B-Kyu Newsletter - 6 December 2020
Lamprais, beige food, Fosters, Nonya laksa, pizza toast, sattu, Gatsby sandwiches, fake meat, food emojis, tofu
Hi folks
Welcome to the B-Kyuniverse for 6 December 2020. Feel free to share the B-Kyu love by sending this newsletter 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 wide 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
29 November 2020: As a food writer with covid, I worried I’d lose my sense of taste. It turned out to be much worse. (Tim Carman, Washington Post, $) This food critic contracted Covid-19 and writes about the experience in all its gory detail. While he wasn’t hospitalised, the disease takes him close to the edge and thankful to be on the other side.
30 December 2020: Learning to love beige food: 'Australian cuisine isn’t just fairy bread and meat pies' (Rosheen Kaul, The Guardian) This is a story from the excellent New Voices on Food, now available from Somekind Press. From a Singapore childhood and all the delights of the food there to a teenage year in Australia of salad sandwiches, Kaul comes out at the end with a new appreciation for the cuisine of her home country and the diversity of her new one.
2 December 2020: No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time (Damian Carrington, The Guardian) The shift toward a meat free meat grows scarily ever nearer. This product is not quite there yet - it still involves using samples from live animals and other animal based products for growth. In the end, we’d rather just eat real food, this is all starting to sound a bit Margaret Atwood pigoon and dystopic for our liking.
3 December 2020: Celebrity chef Jock Zonfrillo to pay fraction of failed restaurant debts to Australian Tax Office (Bension Siebert, ABC News) While his staff were back paid in full, the ATO and his landlord were not as lucky with only 10 cents in the dollar to be repaid. Outstanding gift voucher holders missed out as well.
5 December 2020: International border closures push Australian businesses to the brink of collapse (Samuel Yang, Jason Fang and Sean Mantesso, ABC News) Although it feels like things are turning for the better, business that relies on international students and travellers are still suffering. Features Peter Chan from Kopitiam Cafe and other businesses that have been impacted.
22 November 2020: The power of food emojis (The Food Chain Podcast, BBC World News) What happens when there is no food emoji for a food from your culture? Food emojis have social and economic power, an ‘expressive exclamation point’ that gives recognition and acceptance of community and people. The Unicode Consortium decides what emojis are approved, ‘language and technology nerds’ that have to weed through multiple proposals for new emojis. Hear how new ones for dumplings, arepas and bubble tea have made it to the emoji keyboard.
Meanwhile in Betoota Heights…
Booze
1 December 2020: Foster's: 'Australian for beer' around the world will soon be introduced to Australians (Aleksandra Bliszczyk, The Guardian) With currently only 10 places in Australia serving Foster’s on tap, the time has come for a push back into the Australian market. There’s a place they hope for nostalgia (as evidenced by Reschs silver bullets returning this year) but the closure of West End was signalled as a decline in traditional brews in favour of craft beers so who knows?
3 December 2020: Politicians urge people to buy Australian wine in defiance of China (Jack, Guy, CNN Travel) The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China has called on consumers around the world to support Australian wine. It’s a shame there isn’t a more positive angle to the campaign, it seems to be about drinking for spite rather than support which may not help the position in this difficult conversation with China.
Chinese
24 November 2020: On Menus (That Jess Ho, Jess Ho) As a ‘Chinese Restaurant Kid’ Jess Ho writes all about the food that his father had to cook for the white folks and how much it differed from the Cantonese food of his background. Asked why he didn’t cook traditional dishes, his father responded there just wasn’t enough demand to make it viable. More immigration has meant changes in Chinese food here (thankfully!) but there’s still a way to go before the ‘greasy fast food’ image of Chinese food is dispelled.
26 November 2020: Feels like home: You couldn't give big plate chicken a better name (Nicholas Jordan, SBS Food) A huge plate of stewed chicken pieces and potato on top of wide flat noodles is a Uyghur favourite. This article explores the many theories on it’s origin as a truck stop fill-em-up dish that went wildly popular to the appropriation of community dishes by the wider culture. We’ve tried this at Kiroran Silk Road in Chinatown, make sure you have a gang of eating friends to help you finish it.
Japanese
2 December 2020: This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises (Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno, New York Times, $) Imagine operating a business that had existed for over 1,000 years? In Japan, there are multiple businesses that can trace their origins back across centuries. The secret to this mochi business and others like it is to do one thing and to do it well - no expansion, no online, no new products. Their small scale and family focus helps keep them alive, rather than focusing on expansion and over reach. It’s a risk averse strategy that keeps them going, and going for over 1,000 years.
3 December 2020: The Man Who Walked Across Japan for Pizza Toast (Lauren Moya Ford, Atlas Obscura) In search of the kissa (the kissaten or cafe) Craig Mod walked across Japan for 40 days documenting these unique coffee and tea houses that serve a mix of Japanese and Western dishes. His key dish is pizza toast, a mix of thickly sliced shokupan with tomato sauce and grilled plastic wrapped cheese slices on top. We love their morning sets, black coffee in thick cups, their unique interiors of dark wood and original signage and the sense of a different Japan they give.
Taiwanese
3 December 2020: Forget wine and olives, Din Tai Fung launches new, dumpling-filled hampers (Divya Venkataraman, Time Out) An alternative to the ‘gourmet’ food hampers full of products no one ever really buys (flavoured vinegars, never a favourite) this one is full of frozen dumplings and includes frozen xiao long bao, shrimp & pork wonton, chicken & mushroom dumpling, spicy sauce, noodles (4pack), braised beef soup, kung pao chicken, BBQ pork buns, egg fried rice with shredded pork, chilli oil, DTF family mug for $90 bucks.
Order online here
Korean
2 December 2020: The surprising origins of this handmade kimchi (Lee Tran Lam, SBS Food) Eun Hee An's Moon Mart store offers a kimchi that is made with a level of skill and care and an origin that comes from her 98 year old grandmother’s recipe. This isn’t ‘factory made’ so expect a higher price point (although we vouch for Paldo as a top kimchi product.)
1 December 2020: South Koreans, Chinese clash on social media over Chinese-style Kimchi winning international certificate (Daewoung Kim, Soohyun Mah, Reuters) China have applied for and been granted ISO certification for the Sichuan pickled vegetable known as pao cai. This has led to a stream of announcements and rebuffs on who owns kimchi, the name itself and the origin of the recipe. The strangest thing in this story is the boast that most kimchi consumed in Korea comes from China - would love to see the stats behind that claim.
Thai
5 December 2020: Thai jasmine 105 scoops top prize in world’s best rice competition (Maya Taylor, The Thaiger) This Thai rice, known as hom mali, has one first place at the twelth World Rice Conference after a blind taste test.
Vietnamese
4 December 2020: VN Streetfoods ~ Vietnamese, Wolli Creek (B-Kyu) Over the last few months we have been sitting outside at VN Streetfoods. It doesn't quite have the same vibe as the Marrickville version but we can always get a zombie safe outside table. The stools by the big open window facing the train station are great for zombie-free fresh air as well.
Indonesian
1 December 2020: These Indonesian food memories can be wrapped in leaves (Ria Andriani, SBS Food) The use of natural wrappings makes a difference to the flavours and the final cooked food. From bamboo tubes, banana leaves, palm fronds and corn husks, each imparts a different flavour to food that plastic just can’t emulate and gives a different, softer outcome to the cooking. Ketaput cooked in coconut leaves really does have a different flavour, grilled satay on banana leaves is visually so satisfying and no waste!
Malaysian
The video series Woks of Life on the Asian Food Network has a focus on individual dishes at the places that serve them including Restoran Ayam Penyet Binjai, Ah Du Hokkien Mee, Old Farm Minumam Susu Lembeng and Nonya Laksa Empire. Loads of wishful travel jealousy inducing footage here.
Indian
25 November 2020: The story of sattu and how so-called peasant food become mainstreamed (Shirin Mehrotra, W Journal) When food is linked to caste or economic status, change can result in loss. Quinoa in South America is often cited as a similar example, and here in India the gram flour called sattu has been picked up from a Bengali worker’s sustaining food to a cultural elite favourite.
Sri Lankan
2 December 2020: This Dutch Burgher lamprais will make you forget curry even exists (Rushani Epa, SBS Food) This café in Scoresby, east of Melbourne, offers a classic Sri Lankan dish popular as a takeaway or an in place feast. In Sydney, Fridays is lamprais day at Lankan Railway Cafe in Mortdale.
“Lamprais is a parcel of food hidden inside a banana leaf. Unwrap it to find a mix of tender, bite-sized pieces of meat (either pork, beef, chicken and/or mutton), rice cooked in the meat's stock, eggplant pickle (Dassanayake's mother's specialty), coconut belacan, chilli paste and frikkadel. She adds a fish cutlet in place of frikkadel due to some of her Buddhist clientele not eating beef, and includes a fried boiled egg, too.”
5 December 2020: (@hopperkade) Hopper Kade have announced they have closed their Darling Harbour store and are looking at online options as well as cooking schools, yoga and health options.
American
2 December 2020: Journey to the West: how tofu made its way to America (Alkira Reinfrank and Bernice Chan, Eat, Drink, Asia Podcast) Tofu has always been part of the food of Asian migrants in the USA. As the 1960’s brought in vegetarianism, it changed it’s role and position as an essential part of Asian cuisine to a hippy food. It has increased it’s market share in the US since, but there’s still a long way to go to see it accepted as more than just a meat substitute.
South African
1 December 2020: Capetown’s Most Famous Fast Food (Heather Richardson, BBC Travel) The origins of ‘The Gatsby’, an amazing melange of cold meats, steak, chips, eggs, pickles and chilli sauce. Originating in a Cape Town fish and chip shop, it has become a cult sandwich that can feed four.
It’s a B-Kyu world
As always, get out and explore the beautiful world we live in.
Alison and Shawn, B-Kyu