Night Noodle Markets - Showcasing the Best of Asian Cuisine in Sydney...street food and dessert stalls, alfresco dining...foodie heaven!

Hello Steemit world! 

Today is a slightly different post to what I usually do (either recipes or restaurant reviews). Every year in October in Sydney we have something called a Night Noodle Market. It is basically an event that runs for two weeks and filled with over 40 'pop-up' stalls showcasing the best in Asian cuisine. You've got everything from Vietnamese, Indonesian, Philippino, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese and more. It's a festival that's gotten more and more popular each year (I last went 7 years ago!) and it's attracted restaurants from interstate that bring their staff, kitchen and food to Sydney for 2 weeks. 

The atmosphere is amazing, the smell of charcoal is definitely strong (so if you hate this...eeek), the variety is insane and you won't be able to try everything in one trip, probably not even five trips if I'm honest! But it's sure worth trying as a challenge haha. 

I went on a Thursday night (not the best night unfortunately, it was BUSY!) and there was already a line to get into the festival (let alone the foodstalls!!)

(it was actually 3x as long as this!) 

Woo, we're in! First stop is the bar to grab a drink after all that waiting...

Here's a couple stalls and seating areas

Another line to get some food

Yay, made it to the front

Hard at work here, it was HOT and the smoke was making my eyes water, don't know how these guys did it!

Hoy Pinoy is famous as they've had a number of pop ups around Sydney prior to this and are very active on social media. They're famous for their Phillipino cuisine cooked over charcoal.

4 sticks please

Next stop was a place called POKLOL which made sort of Asian fusion fast food. We had beef bulgolgi tacos and chi chi cheese (kim chi, chilli chicken, fresh shallots on top of beer battered fries). 

POKLOL was visited out of absolute necessity as we had lined up for this stall called Puffle but the line was 45 MINUTES - NO JOKE! When we lined up, it was daylight, by the time we got to the front...this was the view:

Anyway, so we split and went to POKLOL to grab the above two much needed snacks and then finally we made it to...

We ordered a bulgolgi beef puffle (which is basically a cheesey, puffed waffle)

Was it worth it? It was pretty good but not sure it was worth 45 minutes. It was very tasty and the texture of the waffle was very interesting so it was fascinating to try that but I think it needed something else, it was all just a bit too...oily/fattening tasting?

Anyway, I took a short break and strolled around the park, it was super pretty with all the hanging lights

PIMMS anyone?!

The tall pointy tower you see here is Sydney Centrepoint Tower - one of our famous landmarks but obviously not as famous as the Sydney Opera House or Sydney Harbour Bridge, but it made for a pretty backdrop against the changing lights amongst the trees.

Once I got my appetite back, next stop was, Taiwan Noodle House!

I had heard about their 16 hour slow cooked beef brisket and hand-made noodle dish and had to have it. After having a lot of greasy food I needed something hot and soupy to wash it all down with.

YUM! Honestly, this was the best dish!! I added chilli oil to it and it was perfect. You could tell the noodles were hand-made. The broth was rich but not overwhelming, the beef was melt-in-your-mouth, fall apart tender. I finished the whole bowl on my own and it was a pretty big serving!

One more stop...we had to make room for dessert, everyone always has room for dessert right?!

The stall that we went to is called Black Star Pastry and they are famous for having the most instagrammed cake in the world - the Strawberry Watermelon Cake - google it! Anyway, for the Night Noodle Markets they created the same flavours but in soft-serve form

It tasted exactly like the cake and paired with the chocolate waffle cone it was super refreshing and a great end to our meal and evening.

That was it for me, I was too full so we said goodnight to another year of the Sydney Night Noodle Markets...

I know this post was picture heavy but thought it was easier to take you on a picture tour than just me talking!! 

Let me know if you guys enjoyed it, your thoughts and whether you have something like this where you're from? I'll be back with some recipes from my kitchen in the next day so stay tuned! 

@phamished xx