This Little Piggie Went to Sydney

After stuffing myself silly for three weeks, I feel like it’s finally time to do a post about food! Anchorage has a lot of good restaurants, but I still missed the variety that Sydney offers. In true nerd fashion, I’ve created a restaurant log in my travel journal to document all the places I’ve been going.

Of course, I’ve been visiting a lot of my old favorites, in particular some of the old places I used to go to around the office. One of my favorite places is a tiny little hole in the wall that serves Vietnamese sandwiches – also known as Banh Mi. The basic sandwich has three different kinds of pork, pickled carrots and radishes, cilantro, hot peppers, mayonnaise and another kind of sauce that I’m not sure what’s in it. The shop around the corner from my office may not have the most authentic sandwiches (I wouldn’t know any better), but I like them, they’re cheap and they’re quick.

There’s also a lot heavier European influence here than there is in Anchorage. My coworker recommended a Polish deli just around the corner from my office, so I stopped by and picked up the food he suggested. I won’t try to list the Polish names of what I bought, but they were plums in chocolate, sour cherries in chocolate, something called “bird’s milk” that looks like 3 Musketeers, dill pickles in brine and pierogies (dumplings). The dumplings and pickles were delicious. I also enjoyed the plums in chocolate, but the verdict is still out on the cherries. They were a bit too syrupy for me.

Fulfilling my yen for dill pickles

My friends Gerry and Mel also suggested a really interesting place for me to check out – a place in The Rocks (the oldest part of Sydney) that makes hand pulled candy. The candies they make have quite complicated designs in the center. Apparently people order these for weddings and stuff a lot, so the design I saw them making was “Tony [heart] Anna”.

Those big piles of goo are the candy on a heated table

Each part of the candy is designed separately, and then they are all rolled together into one big block.

The red and white striped slabs are "Tony" and "Anna"

This makes a giant candy about 6 inches in diameter, which is then stretched out and chopped up into little bits.

Rolling into a large candy

The process was fascinating. And the candies were tasty!

Tube stretching out into candy "sticks" on the left.

They ordered 8 kg (16 lbs). He must really love her. And she must love his wallet.

I’ve been to a lot of other restaurants and shops since I’ve been here – Spanish tapas, Chinese noodles, Pho, and my favorite Australian brewery – the 4 Pines. Of course I won’t review them all here, but I’m having fun writing them down in my restaurant log to go back and review later.