The Asian food century begins in Sydney

Almost ten years ago much fuss was made of the rapidly looming 'Asian Century', full of challenge and promise. I was working in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time as Director of the National Cultural Policy Task Force. The discussion White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century being developed at the same time seemed part of a similar big picture approach to Australia's future. Today it seems even more relevant than in those times of more strategic governments. In Sydney you get a much sharper sense of the Asian Century – and its culinary reflection, the Asian food century.

In Sydney, you get a much sharper sense than in Canberra that we are part of the Asian Century. I always say though that the Asian Century began for Australia much earlier - when ancient Yolngu peoples in what became East Arnhem Land started trading with Macassan seafarers, long before Europeans ever appeared over the horizon. 

Dive into the Asian food century
On a quick visit to Sydney our dive into the Asian food century started on a Sunday, straight from the train from Canberra, at Lankan Filling Station. Nearly 50 years ago in Adelaide I was taken to a place that would have been the very first restaurant I ever ate in. It was a Sri Lankan restaurant called the Ceylon Hut, tucked away in a grey basement, and it was an Adelaide institution. To me, someone who had grown up in Tasmania in the 1950s and 1960s, it was a revelation.

Lankan Filling Station interior

On this occasion I ate in another Sri Lankan restaurant and had a contemporary version of that eye-opening moment. Lankan Filling Station, tucked away in Riley Street, East Sydney, a few steps from major thoroughfare William Street, was a pleasure from start to finish.

Corned beef and quinces

Last Thursday we went to Bistrode to eat. I love the location and the ambience of the place. It feels like the old butchers shop it once was – and so it should. I had a silverbeet and parmesan tart, with unctuous and finely crumbling pastry, designed to halve the size of your arteries on the spot. The sour taste of the silverbeet was properly offset by the richness of the cheese. This dish needs a strong, definite vegetable to pair with the Parmesan – it was comforting to see an ingredient like silverbeet which had long crept out of favour and fashion used well. I get a very slight sense that silverbeet may be in the process of being discovered again – when of course it has been here all the time, just neglected and unused. Perhaps silverbeet will become the new pork belly. Perhaps not.

Then for my main course I had to have the corned wagyu beef I ate here last time. This time it came with dense cornmeal dumplings and heirloom carrots. My partner in crime had grass-fed Scotch fillet with roasted bone marrow and we had excellent Roman beans on the side. I stuck to the mineral water and she had a shiraz from the Barossa. Beforehand we stopped at Toko and I had another mineral water in a rather funky bottle and she had a German riesling which tasted excellent – very dry but complex and lavish. For dessert we shared a cows milk yoghurt cheesecake with poached quinces.