First days in Sydney

I've been here a week now, settled into my beautiful Woolloomooloo apartment - above is the view from my window at sunrise.

First foodie trip out was to Cabramatta in search of a perfect bowl of Pho. Cabramatta is Sydney's little Vietnam, and was the setting for one of my favourite Cate Blanchett films, Little Fish. It was quite a trek at 45 minutes each way from the city, but the area is very vibrant, with apparently the best Vietnamese food in Australia.

I chose Pho 54 on Park Road - a basic cafe mostly in Vietnamese with selected dishes translated to English and Chinese, serving only Pho and Bun. Pho was 7/10 - soup was very sweet but lacked depth, and noodles were a little soft for my taste. But accompanying beef (steak slices, beef balls, tripe, and more unidentified beef) very good.

First posh meal with Matt, Emma and Deri at Manta on Woolloomooloo Wharf - all of us couldn't choose. Excellent yamba prawn ceviche (although quite ugly), and equally excellent mixed seafood broth featuring skate (slightly overcooked), calamari, prawns, mussels, clams. Most excellent was the accompanying bit of bread, smothered with garlicky pesto.

First oysters came from Sydney Fish Market - apparently "only second to Tsukiji Market in Tokyo" but a very distant second! Very nice to see lots of local families come here to buy fish to cook, as well as to go to the various seafood cafes, but the busy food halls seemed to specialise in battering any fish in view and serving with chips. I had had high hopes for the sushi bar, but when you arrive, there are only a handful of aging rolls.

However! I did greedily help myself to a dozen oysters, my first Australian oysters I believe? Huge, creamy, they lasted about 10 minutes.

One thing made me laugh about this little trip: as I got off the train at Fish Market station, everyone else who also got off were Chinese, and everyone was yapping in Cantonese. If I end up a 20-stone blob in my old age, I shall blame it on my genes :)