Let the tasting tour begin...

Australia has been an absolute adventure in every way, especially so in terms of the food. With an incredible influence of Asian culture that is reflected in the cuisine, Modern Australian cuisine is an amalgamation of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Malay, Indoneasian, Thai as well as Indian. In between these Asian flavours of rendang, rogan josh, vindaloo, lakska, dim sum and spring rolls you will also find spag bol and carbonara on menus. The influence of the Italians and Greeks in Australia is extremely noteworthy - with the secondly largest Greek population found in Melbourne! Sovlaki and moussaka are therefor not foreign foods here in Oz Land.
This melting pot of culture is a dream come true for me - it means my eating options are that much more varied.


My friend Marion who is half Thai and half Aussie took us to the China Town food court for a taste of chicken feet, a Chinese deliacy. The thought scared me half to death - not so much because that the thought of it sickened me, but I pressumed it to be a rather bony and unpleasant part of the animal. I was pleasantly surprised - the meat was so tasty - had a flavour that was intense! Well, lets just say I'm not going to shy away from chicken feet again! At least not cooked up in this traditional Chinese Yum Cha style.
If your wondering what Yum Cha is - just the type of servings, eating small portions of dim sims, trying a whole variety of them. Apart from the chickens feet that day we did try shark fin dim sim, although I was weary about this - it is just so wicked the way the cut off the fin and through the shark bcak into the water to wrestle the water before they die! Horrible - but I had to try it once just for the experience! Unfortunately, the shark fin dim sim turns out to be the best tastings - so this sucks!!!

We had some tripe which I am pretty certain I have had in Singapore food courts in oriental dishes. I think they sneak it in to many things without explaing it to the customers, so there you go another horror story for the unwitting customer!
The spongy texture of the tripe has a seafood quality to it and on the whole in cooked and served in a blackbean sauce it was pretty tasty.



Amy, a classmate and Cordon Bleu chef was working at Hoggs Breath Cafe - a steak house chain here down under. We went to try the steaks that were well - average, but it had been a while since I'd had a hunk of meat, so I didn't complain!!!