Gourmet Therapy

Yes, you are dreaming…! Cabramatta International isn’t an airport, but rather the very epicenter of Sydney’s Vietnamese suburb.

Here we are, a lazy Sunday afternoon in late December looking for something “Exotic” to do. We decide, while digesting a healthy breakfast, to take my European and visiting parents to Vietnam; mind you, only 30kms from Sydney CBD.

“Another new Sydney suburb!!” they say, full of enthusiasm and wondering how many different types of amazing surprises Sydney has got to offer. We get on the road while I explain to my parents that the ideal would have been to blindfold and land them “virgin” in the middle of this new suburb.

Close enough, the road quickly becomes so foreign to them that they don’t know what to expect at the end the journey.

An hour later we arrive in “Little Vietnam”, looking for somewhere to park the car. Cabramatta is so busy on this Festive Sunday Afternoon that we drive in loop around Cabramatta International to find a spot for our SUV. I notice that my parents have their entire face stuck to the window hungry for something new and unexpected; a story to tell family and friends by email as soon as we get back to Pyrmont.

Here we are, parked (far away), but happy to walk a bit and find somewhere to eat.

The surprise is there waiting for us. Streets full of life, packed with people bargaining, trading, cooking, chatting. Amazing new smells coming out of fruit shops, fish shops, butchers and Vietnamese coffee shops.

My parents are truly amazed. Never, they say, they would have imagined finding a little Vietnam so close to Sydney. Already, my father starts jokingly imagining how he can make his friends believe that we took a weekend trip to Saigon, real Vietnam.

We find in one of the numerous arcades a Hot Bread Shop selling Chicken and Pork Bread Rolls. It’s 12.30pm. We jump on the opportunity and feed the four of us for less than $15. We realise quickly that this Bread Roll Shop is no common shop; they won the Citi Group – SMH Festival Competition! The Rolls are delicious, full of colours and the bread is still warm and crusty.

We continue our visit hoping to find a typical Vietnamese Café. We end up finding one on the corner of John and Hill Street. We ask for a Vietnamese coffee, thinking they would serve us a strong expresso with a dash of long life sweetened milk at the bottom of the cup. Instead, we get served a fantastic chilled milk-coffee which is apparently very popular in Vietnam. This one is so good, it goes down in no time…

But I am determined to impress my parents even more. They love good strong hot coffee. From the corner terrace where we’re sitting at our table, I walk back inside the Café wondering how I am going to explain that I am after a strong hot Vietnamese coffee. I realise suddenly that a “Vietnamese style short black” is what I was looking for and we get served a delicious hot coffee in no time. It is sweet, strong and flavoured and has exactly what I was after at the bottom of the cup: a layer of sweet condensed milk.

Recharged with more caffeine than our blood stream can handle for this lazy afternoon, we once again take on the busy Cabramatta sidewalks in search of good mango deals.

We end up joining a crowd gathered around a wealth of beautiful fruit and veg and we find stacks of mango boxes ready to go ($18 / box for Kensingtons), fantastically sweet pineapples, cherries, dragon fruit. Our 4 pairs of arms become quickly overloaded with sweet and vitamin packed merchandise and we walk back to our car while chatting with a grand-father from Laos, who’s happen to have spent more time in this area of Sydney than he did spend in Asia.

It is the end of the day. We drive back to our familiar suburb with a grin on our faces thinking once again… that Sydney is full of amazing surprises!

Cabramatta is 29.9 Kms from Sydney CBD
Travel time by car is approximatively 1 hr., but can also be reached by train (get off @ Cabramatta Station).

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