Fairfield Feast Food Tour - Part 1

So here is a short story on how I ended up joining this tour. Thang Ngo, a well known photo and video blogger, put out a post on his blog Noodlies. The post was about an upcoming food tour of Fairfield, titled Fairfield Feast and it was open only to bloggers, with certain conditions listed in his post. The deadline to  submit a request to join the tour was March 31 and once he had selected the 6 to 7 bloggers, they would be informed accordingly and the rest would miss out, for this time anyway.

Thang Ngo's intention to hold this event is to highlight Fairfield to Sydney and to the rest of the country. The nearby suburb of Cabramatta is extremely well known for it's Vietnamese cuisine, culture and shops galore but Fairfield is less well known. With the help of Fairfield City Council which had sponsored all the food, Thang Ngo has been able to get this tour up and running.

Well, I decided to apply for a spot. I had not been to Fairfield before and was intrigued to find out more about this suburb.

But I lucked out, I didn't get selected. However, to cut a long story short, I got a tweet from Thang the day we returned to work after the Easter break asking me to check my email and lo and behold there was an email from Thang informing me that as I was the first on the reserve list I was chosen to fill in an empty slot as a blogger from Canberra couldn't attend. Wow! I was stoked and said yes immediately.

There was so much to write about and so many photos to show. So I have decided to split the my posts into 3 parts.

We all met up at Paula Continental Cakes. I was a bit nervous as the rest of the bloggers that Thang selected were well established in the Sydney blogger world. I felt quite insignificant actually. We met Helen Pijaca from Fairfield City Council, she was such a lovely lady. She was a veritable walking dictionary on all things Fairfield.

Simon Leong wearing a great t-shirt!

Infologue:
Fairfield has 900 business in the CBD. 2 out of 3 people who reside here speak a language other than English. The residents here speak up to 70 different languages and there are 133 nationalities represented in Fairfield. Fairfield has the largest settlement of Iraqis outside of Iraq.

After some quick introductions around the table and a little infologue about Fairfield we started our food odyssey!

Paula Continental Cakes
This unassuming pastry shop holds lots of dessert gems. As we were sitting there having our coffee, getting to know each other and savouring all the glorious pastries that was being served to us, the stream of locals coming in and out was constant. It is an obviously popular place for getting delicious pastries and cakes.

We met Daniela Casanova who explained to us some of the delicacies baked in-house. The store was opened in 1982. Initially it was based in Liverpool and a few years later they moved to Fairfield.

They were so generous with all that was brought out to us. I tried to hold back and not have everything that was served because I was mindful of the number of places we were intending to visit.

My favourite was the Torta Milhoja, which had layers of caramel and was topped with delicious nuts. The textures and flavours were amazing. Another cake I found to be truly delicious was the Tres Leches. The sponge cake was light and the cream on the cake deliciously smooth.

Torta Milhoja

Tres Leches

Thang's favourite was the Queen's Arm. A rather interesting name for a cake! Honestly everything I had was delicious. I could have kept going but I had to stop. We all had to stop.

Queen's Arm

A truly local gem and one that I want to return -  to buy more of the deliciously sinful desserts.

Paula Continental Cakes
Shop 2/9 Barbara Street
Fairfield
02 9726 2379


Afghan and Arabic Bakery

Again, another unassuming corner store. We walked in and guess what greeted us? Stacks of freshly baked Afghan bread, also known as Naan. Habib, the owner of the bakery, was such a nice and humble man. He happily explained the process they go through to bake the bread and the number of shifts they have per day. In general, they bake approximately 800 to 1000 breads during the day and the night shift bakes about 3000 breads. Such hard working and dedicated people. And dare I say extremely humble too.

I was fascinated by the very hot wood fired ovens (known as Tannur ovens) that was churning out all the bread. The oven was at a constant temperature of 200 degrees.

Habib's assistant Mehr Dae was only too happy to pose for us bloggers. They were really very sweet to us.

An Afternoon Tea with Crossway 9am Ladies

Recently we had a ladies only afternoon tea at RD's lovely home. I couldn't think of what I could bring as a contribution and fell back on my home made curry puffs. They are easy to do and wouldn't look too bad on a plate (well, that was what I was thinking). Plus it represented my culture, which is always a nice thing.

I didn't know what to expect when I arrived but I was blown away by the very professional looking tiered trays of petit fours, mini quiches, cupcakes, brownies, and dainty sandwiches.

They were all so beautifully presented and I personally felt my rather clumsy looking curry puffs looked slightly incongruous among the dainty bites served so beautifully across the various indoor and outdoor settings.

The platter of fruits were beautiful to look at, gorgeous colours!

Rabbit Hole Bar & Dining

It was Friday and I was craving for a good wagyu burger with chips. I checked out restaurants in the area and decided to try out Rabbit Hole Bar & Dining.

What an interesting name! Plus it is literally around the corner from my office.

We got there just after 12 and for a Friday lunch time, I was surprised at how quiet it was.

Our choice was Wagyu beef burger on a Brioche bun with Brie cheese and housemade tomato relish. It was accompanied by hand cut fat chips.

The chips were good! More please!

Napoli In Bocca

Napoli In Bocca is located in the suburb of Haberfield. In my humble opinion, Haberfield epitomises all things Italian in Sydney. Yes, I know most of everyone thinks of Leichhardt as the Italian suburb but for me it is Haberfield. It has a sense of being in a community and an Italian one at that!

When I do come here, I can't help myself and go crazy with the biscottis, the gelato, pasta, cheese, smallgoods etc. Tonight we celebrate a special dinner for AF, who did amazingly well in the recent HSC exams. His choice was Italian and I picked this restaurant. I have been here twice before and enjoyed both meals.

I stepped in to the restaurant and I felt like I was in a nice family oriented Italian restaurant. I felt the warmth, both metaphorical and physical. The wood fired oven greeted me as I passed 2 young Italian men working away on the pizzas.

There were 8 of us tonight so we started off by having some entree. We had the Bruschetta pizza and Stuffed zucchini flowers. Both were delicious but the zucchini flowers were not as popular because the majority of the group didn't like anchovies. So NF and I happily had our lion's share of the zucchini flowers.

Then we ordered individual main dishes. Some had pizzas, some had calzone and others had pasta. I ordered the Linguine Vongole and found my dish absolutely delightful. It was a simple but classic dish and the linguine was perfectly al dente. By the way, all servings were generous!

Temasek Restaurant

Okay, you may be wondering why would I be blogging about Temasek only now? This restaurant has been operating for years and yet this is my first time posting about a meal there. Admittedly I have been there many times over the years but I didn't have a blog then and you really can't be taking photos at a business lunch.

So today is my chance. A dinner with some friends whom I haven't seen for more than 2 years. Yes, you read it right, 2 years!! This time the group decided to meet for dinner at Temasek, which is located in Parramatta.

We arrived at 6.30 pm and the restaurant was already quite full. I cannot believe how popular this place is, even after all these years!

I suggested we go for a banquet menu and we decided on the $31 per head menu. So here are the dishes. Apologies for the quality of the photos. For some unknown reason my camera wasn't behaving that night and the images are not as clear as I would have liked.

Entrees were Spring rolls and Curry puffs - not the best I have had and I was a little disappointed with the lack of flavour. There is definitely room for improvement.

Spring rolls and curry puffs

Mains were Beef rendang, Satay chicken, Singapore chilli prawns, Assam seafood, French beans stir fried with belacan and Ngoh Hiang. Ngoh Hiang is also known as loh bak and is a Hokkien dish that can be described as five spice pork rolls, rolled in bean curd skin and deep fried.

Beef rendang

Satay chicken 

Assam seafood