Night Noodle Market @ Hyde Park

As all Sydney food bloggers should know, the month of October celebrates the Crave Sydney International Food Festival, where there all different food events all around sydney, each with a unique culinary experiences. The most popular of them all is the Night Noodle Markets at Hyde Park (10-14 and 17-21 from 5-9pm). There are 20+ food stores with most providing authentic asian cuisines from dumplings, to noodles and various desserts.

I got there around 430-5pm. I would definitely advise to go early to be able to sit at a table and to avoid long queues for food. Furthermore, it gives you time to have a walk around and look at the all the dishes provided at each store so you can make your pick.

I love Din Tai Fung dumplings, they are my favourite dumplings of all time. They are freshly made with precision and have a great flavour. Inside the dumpling there is some type of soup that just bursts inside your mouth. I have been craving these dumplings for months, craving was finally fulfilled!

I also bought some sweet buns from Din Tai Fung, each with a different filling (black sesame, taro and red bean). They were soft and tasted wonderful. My favourite was taro (even though I normally don't like taro). They aren't to sweet, so it is possible to a huge amount, but I decided to save my stomach for other food.

 Din Tai Fung steamed pork dumplings $6 (4 pieces)

Mini Buns Trio $6 (3 pieces) Red bean, taro and black sesame

My sister bought Malaysian food from Jackie M Malaysian Cuisine. The beef and lamb were mouth watering, just breaking up in your mouth and the curry had the perfect amount of spice. There was a strange yellow salad composed of some vegetable, it tasted of satay and had a great crunch.

Nasi Lemak with lamb curry and beef rendang $18
(From Jackie M Malaysian Cuisine)

Continuing on with the  Malaysian cuisines we bought roti from Mamak. This was my first time trying roti and it was SENSATIONAL! I don't even have the words to describe what it was like, but it was good. The inside had egg, and you tear apart the roti and dip it in the curry and you can also spread some spicy sambal sauce on it.

Roti $6 (the one on the right is squashed together, so is a bit more flaky)

Next stop was SpanThai, I saw this stand last year when I went and vowed to try it this year and I did. SpanThai seemed like a mixture of spanish - thai. That is, cooking thai food in a giant paella. The dish had a strong flavour of saffron but with all the vegetables and a squeeze of lemon it was great. It tasted as good as it looked. There were a lot of people with this dish, and someone had asked me where I got it so they could get the same thing.

Saffron Chicken Rice: Rice, chicken, garlic, saffron, chicken stock, mushrooms, capsicum

green beans, cherry tomatoes, black olives topped with peanuts $12 

DESSERT:

There were ample amount of dessert options, and with so much variety it is really hard to decide what we want. But this is what we got:

Egg Tarts $10 (6 pieces) from St Honore Cake Shop

Frozen soft serve yoghurt with wildberry sauce and nuts $5 (From Curlymoo)

I tried the above desserts and they were good and won't disappoint. But now for my main dessert. I saw this last year but they had sold out and I made it destiny to try it this year. Most people would think passionfruit and chilli should not be put together, but this interesting concoction was  pleasant on the palate and definitely an acquired taste. With the first spoonful there was a strong passion fruit flavour, and after a few seconds of the ice cream melting on your tongue you get the hit of a chilli flavour. It is a different type of chilli where it was a tad spicy, yet subtle (similar to the dried chilli that some asian countries eat with fruit e.g. pineapple). I admit I couldn't eat a lot of it, so this tub was the perfect amount. 

Passionfruit and chilli ice cream $4 (Serendipity)

Good food, good times!