Perth is one of those places where you can find a lot of Asians, particularly Chinese, regardless of Australian born Chinese or Chinese Chinese or Malaysian Chinese... you get the drift. Perth is also a popular choice among Asians as a migration destination, especially Malaysians, pretty much like how the Hong Kees superlove to migrate to Vancouver, Canada- at least most of the TVB dramas tell us so.
I guess it's a universal thing that all major cities in the world has a Chinatown. The Chinese are probably some of the most commonly found people all over the world, regardless of whether they're pure Chinese from China or Chinese born. I saw from the TV once, on the Guinness World Records program that the most widely spoken language in the world is not English, but Chinese. Heh, beat that!
On the second day of my stay in Perth, we headed out to Northbridge which is within the city for a dim sum brunch. This particular restaurant is called Northbridge Chinese Restaurant but if you know how to read the Chinese name, it is called 'Luk Fook' or Six Happiness, but I guess for simplicity and not to confuse those poor ang mohs, the English name of it is just named after the area. It was a Sunday and the restaurant was already packed with people lining up outside.
We managed to secure a table thereafter. The tables are quite big, meant to fit 10 but there were only 5 of us, so kinda wasted half the table heh. There were waiters and waitresses (all Chinese who speaks Cantonese, suspect they're from HK or maybe students from Malaysia doing part-time) carrying trays of food and some pushing carts from table to table. Quite a comforting sight to know that some of the traditional ways of having dim sum are still around especially in a Western country.
Meat Floss Flower Roll Buns
Fried Lobak Gou
Fried Calamari
Yam Cake
Fried Fish Balls
Fried Triangular Fish Cake
There are some stuff here that are not seen back home, for example, the fried calamari. There are also the same stuff but cooked different ways, like the yam cake and fried lobak gou which is just plain lobak without eggs and beansprouts. The meat floss flower roll was pretty good and so are the rest although I find the yam cake abit weird and bland. I like the fried fish balls though as the fish was springy and hot from the frying wok! Shiok!
Siew Mai
Har Gao
What's a dim sum meal without the obligatory Siew Mai and Har Gao which are like the King & Queen of dim sum. The K&Q tastes not too bad, perhaps even better than some dim sum places in Malaysia. I notice that the size of the dim sums are quite big here, perhaps to cater to the ang mohs.
After our satisfying meal, we went walking around Northbridge and Chinatown which isn't really big. Here you will find Korean, Japanese, Malaysian, Indian and Chinese restaurants.
I was told that Bubble Tea is very popular among Asians here. It is like THE place and THE drink for Asians. So being a tourist, I had to see for myself the Asian culture in a Western country.
My tourguides brought me to their favourite bubble tea place called Utopia. Truth to be told, there's nothing great about the place at all, it's poorly ventilated and you won't catch me hanging around there. As if the sun's not hot enough, it was getting stuffy and warm in there. Anyway, from what I observed, ang mohs love bubble tea too. The counter is managed by Asians though. They say the cups are quite easy to notice though, spot anyone with an orange cup and you'll know it's bubble tea from Utopia.
The process to get your bubble tea is simple. They have a list of flavours and types of bubble tea on a sheet of paper at the counter. Take a pencil and tick what you want with what kind of jellies you want in your drinks, for ie. black pearls, rainbow jelly, pudding, chocolate pudding, honeydew, grape etc. Queue up to hand your forms and pay. Then wait for your drinks to be shaken and stirred and then you're good to go!
I had the Honey something flavour and they said it was bad even before I tried it myself! Such encouraging sneak previews, hmmph!
Anyway, it's Friday! Go partaaaay, have a cocktail or toast over a scotch for something good you've done over the week, can be whether you've done a good deed, perform well in school or got a job well done at work. I'll toast mine here for surviving the first week at work and finally getting my external email and internet access! (which loosely translates to... I can access my blog from work!)
Yay!
