Herald Sun, Citystyle
For diners wanting a cheap, authentic Asian or African meal, Melbourne’s suburbs offer a world of flavours.
To get some insider knowledge, ED CHARLES talks to five people about the neigbourhoods they visit for a taste of their homeland. The secret to a memorable experience, he discovers, is to know which dish to order from which restaurant
Ethiopian
IT’S the coffee ceremony and the traditional meals that Elleni Bereded-Samuel misses most from her homeland of Ethiopia.
She arrived in Melbourne 10 years ago on a scholarship to study psychology at Ballarat University. But political troubles back home led her to seek asylum. She moved to Footscray with her husband and then seven-month-old baby with another on the way.
She finds the food she craves at the colourful Cafe Lalibela and Harambe, both in Footscray, which serve many mains for less than $20.
Both serve the large traditional spongy pancake injera, traditionally made from the fermented flour of teff grain, an Ethiopian grass that is not available in Australia.
The injera is served on a large plate with wat, a thick stew made with meat, vegetables or chicken blended with berbere, a combination of spices made with hot red peppers, which costs about $15 at Harambe.
“You serve it on a big plate and pass it around the table and share from one plate,” she says. “That’s the most common food in Ethiopia.”
Both cafes offer Ethiopian-style coffee in which freshly roasted coffee beans are ground then boiled in a traditional clay pot, a jebena.
“It’s a woman’s business,” Elleni says. “It is the women who prepare the coffee and pour the coffee and traditionally, as a woman, if you don’t know how to make coffee you won’t get a husband.”
Cafe Lalibela, 91 Irving St, Footscray.
Ph: 9687 0300
Harambe, 205-207 Nicholson St, Footscray. Ph: 9687 7177
Vietnamese
BETTY Thai’s story is typical of many Vietnamese in Melbourne. Her father escaped Saigon as a refugee in 1982 and it wasn’t until 1990, when Thai was eight years old, that the family was reunited.
She visits different restaurants for different dishes in St Albans, where she now lives.
“With Vietnamese I look for something authentic,” she says. “Usually soup because it takes longer to cook at home.”
Her favourites are pho, the traditional noodle soup, or bun bo hue, a spicy beef soup in which the noodles are meant to be made with the well water from Hue.
Thai reckons the best bun bo hue in Victoria is made at the bustling Song Huong, where a decent-sized bowl costs $7.
“A lot of people go there just to eat that.”
When eating pho she goes for the lot: beef, chicken and other strange bits.
“It’s probably daunting. I’ve taken my friend who is western and he couldn’t eat it.”
She says when the Vietnamese get together they order a range of dishes to share at Quang Vinh. With Asian friends she would order a whole deep-fried flounder or canh chua ca, a sweet-and-sour soup with vegetables, prawns and fish.
Song Huong, 71 Alfreida St, St Albans.
Ph: 9356 0567
Quang Vinh Restaurant, 66 Alfreida St,
St Albans. Ph: 9366 4147
Chinese
SAM Lau escaped Vietnam in 1974 and spent five years in Taiwan before emigrating to Australia in 1979.
He works at Lau’s family kitchen in St Kilda, but is no relation to that Lau family.
Living in North Balwyn, Lau eats yum cha regularly at the Golden Dragon Palace. Chicken feet are always on the trolley that rolls across the floor.
As with many Chinese, fresh seafood, often from live tanks, is always popular. He will often eat whole steamed fish or, for celebrations, mudcrab, lobster or baby abalone at San Choi on Kew.
“At Box Hill, for fast food, we like to go for Shanghai dumplings,” he says.
He visits David and Camy, which started in Chinatown, where many dumplings cost little more than $7 depending on the filling or whether they are fried or steamed.
But Lau’s children, who were born in Australia, have western tastes, preferring Australia’s most popular Chinese dish, sweet-and-sour pork with fried rice.
David and Camy Noodle Restaurant,
590 Station St, Box Hill. Ph: 9898 8398
San Choi on Kew Level 1,
298-302 High St, Kew. Ph: 9818 0438.
Golden Dragon Palace,
363 Manningham Rd, Lower Templestowe.
Ph: 9852 4086
Thai
FOR Pranee Birch, Springvale is the place to find the hot and spicy Thai food that she remembers from her home town of Chaiyaphum, in northeast Thailand.
Birch arrived in Australia in 1994 and now works as a nurse. She is also principal of the non-profit Thai Language School in Springvale.
She says Thai curries and tom yum soup favoured by Western palates can be had anywhere in the city. But she doesn’t order these in restaurants because she can make them better at home.
She favours two Thai restaurants, Kao Gang and Me Dee Thai.
“They have a very good authentic Thai taste,” she says. “If you are from Thailand and miss Thai food, these restaurants are worth visiting.”
For an authentic nahm tok Thai noodle soup, she visits Kao Gang (where she also enjoys karaoke at night). The soup is made with fresh blood, Thai herbs and other delicacies.
“This is a very special Thai dish.”
Birch, who likes her food to be blow-your-head-off hot, also visits Kao Gang for papaya salad, known as som tam.
“You don’t have to have it hot though,” she explains. “Even my husband loves it. He doesn’t eat chilli and you don’t have to put chilli in it.”
From Me Dee Thai she’ll order khao mun gai, a chicken rice dish served with a sauce made with fermented soya beans called nam jim. Other favourite dishes include larp, a minced-meat salad.
Me Dee Thai, 1/1-3 St Johns Ave, Springvale. Ph: 9546 0599
Kao Gang Thai, Shop 14,
22-38 Queens Ave, Springvale.
Ph: 9540 3199
Indian
NIMMI Malhotra and her husband Mantosh arrived in Australia from Delhi in 1999. Mantosh wanted to study for his masters in telecommunications and, of course, play Aussie cricket.
They have recently moved from Berwick to Ashburton, but they haven’t stopped returning to the ethnic shops in Dandenong for the authentic food experience.
“The whole strip in Dandenong is extremely Indian. There are Indian grocery shops, Indian clothes shops and little restaurants which are all about sweet and savoury snacks, things we would eat at roadside eateries (in India),” Nimmi says.
For north Indian fast food she visits Bikaner Sweet and Curry Cafe or Calcutta Sweets and Indian Takeaway in Dandenong, where she chooses sweets such as burfi (made with condensed milk, sugar and often nuts), jalebi (a pretzel-shaped batter) and laddoo (made with chickpea flour).
The sort of north Indian fast food she eats is the Punjab speciality chola bhatura (a chickpea curry with puffed fried bread) and golgappa (puffed balls filled with potatoes).
Every Sunday Madras Banyan Tree in Hampton East serves a vegetarian banquet featuring gujarati daal, kadhi (a curry made with yoghurt) and oondhiya, a favourite of Malhotra’s made with yams, potatoes and brinjals (eggplant).
North Indian
Bikaner Sweet and Curry Cafe Shop 5, 52b Foster St, Dandenong. Ph: 9792 9246
Calcutta Sweets and Indian Takeaway, Shop 2, 52e Foster St, Dandenong.
Ph: 9793 8101
South Indian
Madras Banyan Tree, 924 Nepean Highway, Hampton East. Ph: 9555 7170