If you’re craving authentic Malaysian food, save your airfares and head to Haymarket. The Indomie Goreng with salted duck egg is the best dish in Sydney full stop.
A Vietnamese diner in Sydney’s south offers inventive takes on the classics including coconutty pancakes, crunchy pig’s head nuggets and fresh banh mi.
It's rare to fill two bellies for $20 in Sydney, but at this beloved chicken shop a whole charcoal chook, garlic sauce, pickles and bread is a meal for a king on a pauper's budget.
Order the chicken biryani (or the lamb, if they haven’t run out already) and revel in the mosh pit of spiced up basmati rice, each grain tinted in varying shades of butter yellow and saffron orange.
They brine their chook for 24 hours, coat it in spices, cook it in a vacuum bag, bath it in buttermilk, batter it and fry it.
A Sydney institution. Always ask for the fish special and the massaman curry is just about the best anywhere in the world.
This old faithful is famous for hand-pulled noodles with pork mince and light-as-a-feather dumplings. Pork and chive are an essential order – get them pan-fried, steamed or boiled.
What it may have lost in suburban charm is has made up for in regular accessibility. Is Alice Tan's char kway teow still the best in town? It certainly gives its competition a run for its moneybags.
Spicy Joint, a wildly popular Sichuan chain in China, has expanded south – bringing peppercorn-littered braises, fiery hotpots and nightly queues to Dixon Street.
The burgers are excellent, the smoked chicken wings are juicy as and the brisket sandwich is worth slugging your way across the city on a rainy day to fulfil your braised meat dreams.
Banh mi are a Sydney religion and here they make them cheap and crunchy. There is the traditional pork (a cold cut combo), deep pink barbecue pork, crackling pork belly, chicken or dense meatballs.
The queues form early for lunch at this CBD staple, but they also move swiftly. The kitchen here bangs out trays of mixed Malaysian curries, laksa and Hainanese chicken at a terrific rate.
What it is that Sichuan food enthusiasts can’t get enough of is the unmistakable flavour imparted by Sichuan peppercorns, especially those in the food at Dainty Sichuan Noddle Express.
