meat sounds exotic but how often do Australians actually eat the stuff. Times may be changing, Australia is so cosmopolitan these days blah blah blah, you can even scoff sashimi in a shotglass... but I doubt Australians will ever be as fanatical about their food as the Asians are about their's. Young Australians would rather be football players than foodies. Fair enough -- I will keep to the Asian blogosphere. And on the topic of Glebe, my home for a couple of months at the start of the year 2000, eat like a cow say: "It's hard to decide what to eat in Glebe - the area along Glebe Point road is full of delicious eateries. In fact, it's somehow like Paddington - but for hippies. This road strip is a melting pot of many cultures and races. One can see a seemingly endless myriad of people types - dreadlocked hippie girls, leather fetishists, even Asians in Louboutins. It's really an oasis in suburbia, lined with charmingly un-renovated old townhouses and fabulously dinghy second-hand shops."

I haven't been to Australia for a long time now (2.75 years, as of the end of November 2009), but when I am in Sydney, my way invariably leads to Glebe. Recently I have started thinking: had I not left Australia to live in Japan in the year 2000, what would have become of me? I probably would have tended to the west (not Western Australia, but western Sydney -- that's where I was working, and that's where the cheaper real estate is, and in many ways, that is where the real Sydney is. In my altUniverse Aussie me, Glebe Point Rd would probably be as far east as I would tread. My centre of gravity would probably be Strathfield Railway Station. In this universe my uncle Bill died in the year 2000 and something near Oxford Street, and my center of gravity is tending around Taiwan .

Here are some great Glebe restaurants, as suggested by Urban Spoon: Baja Cantina, Thai on Wok, Glebe Point Diner, Clipper Cafe, Boathouse on, Almustafa, Badde Manors, Chocolateria San Churro, Spanish Tapas and Cafe Giulia.
An Lac Vegetarian Restaurant: 94B John St, Cabramatta. Phone: 02/9727 5116.
This is considered one of the Super V vegetarian restaurants, at least by a reviewer on Veggie Friendly. Kate Pounder celebrated her 35th birthday here in August 2006, and describes An Lac as a "simple family restaurant of the wholly authentic Vietnamese kind. The first thing to notice is that each table is set with condiments and cutlery, kitchen-style. While most of the clients are local Vietnamese folk, the menu makes concessions to the occasional English-speaking guest with the inclusion of English names for the dishes and short descriptions of each of the ingredients. Jasmine tea is provided as a courtesy to guests in thermoses which sit on each table." I have noticed that jasmine tea on tables in restaurants in my previous four trips to Viet Nam and to be honest I don't touch it anymore -- it doesn't agree with me. I can handle the superstrong Vietnamese coffee, but the jasmine tea makes me feel kind of sucked-up and empty. Go figure. Pounder goes on to write: "We chose the stuffed tofu with chinese white cabbage in a brown savoury sauce, the imitation roast chicken with dried lily flower black fungus and our favourite for the afternoon, vermicelli with chopped-up spring rolls, cucumber, bean sprouts, mint and a traditional sweet vinegarette. Each dish was beautifully done -- but the vermicelli was truly exceptional."

Bau Truong Restaurant: 10/70 John St, Cabramatta 02 97274492 Restaurant Cabramatta - Tags: Vietnamese.

Cafe Cay Du: Shp 4-5 294 John St, Cabramatta 02 97232696 Restaurants Cabramatta - Tags: Vietnamese Cafe.

Camira Chinese & Thai Food Restaurant 1/ 50 Park Rd, Cabramatta 02 97281052 Restaurant Cabramatta - Tags: Chinese Thai Dai Lam Son Seafood Restaurant 1/111 John St, Cabramatta 02 97550091 Restaurants Cabramatta - Tags: Vietnamese Digger's Bar & Grill Tan Viet: .
Why is it that all the best Australian food bloggers are actually Malaysian women? Food blogging must be a serious pasttime in Malaysia because that is where I picked it up -- during a brief visit to Kuala Lumpur in 2005 en route to Mumbai, India. Malaysia was where my food blogging was born. Musings describes herself as a "happy and fun loving woman who has lived in Sydney for the past 16 years." That's four times longer the period that I lived there, so I am sure she knows the place much better than me. On one of her visits to Cabramatta (which she claims means "Tasty Freshwater Grub Point" in the local Gandangara language) Musings brunched at a new restaurant called Tam Viet. She described it: "The crispy skin chicken must be their specialty as every table ordered one either with egg noodles with soup or dried. Must say the soup was delicious and the crispy chicken lived up to its name! It was crispy and succulent. We also ordered a broken rice special with the works i.e. with pork chop, shredded skin, fried egg and a pork loaf. It was yum! The hot milk coffee topped it all of. This restaurant was really busy with a high turnover. There were a lot of locals gobbling down their food and speaking in their native tongues. If one were to close one's eyes, you'd be forgiven to think that you are somewhere in Vietnam or Lao or Khmer..."

First, those stats about Bankstown. Bankstown is located in south-western Sydney abotu 30 minutes by train from the city center. According to census results, only about half the population speak English at home. About 16 per cent of the people speak Arabic and about 7 per cent speak Vietnamese, hence my references before to Bansktown being an English/Arabic/Vietnamese blend. Other immigrants come from China, Yugoslavia, India, Greece, you name it.

Glebe Street Fair: Here Comes The Food relates: "Staring across at the sea of fellow street fair-goers, I felt a sense of amazement and how many people were as crazy as me and willing to bear the uncomfortable heat to venture down this long. closed stretch of road. The Glebe Street Fair was on once again for the 26th time but this was the first time I had visited and it was a definitely and fun and foodful experience even in the sweltering heat. The 2 rows of stalls came in all sorts of shapes and sizes and there were many fascinating products on display." . They were lesbian fantasies, I believe, and she was talking about going to a lesbian bar one day. Of course, being the wuss that I was back then, I failed to take the opportunity she was obviously offering me, so nothing happened between her and me. It was cool to go shopping with her though. We found one particular Chinese item called Moon Cake or something like that -- inside the cake there was supposed to a complete duck's head, wih! (I'm serious -- that's what she said!) Anyway, I never tried Moon Cake while I was in Bankstown, but I would be interested to have a go at it if I found it again, somewhere in the world...

Aboriginal Australia