Eating Australia Part 1: Sydney Street Food & The Fish Market

The Sydney Opera House

So it's been a long freaking time since I've updated BWAM, so let me start off by apologizing to you for not keeping up with the food porn pictures since I know that's really the only thing getting you here anyways.  Now that I have that out of the way, let's get to the good stuff!

My brother is studying abroad this semester in Gold Coast, Australia - it's about an hour outside of Brisbane.  So besides being on my travel bucket list, I had another reason to visit Australia, so my dad I went for about 10 days with our first stop in Sydney.  We ate some fantastic meals along the way and you can check it all out after the jump.

Whenever I travel, I try to eat as the locals do, and the easiest way to do that is to eat street food.  We landed in Sydney and it wasn't before long that we were in search for something representative of the local cuisine.  Our answer - the Eveleigh Farmers' Market in the neighborhood of Redfern.  The market is a once-a-week conglomeration of over 70 farmers and local food producers.

Eveleigh Farmers' Market in action

Our first stop was the Eumundi stall that featured an assortment of breakfast (or breaky/brekky for the locals) sandwiches.  We went straight for the Confused Egg Sandwich.

The Eumundi menu board - Confused Eggs

The only thing confusing about this sandwich was the fact that my dad and I just split one of them.  Shoveled between two ends of a fresh roll was a smattering of eggs, bacon, sautéed onions, lettuce, and their Famous Creole Sauce.  The sauce was a tangy and slightly spicy bbq mixture.  The lettuce was a little unusual for breakfast but gave it's best effort to lighten up the artery clogging weight of everything else.  This was a fantastic breakfast sandwich.

The Confused Egg Sandwich from Eumundi Smokehouse

Next was Kyle Kwong's stall, who's apparent celebrity does not keep her from dishing out fistfuls of Chinese food every Saturday.  We were going to just order the savory steamed pancakes filled with organic eggs and vegetables, but then we decided it would be best to supplement that with some steamed dumplings filled with free range pork and plopped in a ginger and tamari broth.  The pancakes were fluffy and just had an over super fresh taste.  The dumplings were wrapped in a thin dough and contained a juicy and well seasoned ball of pork.  But the star of the show was the broth that the dumplings were sitting in.  It was perfectly balance and firmly flavored - I drank it out of the cup.

Savory pancakes with organic eggs and veggies from Kylie Kwong

Free range pork dumplings in a ginger and tamari broth

Making our way to the back of the market we came across plenty of stalls to satiate my father's sweet tooth, and he finally settled on a macadamia nut brownie with white chocolate chips from Fare Gourmet.  It was a giant square of a slightly fudgy, but light brownie with a nice crunch from the macadamias just the right amount of sweetness added by the white chocolate chips.

  Fare Gourmet's Belgian style White Chocolate Chip and Macadamia Nut Brownie

On the way out, we realized that we were still a little hungry, so we split a veggie filled pastry from a stand that I didn't catch the name of.  The pastry was croissanty but a little heavier, and was filled with well seasoned squash and seasonal vegetables dressed in a tomato sauce

This is how you become a fat vegetarian.

The next day we headed to the famous Sydney Fish Market - the second largest fish market in the world after Tsukiji in Tokyo.  Our primary target at the fish market was the Tasmanian oysters that the bus driver, on the city bus we took to the market, told us about, but that would never fill us up alone.  The market itself is sprawling and adjacent from the live auction area where purveyors and restaurants bid on the day's catch (only available to the public via a paid tour), are a series of fast food restaurants and fish markets.  So you can't buy directly from the fishermen, but it's about as close as you can get.  Not only did we find our oysters, but we found the freshest sashimi I've ever had and some beautiful prawns.

The day's catch on display for purchase

Tasmanian oysters by the dozen - by far the best oysters I've ever had.  Sweet, velvety, delicious.

You should get to know these up close and personal if you ever get the chance.

Prawns - worth the effort of peeling, I promise.

Show me fresher sashimi that you didn't catch yourself.

  
Come back soon for some street food in Brisbane, my first ever time cooking kangaroo, and some seriously spicy Pad Thai on the final night in Sydney.