Vegetable Buns in Sydney's Chinatown

Let me begin this post by saying that Australia is an EXPENSIVE country. Everything costs more. Food costs more. Beer costs more. Housing more, utilities more, you get the picture, it's expensive. Fortunately, the reason for this isn't actually a bad one. First of all, minimum wage is 16 dollars here, and secondly, tax is included in the price. Regardless, if you are an American studying here and not being paid the higher minimum wage (like me) that means it costs more. So after the first day of our time here we realized that when it comes to food, it's good to go cheap. 

Our third night in Sydney, we were in charge of our dinner and decided to go to Sydney's chinatown because it was two blocks away from where we were staying. We went to a place called the Chinese Noodle House…and there were actually 3 Chinese noodle houses all next to each other. Each had a women at the door trying to convince us to go to her restaurant. We ended up picking the one on the far left. However, they didn't have enough space for our large group. So they led us down the stairs up and onto a back street… and what do you know, into yet another Chinese Noodle House. They hurriedly put one giant table together for all of us. As we sat down they placed kettles of free tea on the tables instead of water (and it was really yummy tea), and a man with a violin played pop tunes by the door way. It was a really fun place.

All of the restaurants in chinatown have these colorful pictures of the food that they sell in the windows and I noticed they had Bao (or steamed buns) on my way in. I love bao, it's filling an tasty. So it was the first thing I looked for on the menu. I was surprised and pleased when I saw that they did indeed have vegetarian bao, and it was only $1.50! Even if I got 5 pieces it wouldn't be as much as an entree. I excitedly decided to order two veggie buns and two red bean buns. when I ordered the veggie buns and then went to order two more of the red bean ones the waitress looked at me in surprise, so I asked how big they were. As you can see from above much bigger than what I had thought. I decided to order one of each, but they were out of the red bean ones so I ordered two veggie bao. They were amazing! Stuffed with cabbage, celery, carrots, and mushrooms, they were filling and tasty. I don't think I even needed two. In the end I got a yummy and filling meal in Sydney for $3, quite a feat if I do say so myself.