If you’d like a glimpse of how truly multicultural Sydney can be, take a drive to the inner west suburb of Campsie.
A few days ago, Pete and I had a delicious lunch at Manmaruya. A hot tip for Sydney lovers of Japanese food – you’ll find delicious, authentic cuisine there for about half what you’ll pay at other Japanese restaurants. An average dinner for four (including our two starving offspring) will usually cost less than $20 a head. Manmaruya specialises in noodles, and have a selection of more than twenty different ramen and udon dishes to choose from. If you go on a Friday or Saturday night, be prepared to wait!
After lunch, Pete and I took a stroll up Beamish Street. It’s an interesting place, and not without its dodgy elements (like last week’s shootout in the middle of the street). It’s by no means the high end of town, but it more than makes up for that with its rich ethnic diversity.
I was astonished by the number of different cultures represented in a single block, and stopped to take these photos while Pete wandered around the corner to purchase a bag of kishk from the Lebanese bakery.
From the left, we have an Egyptian coffee and nut shop, an Indian, Pakistani, Fijian and Bangladeshi grocery store, Wally’s Ossie pizzeria…
…an Indian spice house, an Indian dress shop, Albee’s Malaysian restaurant, a Chinese tax accountant and an Italian barber shop.
If you’re a fan of Malaysian food, Albee’s Kitchen is definitely worth a visit. They serve handmade noodles on Monday, assam laksa on Wednesdays, bakuteh every day and a very good nasi lemak (from just $6.80). The food is very tasty, and the ambience reminiscent of little eateries in Singapore and Malaysia, right down to the free soup and cutlery in a container on each table. I went there with the Spice Girl once, and we ate ourselves into a stupor. (SG, we have to go back to try the fish head curry soon…)
Below is the bag of kishk that Pete bought. It’s a traditional Lebanese cereal made by fermenting cracked wheat with yoghurt. The mixture is then dried and ground into a fine powder. The proprietor of the shop told us that it was often cooked into a form of porridge for breakfast.
We combined it with tomato passata, chopped onion and olive oil and used it as a pizza topping, as suggested in this recipe. The yoghurt gave the pie a delicious tanginess…
Cosmopolitan Campsie – we counted twelve different countries represented in the two blocks that we walked!
. . . . .
Manmaruya
193 Beamish St
Campsie NSW 2194
(02) 9789 5759
. . . . .
Albee’s Kitchen
282 Beamish St
Campsie NSW 2194
(02)9178 8302
. . . . .
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
I love this! Within walking distance from our house there’s a lot of variety too. A giant Japanese market, a Vietnamese pho place, empanadas from Argentinia, Mexican, Greek, Italian, Thai. We have to drive for really good Indian food.
What a great adventure!
Marilyn
I would love to eat myself into a stupor with you and the Spice Girl (wink) Aren’t you lucky having all these wonderful places nearby! And now I’ve learnt about something I have never heard of before – kishk. Grain and milk and fermentation. The traditional way of making it that you referenced sounds very labour intensive. Thanks for sharing all this Celia :)
Thats what I really do love about Sydney- so many foody options to be had. One definite great thing about living in a big city. Kishk sounds really interesting!
Marilyn, your neighbourhood sounds amazing! I’m yet to find Mexican food in Sydney that I really like (anymore – our favourite Hot Salsa Kitchen closed several years ago).
Jo, that would be so much fun! The fish head curry would feed three easily! The kishk looks like powdered milk – I kept thinking it might make an interesting addition to bread.
Brydie, you’re right, so many options in Sydney!
Thanks for the tour Celia! I recall eating much Korean BBQ in Campsie. We loved to go there and it was always so authentically good (down to the karaoke) :P
Lorraine, of course, Korean! How could I forget to mention that! There are more Korean stores along the street than anything else!
You seem to have stumbled upon a street of foodie heaven there. Authentic, not in the guidebooks, real food. That Coffee and Nuts shop looks like it could hide some gems.
What an interesting post Celia – or I should say particularly interesting. I hadn’t heard of Kishk either and I really like the sound of it. That is one of the things I miss living down here in Cornwall – we don’t have much cultural diversity. Even Plymouth, the city where I work, only has one exotic food shop which sells a few foodstuffs from China, India and the Middle East.
Gill, absolutely! We found pomegranate molasses in there – treasure!
Choclette, the kishk is fascinating, and apparently very old world food – the young Lebanese guy in the bakery said most of his generation had never eaten it, it was more a food of his parents and grandparents. It apparently developed as a means of preserving the wheat and yoghurt for use in winter.
Wow–very cool street and I’ve just learned something new–the kishk. Never heard of it…love the idea of using it for the pizza…
oooh. i’m close to campsie! are there many good veggie options at the japanese place? i love japanese but can rarely find good veggie stuff :(
Nico, I haven’t tried a lot of the vegetarian options, but I think they have some vegetarian soups, and we saw some big salads going to adjoining tables. Also the usual endamame, tempura etc. Sorry I can’t be more specific, but it’s definitely worth a visit. You can book most weeknights, but no bookings on Fri/Sat/Sun nights or weekend lunches (and it’s often busy then, so you need to take a ticket and wait, although turnover is pretty quick). There are also a couple of council carparks on side streets if you’re driving.
thanks! i’m craving japanese now :)
how much was the kishk? i want to try something new for breakie… was it any good?
Hi Susan…I’m sorry I really can’t remember how much it cost any more! It was nice on pizza, but I didn’t really like it as a breakfast porridge. I’ve also seen it on sale occasionally at Baalbak Bread in Canterbury…