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!
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Manmaruya
193 Beamish St
Campsie NSW 2194
(02) 9789 5759
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Albee’s Kitchen
282 Beamish St
Campsie NSW 2194
(02)9178 8302
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Photo source: Wikipedia
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 