Macarons, Night Noodle Markets and Meetfresh

As I blogged earlier on, October was the month of food with the Sydney International Food Festival held across the city and suburbs for the entire month. One of the most popular events was the Night Noodle Markets held at Hyde Park, Sydney.

Throngs of Sydneysiders flocked to Hyde Park to eat an assortment of noodles, only to discover that it wasn't so much a noodle market as a foreign cuisine market.

It was a pretty overcast day so the photos aren't as clear and bright as I would have liked.

Straight after uni on a Friday afternoon I travelled the 2hr trip to the city so I could buy some macarons from Baroque (boy I do love this place). The week before, I had visited Baroque and bought their new violet flavoured ones but didn't take a picture before I popped it into my mouth.

Click for more saliva-inducing photography:

Macarons bought that day were violet, rose water, salted caramel, coconut and chocolate.

The violet macaron had silver edible glitter on it! How gorgeous!

Then it was a short bus ride up to Hyde Park from Circular Quay to meet up with the rest of my friends for some dinner.

By the time I got there the markets were already swarming with people. The crowds got pretty intense as the night went on, especially some of the queues. I attribute some of those insane queues to the "crowd mentality". You know, "hey this place must be good if it's got so many people lining up, so let's join!".

I joined one of these lines and 45+ minutes later, came out with some really good roti and beef rendang with an ayam (spicy) marinated chicken wing. I say it was really good roti because it was what a roti should be: made fresh, still hot, perfectly flaky and crispy but soft at the same time. Worth the wait? Probably, but I am a pretty patient person.

I also introduced kaya roti and was shocked when my friends didn't even know what kaya was! And they call themselves Asians!

Kaya is a coconut spread, usually flavoured with pandan. It is Asian jam, and probably one of the fattiest things you'll ever eat other than real mayonnaise! Egg yolks and coconut cream, ooohhh bbboooooyyyy. My grandfather's favourite breakfast is kaya toast.

I don't have any photos because I have this horrible habit of eating before I realise what I'm doing.

Some of the food my friend's friends ate, included a sausage filled with melty cheesyness.

The park was decorated with colourful lights and there was a lion dancer was running around with its drummer.

While Vi was quite content with sitting out, bestie and I wanted to fill our second stomach with dessert.

We shared a box of Shanghainese xiao long bao (slightly different to the Taiwanese xiao long bao made famous by Din Tai Fung)...

...mango pancake (the Asian version is crepe-like and wrapped with whipped cream) and an egg tart...

...and mango cheeks with coconut icecream and coconut cream (which tasted saltier than usual). They ran out of glutinous coconut rice so had to give us icecream instead, and charged us the same amount T_T

Despite my jeans bursting, I agreed to get a second helping of dessert at a new place that just opened up in Chinatown, serving Taiwanese desserts. Having missed out on a opportunity to go to Taiwan last year, I've always wanted to make up for it by eating more than my parents!

Some of you may have heard of it, but this place is Meetfresh!

It recently opened in place of the dumpling restaurant that was apparently not very good. That night when we went and the second time I came back with my parents, there were very long queues that stretched all the way back to Mamak (which itself, has massive queues, so you can imagine the congestion on Goulburn and Dixon St).

This place was awesome.

If you love the texture and chewy softness of bubble/boba/pearls, you will love Meetfresh.

Herbal jelly with glutinous cake, noodles and pearls.

Iced winter melon tea.

Tofu (silken) with taro balls.

Taro balls with sweet potato, barley and pearls. 

Taro balls look more like nuggets, and are deliciously squishy and firm and chewy and bouncy and...basically, it has a lovely texture that is reminiscent of abalone. It is quite hard to describe because there isn't an English equivalent of the Chinese word.

Herbal tea crushed ice with herbal jelly and cream.

If you discount or don't drink too much of the syrup/soup, these are all very healthy for you ;D

Tofu, winter melon, barley = all things you wouldn't eat on a daily basis that are good for you. And you know me, I love to eat uncommon things.

You have the option of choosing warm or cold for your desserts. Desserts for all seasons! I can't wait to try this in Winter.

Unfortunately I had a hard time sleeping since I overate quite a lot that night. It was worth it. Soooo worth it.