B-Kyu Newsletter - 22 November 2020
Food vouchers, Parramatta, speculaas, Indo Mie pizza, regional foodways, Canadian lobster wars, chilli oil, K-drama food.
Hi folks
Welcome to the B-Kyuniverse for 22 November 2020. Feel free to share the B-Kyu love by sending to all your good eating and reading friends and get them to subscribe for themselves. You can read past copies of the newsletter here and our blog here.
In each newsletter we search out articles for you the curious reader to broaden your eating adventures. We collect a broad menu of stories, blogs (including our own) or other media for you to digest, consume and hopefully, get out and feast on the wonderful world of food in Sydney and beyond. Links in the title, a $ sign after a story means you may have to go through a payment firewall if you’ve used up all your free hits.
Food and food writing
17 November 2020: “Hopefully it won’t all go to McDonald's”: operators express cautious optimism about NSW restaurant vouchers scheme (Yvonne C Lam, Gourmet Traveller) NSW folks will be getting $100 worth of food and entertainment vouchers to spend early in 2021. We’re spending our vouchers at Sussex Street Food Court or Eating World. Or maybe a family sized bucket of biryani at Student Biryani.
16 November 2020: A local's guide to Parramatta (Juliana Yu, Time Out) Another of Time Out’s compilation of places to eat and see, focused on Parramatta. Features Temasek, Pho Pasteur, The Holy Basil, Sahra by the River and Xcel Roll. Not much on the other (more interesting) side of Church Street though.
16 November 2020: Publisher ends relationship with Pete Evans after chef posts neo-Nazi symbol on social media (Josh Taylor, The Guardian) Pete goes one step too far for his publisher and his books are open for return by any retailer who no longer wants to stock them. Does he knowingly do these things? Only Mr. Evans knows.
18 November 2020: Why did it take so long for companies to cut ties with Pete Evans? (Nikki Stamp, The Guardian) This opinion piece looks at the timeline of Pete Evans and his pronouncements and asks if we need to consider cutting off the lines of communication and publicity (and therefore money) sooner, or even reconsider promoting them in the first place.
20 November 2020: A Case for a More Regional Understanding of Food (Bettina Makalintal, Vice) While we are slowly seeing the emergence of regionality in restaurants here in Australia, there’s a long way to go yet. Just having the confidence to offer a food from the north or a certain city still takes some courage. Often it’s found in the ‘Chef’s Specials’ list, or a small list tucked away at the end of the menu. We admit the way we categorise cultures and cuisines in this newsletter could feed into this narrative!
Lollies
16 November 2020: Nestle Has Revealed the New Names for Red Skins and Chicos Lollies, and, Well … at Least They Aren’t Racist (Broadsheet) OK, we’ll spare you the suspense. They will be called Red Ripper and Cheekies. It also turns out that Red Ripper was the name of a notorious Russian serial killer!
Social Enterprise
19 November 2020: Zen Tea Lounge, Smithfield (Lorraine Elliot, Not Quite Nigella) Located in Smithfield, this cafe aims to support families dealing with domestic violence and give women a means for financial security. They serve tea and meals, including some tasty looking angel hair spring rolls, mixed rice plates, baguettes, and noodles.
Chinese
11 November 2020: Noodle diplomacy at Yaoji Chaogan: Diners flock to popular Beijing restaurant Biden visited in 2011 (CNN Travel) Diners are queuing at this eatery visited by Biden on a visit as Vice-President in 2011. On offer is the ‘Biden Set’, the same meal he and his team ate, which includes zha jiang mian (noodles with bean paste), steamed buns, smashed cucumbers, shredded potatoes and mountain yam salads. What they didn’t eat was the restaurant’s specialty - fried liver and intestines. That would have been first up on our order.
17 November 2020: Six to Try: Small Batch, Australian-Made Chilli Oils (Plus the OG Found in Fridges Around the World) (Pilar Mitchell, Broadsheet) The case is made here for boutique chilli oil and chilli crisp, an essential condiment made from dried and often fried chillis, oils and secret herbs and spices. We are pleased to see Lao Gan Ma get a ring in, it does hold up. Our favourite is a Taiwanese Yusei brand one with a donkey featured on the lid.
Japanese
4 December 2020: The Japan Film Festival is available as streaming this year - and it’s free! It’s now called JFF Plus and is running in countries around the world via streaming, in Australia from 4 to 13 December. Films we will be looking out for are Bento Harasment where a mother tough loves her surly teenage daughter with ultra kawaii bentos, Katsuo-bushi which delves into the world and dying art of making dried bonito.
Korean
16 September 2020: South Korean food export boom: Kimchi and ramen lead charge with massive growth even through COVID-19 (Pearly Neo, Food Navigator Asia) Exports in kimchi are on the rise, fuelled by interest in fermented foods. Close behind is gochujang, rice products and chickens, credited to the rise in home cooking especially in China.
K-Drama Food (Asia Food Network) Into Korean soapies? Here’s a whole stack of recipes linked to popular K-Dramas like Crash Landing, It’s Okay Not To Be Okay, Itaweon A+, Legend of the Blue Sea and our favourite name of all, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-Joo.
Malaysian
20 November 2020: First Indomie Pizza in the World Available in Malaysia (Indonesia Expat) Pizza dough topped with Indomie noodles, grilled chicken, eggs, spring onions, more onions, and chilli. You decide - where have you been all my life or good taste has officially ceased to exist.
Singaporean
14 November 2020: Travelling to Little India Means Seeing It With New Eyes (Ivan K Wu, Rice Media) A walk on a Sunday morning in Little India, doing a little shopping, doing a little eating - yes please. Although it’s quiet now during the ‘circuit breaker’, there’s still life to be had albeit with caution.
Vietnamese
13 November 2020: Sipping Cocktails on Plastic Stools Is a Special Saigon Street Treat (Pavan Shamdasani, photos by Rory Gill, Saigoneer) What do you do when you want to attract people back out into the street - open a cocktail bar! In Saigon the street carts sell most everything, why not buy a ‘mixology focused’ drink as well while perched on a tiny plastic stool? You too could end up holding hands with policemen, have your adult braces prodded for strength or discuss the impact of ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’ on the Vietnamese gay community (all real B-Kyu beer hoi fueled events.)
17 November 2020: V Bites, Bankstown (Helen Yee, Grab Your Fork) Helen has been far more active on Instagram than her blog this year (and we can’t blame anyone for either a) not posting very much during these times and b) not posting at all). These bánh hỏi chạo tôm (sugar cane prawn rice paper rolls) from V Bites are just perfect as the weather in Sydney hikes up the humidity.
Sri Lankan / Lebanese
24 November 2020: Culinary Tales in collaboration with the Women’s Creative Hub is offering a Sri Lankan x Lebanese Cooking Class at Auburn Community Centre. These classes are taught by refugee chefs, Chandra and Saida, and you will learn how to cook Dosa with chutneys and a Lebanese dessert, Mehalabiyyi (Milk Pudding). At the end of the class you get to eat it, along with other snacks - all for $30.
17 November 2020: The best Christmas cake you’ll ever eat comes from Sri Lanka (Rachel Bartholomeusz, SBS Food) From the confessed biased author comes the claim, but how can you dispute a cake filled with semolina flour, cashews, dozens of eggs (really), vanilla and rose water, almond essence, spices, brandy, glace cherries, peel and nuts, strawberry jam, preserved pumpkin, ginger, and choko, coated in a marzipan icing.
Egyptian
19 November 2020: Charcoal-infused flatbreads take me back to Cairo's laneways (Nihal Abed, SBS Food) Besides the simplicity of this spiced meat and flatbread recipe, we love the way the writer weaves in the story of the links to family and the dreaded childhood lunch box reveal. Are we almost at the generation where they will write about their fear as school kids at having a lunch that didn’t smell? I hope so.
Belgian
18 November 2020: What's the deal with... speculaas (and why are so many Sydney cafes serving it)? (Isabel Cant, SMH Good Food) Originating as Dutch spiced Christmas cookies, the Belgian owned Lotus Biscoff has taken off as the sweet flavour du jour. Our tip? They’re $1.95 a pack at Foodworld Newtown.
Canadian
21 November 2020: #014 | In Digestion With Zoe Heaps Tennant: The politics of citation in food and in writing, the lived embodiments of lobster, and what it means to say "we are all treaty people" (James Hansen, In Digestion) The intertwining of food and the ongoing impacts of colonisation on First Nations people of Canada rarely gets much of a look in around these antipodean parts, which makes this article a fascinating read. Zoe Heaps Tennant writes about the ongoing battle for the right to fish for lobsters. Also of interest are thoughts on writing about indigenous foods and chefs, the use of indigenous place names (political or factual?), the importance of giving credit to story lineages and backstories and the concept of Terra Nullius in food, the erasure and invisibility of indigenous ingredients - so much relevant for the Australian context.
“Food can’t be separated from land; in this particular lobster story it can’t be separated from water; and to talk about land and water in Canada is to talk about Indigenous sovereignty.”
Turkish
16 November 2020: Have a Look at the Fabled Honey Forest (Photographs by Sarah Pannell, Text by Daniel Milroy Maher, New York Times, $) From the Turkish province of Rize, the fabled Honey Forest produces honey from black hives. These are hives made out of hollow logs and kept busy all year round, producing the less sweet chestnut honey, popular on Turkish breakfast tables. And there’s an Australian angle as well, with beekeepers coming to share knowledge and equipment to keep the old traditions alive.
It’s a B-Kyu world
As always, get out and explore the beautiful world we live in.
Alison and Shawn, B-Kyu