Bankstown Bites!

Celebrity Chefs, Dumpling Demonstrations, Japanese Squid-balls and Authentic French Buckwheat crepes - some of the fabulous fare on show at the Annual Bankstown Bites Food Festival, when Greg and Beth and I ventured out there a few weekends ago.

As we browsed the stalls in a moveable feast, we decided to opt for a few bites of 'everything', sharing the dishes we bought between us, so we could sample as many as possible of the delights on offer...

Here's celebrity chef "Fast" Ed Halmagyi cooking up a storm while an energetic band of septuagenarian Greek kyries danced to Zorba's theme-song.






Here's Jacques, pouring-spreading-sugaring-flipping-lemon-juicing a crisp buckwheat crepe:

The special crepe batter-spreading paddle...

Mmmm, authentic French Lemon-Sugar Crepe, piping hot and crispy-crisp!


We signed up for one of the several
'cooks tours' that were on offer.
Our calm and peaceful Dumpling-Demo chefs whipped up batches of tasty dumplings in three different styles, in next-to-no-time-at-all...

Their restaurant New Top One is located at 277 Beamish St in Campsie. Ph 9787 8766. They open at 5.30am (!) and serve delicious dumplings like these, along with other Oriental delights, till 3pm - clearly one for the early birds and hearty breakfast-eaters!


















This is my dear friend My Le Thi at work - she is an exceptional Vietnamese Artist - and a great cook too! Here she is, helping some young kids get started on their creative adventures, making panels for inclusion in the Namescapes community art project. My Le is also the founding president of the Ian Bowie Memorial Association, which she formed in the name of her late partner Ian Bowie, to raise funds to carry on Ian's work of mentoring young people in the Theatre Arts. (I'm the volunteer treasurer of this charitable organisation and we will be having our second fundraising concert later in the year - will keep you posted...)

Lebanese Chicken Kebabs, barbecued by the batch...



A team of fast and efficient Japanese chefs made thousands of Squid and Prawn Balls: a seafood and vegetable batter is poured into scorching-hot cast-iron half-sphere griddle molds and the team's shiva-hands dart about over the griddle, deftly turning the balls with chopsticks when half-cooked, allowing the batter to expand on the turned side to make a sphere.







Dressed up with Japanese BBQ sauce, wasabi-mayonnaise and gossamer thin fish-paper flakes, these little snacks are seriously
Yum-oh!