Food: Brisbane

Weekend of relaxation and eating in Brisbane.

Gunshop cafe, West End

This was a super popular cafe and it was easy to see why. The decor was a little quirky with a few antiques strewn casually about the place. The front part is a cosy old room (the old gun shop), and the back an open space with a wall of strawberry pot plants, so cute!

 This was the standout dish: french toast brioche with maple syrup, crispy bacon and bananas. None of us were hardcore bacon fans, but the elements of crisp/mushy, sweet/salty really worked in this dish. 

Lamb cutlets for breakfast.. a little unusual but well paired with tasty tomato relish and bubble&squeak.

Salmon bagel with poached egg.


Chouquette, New Farm

A French patisserie with all sorts of tempting cakes and slices. We had strawberry tart, lemon tart and a chocolate caramel slice.


Two

 A little change to our usual cheap & cheerful eating style, this was serious sit down food with tablecloths and polished cutlery. This was their special dish, roast suckling pig which was served with roasted winter vegetables (including an impossibly intense caramelised carrot). 


Boggo Rd Jail markets

Have to love the name! Mostly a fresh food market, it sold lots of local produce and had an interesting selection of breakfast stalls. We had a Venezuelan arepa (corn cake) filled with pulled pork and served with hot spicy sauce, an okonomiyaki with local pork and eggs (so much cheesy goodness) and a Hungarian langos. What a delicious way to increase one's cholesterol - deep fried puffy bread topped with cream cheese, smoked salmon and herbs. 

Riverbend Books, Bulimba

As usual we ate too much, so had to stop for a drink and browse through the funky suburb of Bulimba. This iced coffee was at the Riverbend Books & Teahouse, where they had adorable magnolias in mini bottles at every table.

Yeshi Buna, Moorooka
We debated where to have our last meal, a late Sunday lunch. I had woken in the morning with a craving for injera, and so though my companions were pretty sceptical, we headed to Moorooka to search out African food.

This is apparently the place where many Sudanese refugees have settled, and it's pretty obvious they have settled in well. A group of young men were perched on the footpath playing dominos outside the Sudanese restaurant (spaghetti, chicken & chips - is that what they really eat in Sudan??). One of the shopping arcades held an Ethiopian bakery in which young people lingered playing cards. We went into a shop that sold all sorts of strange things imported from the Middle East, and the random collection (jeans, next to palm oil) made us wonder if shops were like this in Sudan.

We were grateful for the shopkeeper's suggestion that we try the restaurant next to the post office. I was highly amused to see that it's called Yeshi Buna, the name of a popular cafe chain in Addis Ababa. The place was super bright (yellow) and cheerful, with traditional Ethiopian eating tables scattered around simple normal tables. The owner was friendly and the food was homely, could not ask for more.

We had a mixed plate with meat & vegetable options - as in Ethiopia the tastiest were the lentil dish and the spinach dish. My friends didn';t like the injera, but it did take me quite a while to get used to it when I visited Ethiopia as well. This was a toned down version, hardly fermented at all with only a very mild sour taste. I was impressed that they even had breakfast options like firfir and chechebsa - I wish they were in Sydney so I could go there for breakfast! The coffee came served in the old school Ethiopian claypots, intensely strong and sweet, albeit without the popcorn that was served to other customers.

 

A tale of two water villages

The area around Shanghai is well known for its water villages, where people traditionally lived around a canal system. The water supplied all their needs, served as a form of transport, and most importantly contributed to the agriculture around the region, such that this became a prosperous area.

I first heard about all this 15 years ago when I was still in high school, back in China on a visit. A friend told me about taking an overnight trip to discover Zhouzhuang, and like so many other things it just got filed at the back of my mind. In the years between then and now, I've been to a number of water villages, most of which fell to tourism much before my visit. I never entertained the thought of visiting the "original" water village to open up to tourism, because I always thought it would be awful.

And it was, in the tacky Chinese way of being overcrowded with groups and megaphones, shops and touts, terrible food, rubbish everywhere..

Yet one could not deny the natural beauty of Zhouzhuang, with canals sprouting everywhere you turn and quaint old stone bridges connecting different residential areas.. I mean tourist shops.

People still live here in these old houses, but now the whole town caters only to the whims of tourists. These blue canvas-topped gondolas were everywhere, cluttering up the canals and creating mini gondola-jams. Looking away from the crowds, one could still find a little hint of nature.

  Ivy covering an abandoned house.

Pretty little flowers by the canal

Like so many things in China, some places are super "hot" and others near it might be just the same but no-one goes there because it's not famous. We went to Jinze, the town adjacent to Zhouzhuang, and to be honest I wasn't expecting much. Was I really the first person ever to think, hey maybe the town next to this place would be similar but not so touristy?? 

Apparently, I'm not so Chinese in thought, for we couldn't even find the village and had to stop in the "new town" to ask for directions to the "old town". 

We parked near the canal leading up to the entrance to the old town. As we approached the bridge, a local man came up to us and said (rather proudly): you can drive inside now! we've done up all the streets so cars can get in. 

Jinze is famous for its bridges, which are each attached to a temple. Many of the temples are now ruined, but some were being renovated when we were visiting. 

Refreshingly, there was no steep entrance fee (Y130 ~ $20 to enter Zhouzhuang) and the streets were practically deserted. A few old people came out of their houses to stare at us, and children played by the canal. 

A shopkeeper stopped us and directed us to the "gondola kiosk" which I was somewhat sceptical about (thinking it would be like every other gondola trip in south China). When we got there, the shutters were closed and a mobile number was scrawled across in red paint. When we called the number, the man told us to wait while he was finishing his meal. Our Chinese family friends complained about his lack of earnestness in moneymaking, but I didn't mind the idling by the river.

One of the bridges had been redone to be "modern" and it was interesting to see what the ideas of "modern" are. It's painted entirely in red, in contrast to all the other bridges in original stone or wood. Garish lion heads poked out of random beams, and the whole thing looked like it fitted better in a playground.

An old bridge

I'm pretty anti touristy boat rides, but this guy was enthusiastic as he showed us around. He told us he was the only boat operator in Jinze so far (indeed his business name is No. 1 boat of Jinze), and he was praying that the tourism trade would take off as it did in so many other water towns in the region. His wife came in at the end, made us all tea in their little shop and beseeched us to advertise Jinze to the outside world. It felt like the China of yesteryear, I couldn't believe we were merely 20km from Zhouzhuang..

Shanghai - a little nostalgia

I grew up in a grand old house in the heart of Shanghai's French Concession. No one knows how old the place is, but it was probably built during the period of French occupation and eventually fell into the hands of a rich businessman. After he and his family fled to Hong Kong, the government divided the house into ten separate living spaces and gave them out to various families. This is how my family came to live in this place in 1959.

The house has been crumbling for as long as I can remember - the walls peel, the floors creak and the space under the floors is occupied by all sorts of random animals from wild rats to wild cats. The pipes freeze over in winter and sometimes the water stops. Despite this, it has a real charm to it that perhaps everyone attaches to their childhood home.

 The original windows leading out to the deck

Spring is a beautiful season to be in Shanghai. The maple trees in the French Concession somehow escaped the exploding development of metropolitan Shanghai, standing stubbornly by the roadside as they have done for many decades.

Looking down the street near my house.

Alley near the German consulate on my street

 

 I wonder who carved my street name on a tree?

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