It’s about 5° C outside. You’re in a foreign city, you’ve finished work and your feet are sore. It’s about to get dark and you’re feeling a little snacky. What to do?

We have two options here:

1. Stay in the hotel and catch the lift downstairs to the restaurant buffet.
2. Rug up, put fresh socks and shoes on and hit the pavement.

Honestly speaking we did both and seeing I wrote about the hotel buffet last time I was in Yiwu it was time to really hit the streets and see what this town dishes up after hours. The locals have found a way to keep warm and fit every evening after work, as we discovered in a park on the corner of Binwang and Gongren North Roads. For a few hours the asian electro-pop belts out from boom boxes as one dude takes the lead in a very energetic dance and exercise routine. It’s like Chinese Zumba where anyone can join and sweat it out. I swear Miss B and I should have joined the happy pack!

Huagong Road comes alive at night in more ways than one. From drab traffic thoroughfare and hot-pot restaurant street in hazy daylight to bustling food destination at night. There are wine shops, the occasional hole-in-the-wall eatery offering a very local specialty that caught me off guard (more on that at the end of this post) and a couple of dentists with shop-front windows. Yes folks, we stood and watched a lady get her tooth extracted. Man it was a struggle at first but after a few back-and-forth wriggles the sucker popped out. The practitioners thought it was amusing that we were watching at the same time I thought it was amusing that they see nothing odd about it.

Just near the Santing Road night market we found a couple of people selling puppies, one of which Miss B latched onto and almost purchased to bring home. Too cute. The Santing Road Market runs every night of the week and once you get past the household rubbish, clothes and underwear (yes, I did stock up on bootleg Calvin Klein briefs) it gets pretty damn exciting.

Hello street food market. The eastern end of Santing Road night market bustles with (mostly young) locals fuelling up for a night out on the town. The strip of food vendors is alive and action-packed, providing a broad selection of delights that would make just about anyone happy. Bitterly cold nights call for fresh hot food. Má là tang is sure to warm the insides; skewers of various meat balls, vegetables and tofu sectioned off in simmering troughs. Choose your desired skewer and the trough master does the gathering. You add your chilli sauce and whatever other condiments there are.

The skewered goodies continue as you make your way down the stalls; delicious spiced octopus fresh off the grill, pork, or if you’re game the golden caramelised duck necks loaded with charcoal flavour.

Both of us swooned over the slabs of silken tofu, caramelised on both sides with flecks of spring onion. It’s sliced into strips and dished up with a generous dusting of cumin, chilli and seasoning.

The most popular food stand was where the Donghe meat cake was constantly being made. Small plate-sized cakes sit in baskets but most of the people, including me, jostled for the large version that’s cut to your desired size, weighed, and then sold. This is not one for the weight conscious. At the back of the stand beneath a tree a guy stands and makes the enormous cake in a large shallow pan heated over coals. A rather liberal amount of oil is used as the meat-filled pastry blubbers away before being flipped over, sprinkled generously with sesame seeds and spring onion. He then passes it to the young girl with the cleaver. Ignoring the high oil content, it’s a seriously tasty local specialty.

Twice we came to the market for dinner, selecting servings of pre-made vegetarian meals, a piece of grilled chilli chicken for me, a beer and for under $6 we had six plates of food and a long-neck of beer that we struggled to get through. Well, not the beer. It went down in no time.

Plastic covered plates eliminate the need for washing up so any left-overs can either be taken home in the same bag or just tied off and disposed of. Loved how the locals just spat bones onto the table or on the ground around it. The resident rats must love visiting this market every night after hours.

Dazzling displays of sugar-coated fruit made my temptations crumble. Grapes, melons, kiwi fruit, strawberries, orange segments, cherry tomatoes; all skewered and dipped in toffee and allowed to set. It was a toss-up between the sesame crusted banana or the strawberries. The skewer is handed over semi-wrapped in whispy rice paper that is also edible and just dissolves in the mouth with the sweet and juicy fruit.

Being full from dinner meant I could just stand and observe what this lady was creating. Xi’an buns loaded with juicy braised meat chopped with green chilli, stuffed into a flat pocket of bread. Now I’m kicking myself for not getting one.

With Yiwu’s high population of visitors from Middle Eastern countries you can even find an area of town that is just like stepping into downtown Aleppo, or anywhere else like it. In the tangle of streets just north of Chouzhou North Road, in particular the strip on 7th and 8th Streets, is an enclave of outdoor restaurants enshrouded by plumes of smoke from grilling meats, vegetables and seafood. Many of the restaurants are set up and owned by people of the Xinjiang province, serving up Uighur cuisine and immediately getting my attention.

It was the char-grill at Mamat Restaurant that drew us in and despite the chilly temperature we sat outside by the warmth of the grill. Pots of mint tea are dropped off, loathe the stuff, and immediately we’re asked what we want. “Er, a minute, please?” A quick look at the array of ready-to-cook skewered goodies on display plus a glance at the menu and we had our meal mapped out. Before we knew it we were chowing on hummus and freshly baked nang bread. The light scraping of hummus on the plate was a little pathetic in quantity but the delicious bread helped out in that department. My charred Uighur skewer of lamb and steamed lamb dumplings caused a few pleasurable groans and the great hunk of perch was just the ticket on a brisk evening.

Not too far away is a great little unnamed bakery that sells a handful of Middle Eastern biscuits and baklava-style pastries. Keep an eye out for the Aleppo Restaurant, bustling with groups of men lounging about smoking on hookahs, sipping strong coffee and fingering prayer beads. It’s very much a smoky boys club and next door is the bakery. Everything is priced by weight so it’s as easy as telling the friendly bloke what selection of syrupy pastries you want and he’ll look after the rest.

Heading back to the hotel, we walked along Huagong Road snapping away with our camera’s at anything remotely exciting such as dentists in windows, big bowls of eggs in brine, snails for anyone that likes eating them and a rather unusual-looking animal in a large bamboo steamer. The foods at these two hole-in-the-wall restaurants are out on the footpath as means of showcasing the goods. Now, the thing that caught me off guard and the thing that must come with a warning is shown in an image below. By the look of the animals shape and the pads on its paws it looked as if we found a couple of restaurants specialising in dog meat. The restaurant owner ran out when he saw me photograph it and proceeded to flip it over as the skin-side was much more attractive than the gutted inside. He was pretty chuffed that I was photographing his food.

Scroll down if you wish, but you have been warned.

That’s it for Yiwu, folks. Here’s hoping we return in another couple of years.

Mussels are one of those things that many people just never cook at home. Anyone that loves them has their own favourite way of preparation but the best way is to just keep it simple. Here’s one very simple way of cooking them. I’ve gone with a classic Croatian recipe that I’ve adapted to my own tastes by adding chilli, paprika and celery leaves; eliminating the tomato that often finds it way into the recipe.

When buying mussels just make sure you get ones that are still alive, with their shells tightly closed. If you see some that are still open just give them a tap. If they slowly close they’re alive and still ok; if not, they’re dead and only good for the bin.

mušule na buzaru

Serves 2

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 6 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp paprika powder
• 1 small red chilli, seeded & chopped
• 4 tbsp bread crumbs
• 900 g mussels, washed & beards removed
• 1 cup white wine
• ½ cup young celery leaves, roughly chopped
• ¼ cup parsley, roughly chopped
• Salt & pepper, to taste

1. Heat a large and deep saucepan over medium heat. Add the oil and garlic and cook until lightly golden. Add the paprika, chilli and stir to combine. Add the breadcrumbs and stir quickly before tossing in the cleaned mussels followed by the white wine and chopped celery leaves.
2. Put a lid on the saucepan and shake it vigorously for a few seconds to coat the mussels in the sauce. Shake the saucepan frequently for a few minutes. The mussels will be done when they’ve all opened. Discard any that are still closed.
3. Pour onto a platter and serve with crusty bread and loads of good white wine.

Every now and then I come across a meal that impresses the crap out of me. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a crisp linen kind of joint with crockery significantly larger than the morsel of food that sits upon it, hell, it could be a crusty hole-in-the-wall with multi-legged ground feeders sharing my dining space. An iconic food moment can happen in any environment. When that moment happens, where the world slows down and every sense is being delicately caressed, I have no choice but to surrender, go with the flow and be grateful for the experience.

Stopping over in Singapore for a few nights after a couple of weeks in Vietnam was a perfect way to end the holiday, and at the same time, slightly prolong it. In my eyes, holidays should never end. If you can drag it out that little bit longer, why the hell not? Almost two decades have passed since my last Singapore stop-over; a visit I barely remember. Little India, Boat Quay, the Swissotel, Tiger beer. I don’t even remember what I ate.

Here’s one meal I won’t forget for quite some time. Found in the labyrinthine Dempsey Hill restaurant complex is the Tippling Club, a drinking and eating house that was initially a joint venture between Singaporean Cynthia Chua, founder of Spa Esprit, UK-born chef Ryan Clift and Adelaide-born artist/mixologist Matthew Bax. Together they made a few dreams come true, transforming a military building into a beautiful drinking and dining space, inside and out. Matt left the party a couple of years ago. The set-up almost reminds me of Momofuku Seiobo in Sydney where most of the diners sit up at the kitchen bar in view of the action, except here at the Tippling Club it’s less rigid and more relaxed. If Sydney was wetting itself over Momofuku Seiobo in its novelty stage, it’d be doing a whole lot more if the Tippling Club was in town.

Having just two menu options, both of which are degustations, makes choosing a breeze. The Classic* 7-course menu or the Gourmand** 12-course menu. We went with the latter, starting with a procession of not one but six amuse bouches. A soup often makes it into the amuse bouche set and rather than the conventional small cup and spoon, Ryan Clift presents our vichyssoise in a flattened glass pipe topped with a cube of confit potato, caviar and fennel flower. It’s all quite simple. Place the pipe to your mouth and down it in one hit, including the potato.

Next we get a jar containing a curried carrot mousse, covered with freeze-dried yoghurt and coriander. The flavours are delicate and the meringue-like texture of the yoghurt changes from crispy to silky as soon as it hits the tongue. Amuse number three may look like something unearthed from an archeological site (perhaps there should be a brush and edible sand involved) but once you dip these charred peppers into the salt-heavy golden wasabi soy sauce you soon realise it’s a batter coloured with squid ink, encasing a sweet strip of soft capsicum.

At a quick glance one could think that what was put in front of us for amuse number four came straight from the garden nursery outside. Served up in small plastic seedling pots is a warm truffle brûlée with white truffle and black truffle soil complete with snow pea tendril. Next we have a small lidded jar that, once the lid is peeled back, reveals a smoked pickled quail egg enshrouded in woody smoke. The flavour and aroma is sensational and when the runny yolk pops in the mouth it truly makes for a happy ending. Finally, amuse number six is served in a test tube. Freeze filtered gazpacho fills the glass tube while the straw has a vibrant essential basil oil that hits the palate before the lightly sweet and spiced gazpacho.

Oyster lovers will be pleased with the first of the starters. A briny lonesome oyster sits surrounded with micro herbs, wading in apple olive oil and parsley champagne. highly refreshing and very moreish.

Smoked eel is next on the Gourmand menu. The wild eel is smoked in-house using hickory and we also have soya braised mustard seeds, charred vinegar onions, fresh cucumber and a crumble of bread and pumpernickel. A tangled shallot touile crowns the dish and a beautiful mustard ice cream takes the flavour sensations even further. Incredible.

Foie gras is always a touchy subject. You either love it or you’re politically against it. The stuff we have here is raw and unpasteurised and sourced from Spain’s Basque country. The ducks aren’t force-fed like they normally are, instead they’re tricked into believing they are migrating two days later than they actually are so they force-feed themselves. The liver is much smaller and the flavour is a lot more delicate as it has been tempered to about 50°C with a little bit of cocoa butter. The gorgeous creation here is a tube of foie gras perched on top of a crumble with glüwein meringue, crystallised  cacao, shiso leaves and freeze-dried blood plum. When you cut into it with a fork a river of glüwein gel pours out, adding sweetness and a little spice to the divine creamy liver.

Next we have wild scampi from Western Australia with wild mussels that are braised in a stock of chorizo and vinegar. Smoked paprika, parsley and confit tomato join in on the fun and draped over the scampi is glistening Jamon de Bellota with batons of Iberico chorizo.

All the way from Italy is the meager, a deep ocean fish similar to mulloway. It’s slowly poached and topped with porcini puree, roast porcini mushrooms, braised salsify and finished with a skin of buffalo mozzarella, pea tendrils and shavings of house-preserved truffles from last season.

Tender, slow-roasted A3 Kagoshima wagyu comes served in a glass with diver-caught Hokkaido scallops, wild sea grapes, Japanese cucumber, wild organic sesame, nori, shiso and coriander. A hot fluid gel of dashi is poured over the top, adding warmth and delicious umami.

The savouries continue onto slow-roasted, lightly seared pigeon breast with a confit of its wing, purée of caramelised shallot, burnt and then braised Jerusalem artichokes, preserved lemon vinaigrette and nasturtium leaves. The pigeon is just perfect and the deliberately burnt skins on the artichoke add a smoky depth to the meat and salty vinaigrette.

A cheese dish always gets my attention and the one we received here included braised banana shallots that are braised in porcini stock served with crumbled Loire Valley chèvre. We also have thin croutons made using the house made preserved truffle and a purée of the same truffles. Freaking awesome.

With the savouries behind us we move onto a couple of pre-desserts. Shimmering black like it just fell from the heavens, the blood peach meteorite is metallic in appearance and had a thick, almost chocolatey shell that gives way to a centre of blood peach sorbet. Next comes a small packet clipped onto a stand. The fizz bomb is simply unclipped, placed into the mouth and then chewed. The contents are just like sherbet, tingling on the tongue.

The first dessert is Ryan Clift’s interpretation of Bertie Basset liquorice allsorts. A tube of house-made liquorice is filled with mandarin sorbet, nitrogen-separated blood orange segments, smoked yoghurt, freeze-dried black olive, freeze-dried mandarin, rhubarb batons and smear of liquorice the length of the plate. It truly is a celebration of liquorice so those that don’t have mush of a penchant for the stuff may struggle with many of the components. My favourite part was the tumble of freeze-dried mandarin and blood orange.

The final dessert is the textured milk. The base of the structure is coconut milk sago topped with sheep’s milk ice cream and three shards of crispy full fat dehydrated milk. All the whiteness is broken up with wild oxalis (wood sorrel) that’s hand-picked from the forest around the restaurant. The leaf has an acidic flavour, complementing the various milk textures and varieties. Chocolates round up the Gourmand meal – salted caramel gel, salted green olive and a rosemary & olive oil ganache.

While the meal may be extravagant and far from inexpensive, it was without a doubt one of the best I’ve had. Just incredible.

It’s funny that I’ve come back to cooking something that this Croatian fisherman, chef and restaurateur makes at his pride and joy eating house, Konoba Batelina in Istria. Not only does this guy cook with some of the more unpopular varieties of seafood but he makes something delicious out of the simplest of ingredients. I made his chocolate chilli nibbles late last year and here I am recreating his delectable seared tuna. The fish he uses depends on what is caught that morning; being mullet, bonito, whatever’s going. With it he serves up a wild radicchio sauce with balsamic whereas I’ve gone for something slightly different.

What I’ve done is stick by that same formula using regular tuna from the seafood monger and a wild rocket pesto, of sorts, just runnier than normal using pumpkin seeds rather than pine nuts. I’ve also added nigella seeds for the extra nuttiness and smokiness they bring to a dish. The flavours are subtle and earthy and paired with the soft and silky textures of the tuna and nutty crunch from the seeds, it’s a really nice way to present and eat fresh fish.

david skoko’s seared tuna

Serves 2-4 as an appetiser

• 2 cups wild rocket
• ½ cup grated parmesan
• 1 tbsp pumpkin seeds
• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
• Pinch of salt
• 400 g tuna
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds
• ½ tsp nigella seeds
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Salad leaves, to garnish

Don’t be fooled by the delicate cherry blossoms. The city of Yiwu far from qualifies as being one of China’s beautiful cities. It’s industrial, it’s bleak, it’s polluted and like many parts of southern China the sky is a lovely shade white; thick with pollutants where after a few days in the city you can actually feel a heaviness in your lungs. No cause for anguish, however. Once you get past the negatives, as I found this time around, there was a city I was becoming somewhat fond of.

Two years ago Miss B and I made the trip here for work, scouring the mammoth Commodity Market at the International Trade City for products to ship back to Sydney. It’s a cumbersome yet exciting exercise and when the buildings aren’t heated it’s a bit of a slog at 5°C whilst rugged up from head to toe. Thermals and gloves were my best friends, those five days.

The numerous canteens located throughout Trade City dish up some pretty good food considering how hectic they all get with the thousands of people that pour through the buildings every day of the year. It’s a token system where one exchanges renminbi (RMB) for coloured plastic discs, each to the value of 5RMB. That means one token is equal to about 75¢ and considering a meal here costs between 5 and 10RMB, lunch is inexpensive to say the least.

No English signage means that it’s all a bit of a guessing game in choosing lunch but to be honest it’s very much self explanatory and doesn’t require too much figuring out. I fell in love with it two years ago and this time around I was glad it was still being made. Fried pork with peanuts and soya beans. The tomato and egg was a little stodgy but the black fungus, morning glory and pork made up for it. Even the tofu was delicious, despite the fact it looked like slop.

No guessing game was needed with what was going on in this corner of the canteen. Watching the pro pull his noodle was mesmerising and the outcome was some of the best hand-pulled noodle soup that has entered my mouth.

With each order of soup the noodle master puts on his theatrics and drops the freshly pulled strands into the bubbling cauldron as you point and ask for your desired additives. There’s a tray of braised pork, another tray of chicken, some fried eggs and also some uncooked chopped morning glory. First the noodles are strained and put into the large paper cup, the meat/egg/veg follows before he ladles in the most beautiful stock to finish the process. It truly is heaven in a paper cup, and at 75¢, an absolute steal.

Yiwu instagramming

Note about the currency exchangers. We were in need of some local cash so rather than go to a bank our agent and interpreter had us driven to some black-clad dodgy looking dudes, loitering out the front of a bank building on Bin Wang Lu Road. It was all quite simple. Roll down the car window and let the dude know what currency you want changed and how much. A little haggling later and you have your desired RMB. It may be black market but somehow the local authorities turn a blind eye to it. Better rate than the banks!

There are many other food options in the Trade City canteen, including some local specialties. Boiled and then hot-plate fried lamb dumplings, jian bing, a variety of Donghe meat cake that consists of meat filled dough that’s flattened and fried on both sides until slightly crisp or the Donghe meat buns which are steamed and then lightly fried, filled with meat and veg.

Wandering the enormous Commodities Market comes with its distractions. Grannies babysitting grandchildren, ladies schlepping baskets of sugarcane, strawberries and sunflower seeds for stallholders to buy and consume. It’s like a city within a city. The lack of rubbish bins means you’re also stepping over piles of sugarcane fibres and sunflower seed shells that are spat onto the floor after they’re eaten. Cigarette butts and globs of saliva are also mixed in there somewhere but you kind of get used to the filth and that glorious sound of someone hoiking one up before they let it fly. This is not a place for mysophobics.

Coming across two guys seated at a cart weighted down with a huge compressed slab of colourful mantang was the kind of distraction I can comfortably deal with. Our agent/interpreter said they were from Xinjiang province in north-west China as she recognised their dialect despite not understanding much of it. Just looking at them I could see they were from the north-west but it was the slab of peanutty goodness they were selling I was interested in. I bought a slice of it, it was weighed and we took a bite. The nougat-like mantang is loaded with nuts, chewy honey and dates and decorated with a colourful pattern of raisins and other dried fruits.

As the afternoon progresses one can find food vendors setting up temporary shop near the many entrances of  Trade City, hoping to snare the hungry buyers and make a quick buck. Skewered lamb dusted with cumin and chilli, fried and streamed dumplings, fruit, roasted sweet potatoes, steamed corn, you name it.

The section of footpath on Chouzhou North Road opposite the southern building of Trade City transforms into an open-air food street late in the afternoon. There truly is no need to find a restaurant for dinner when you can load up on local street foods for a few RMB a pop. The smell of grilling meat hangs in the air so follow your nose or find the gap in the buildings next to a Middle Eastern-looking hotel where this permanent northern Chinese grill and nang oven fire up the goods every afternoon. It’s a simple business selling a simple product. Freshly charred meat with crispy yet chewy nang bread straight out of the oven.

Not too far away, and if you’re not much of a meat eater, catch one of the dudes knocking up jian bing. A batter is smeared on a coal-fired hot-plate and as it slowly sets he cracks an egg over the top, spreading it across the pancake before sprinkling over coriander and chilli. A final sprinkling of crunchy wafer-like tidbits and the pancake is folded into a square before being wrapped and sold.

Snapshots in and around Xiaozici Park

Most mornings before work I’d head up the road for a half-hour walk and by pure accident I turned a few corners and discovered a small local covered market. The community of people made it feel like a small village, with kids running around, guys playing pool on outdoor tables and everyone getting on like one big happy family. Check the steaming cauldron behind the pool table in the above pic. Man, I wish I stuck my head over there to see what was cookin’.

If you’re ever in that part of the world and want to get to the market just walk down the left-side of Huagong Road from Chengzhong North Road. Take the first laneway on the left and then the first right. Easy. It appears to be a morning market so the turn-out of vendors may reflect on the weather as when we visited it was a little wet and there were many empty spaces along the hutong strip.

It’s fresh food galore with pot-roasted pigeon, seaweed, live chickens and ducks, duck eggs, sprouting beans and pulses, dried chilli, live fish, crustaceans and eels, you name it.

I’m glad I didn’t ignore this little plume of steam. Just around the corner on a residential street near the hutong market I noticed a corner hole-in-the-wall restaurant popular with locals. Jin Hua Hu Bing. A food house that likes its poetry, as I learned after fellow blogger Billy translated the text in the above image for me. On the right of the door it says “Aroma can be smelt 1000 miles away”. On the left are messages for a better Chinese citizen along the lines of “treasure marriage, treasure family mix in harmony, husband’s & wives respect one another equally, take responsibility equally, work hard together and hold hands in progress.”

There weren’t queues of people as such, just a steady stream of hungry folk stopping in to take away what this guy was serving up. Dumplings. Two short towers of metal steamers sit outside on the crusty footpath next to a recycled metal drum that has been transformed into a stove-top, making for a round hot-plate where the cook delicately turns and lightly fries steamed dumplings loaded with morning glory and garlic. I almost didn’t stop because I though Miss B wanted to move on but thanks to her saying “try them”, I paused for a few minutes to sit and savour them at the outside table next to a mother and child chowing on congee and steamed dumplings. This was one of those moments where things slowed right down and for a brief moment I became part of the local fabric. Yiwu, you may be a money-generating monster but you truly do have a heart and soul.

Every so often the other half bakes one of the most glorious cakes I’ve eaten. Over the years this recipe has evolved into being more moist and even more gingery thanks to someones heavy-handling with three types of ginger. Crystalised, fresh and dried. Combined they make for a tongue-tingling spicy cake darkened with blackstrap molasses. It’s perfect on its own but to vamp it up a tad I’ve served my portion with a good dollop of slightly sweetened sour cream (use yoghurt if you wish), some blueberries and some extra grated crystalised ginger.

triple ginger cake

Makes 1 loaf

• 1½ cups plain flour
• ½ tsp bicarb
• 6 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp ground cloves
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
• approx 10 small pieces crystalised ginger (the size of your thumbnail), finely grated
• 125 g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup brown sugar
• ½ cup blackstrap molasses
• 2 eggs
• 3 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger
• 2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• ½ cup buttermilk
• 1½ tsp vanilla extract
• Icing sugar, to dust

With New York behind us we jetted back to the west, landing in a desert town I’ve never had a huge desire to go to but just wanted to see and tick off the list. Las Vegas. The only remote fascination I’ve had with Vegas is the unique architecture that can be found up and down the strip. It’s like Disneyland and debauchery combined. Over-the-top buildings and casino’s, seedy folk handing out cards for rented and barely legal girls, people driving mobility scooters all over the place and addicts feeding dimes into slot machines, sipping bourbon & coke and sucking on cancer sticks at 7am. Vegas is fabulous.

While the city itself may not have a soul it sure doesn’t lack character. If you’re into the gambling thing you’re covered. If you’re into the shows you’re well covered. Hell, if you’re into the food you’re covered as well. All-you-can-eat buffets, fine dining, diner-style, fast food, it’s all here. Real coffee? Well, that seemed a bit of a struggle.

Lucky for us there was a familiar face downstairs in our hotel. Espressamente. When we’re in KL we always make sure we drop by that outlet and finding it in Vegas was a breath of fresh air. Macchiato caldo, cappuccino, capo triestino, it’s all pretty decent. There isn’t much going in the breakfast food stakes other than a few Danish-style pastries and various types of toffee apples but not too far away is the Grand Lux Cafe, as part of The Palazzo where we were staying.

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I know the Grand Lux has more on offer other than the breakfast we went there for. What it dishes up in its elaborately classical European-slash-Vegas style dining room is very much of the American burger and steak genre with splashes of Asian, European and Caribbean flavours. I’m loving the deluxe breakfast sandwich that’s packed with scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, grilled tomato, Havarti cheese and mayo. This truly is one for the die-hard vegan. Not. It all comes wedged in sliced and toasted brioche with a massive pile of golden hash browns. Let’s just say that the hash browns are more like one large mound of potato frittata that was as large as the teetering sandwich. Delicious! Sit in the bar and have your mug of Americano with a beer, as I spotted with one particular customer, or take a booth in the ornate and sprawling cafe where I’m guessing it’s ok for the wait staff to chew gum as they serve you. The Grand Lux Express Breakfast is pretty good value at $16.50, giving free reign at the buffet of fruit, cereals, sweet cakes and pastries, breads, egg dishes, meats and beverages. Sustenance for a hard days gambling.

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Over at the sprawling Bellagio complex, the one with the fountains, is Todd English’s Olives restaurant. The renowned American chef has put his name to a bunch of venues along the east coast of the States plus a couple of Cunard cruise liners. The Vegas digs overlook the Bellagio fountains and as most of his restaurants have a Mediterranean flavour, this one is no different.

A generous bread basket and a couple of cocktails each kicks off lunch and the most enormous beef carpaccio I’ve ever seen. I guess there’d be a class action if food portions reduced in size in this nation. Gorgonzola rösti cake, balsamic reduction, parmesan, cipollini onion, scallion cream and garlic aioli. The meat arrives a little icy but once it fully thaws it’s a pleasure to eat. It cracks me up that there’s even a health warning attached to the carpaccio due to the meat being raw, increasing the risk of illness. I didn’t see any health warnings when I’m forced to walk through a smoky casino just to get to hotel reception.  The experience with our other dish was as flat as the bread it sat on. Fiery chicken sausage flatbread. Bland in more ways than one. Herbed ricotta, balsamic onions, roasted tomato sauce that had a mild Mexican flavour about it and some not-so-fiery chicken sausage.

Aside from the kick arse cocktails, the winning component of this lunch set is the Hawaiian ahi tuna. Pan-seared to rare perfection with confit fennel silk, hazelnut basil pesto and sweet chilli glaze. Off to the side is a mini heirloom tomato panzanella. The tuna is top quality and simply dissolves on the tongue. Sadly the glaze overwhelms the beautiful tuna with its gingery and smokey bbq flavour. Is there bbq sauce in this?

There’s room for just one dessert so to keep it light we share the pineapple passion panna cotta. Far from being the pineapple blackberry compote as promised on the menu, the accompanying berries and diced pineapple add a nice freshness to the rich, creamy and decadent panna cotta donning a sweet pastry mohawk.

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Done in true over-the-top Vegas style is the über cool TAO, tucked away in The Venetian at the end of the canal. In terms of its scale and night club vibe it reminds me of Buddakan in Manhattan. Dimly lit, lounge bar at the front, candles flickering everywhere you look and a large open space in the centre of the restaurant. Rather than Buddakan’s massive chandeliers and long communal table, here at TAO there’s an over-sized seated buddha perched above a koi-filled pond and large bamboo lanterns suspended from the ceiling and asian posters up on the walls.

An extensive Hong Kong Chinese, Thai and Japanese pan Asian menu makes choosing a little difficult when you’re someone like me that just wants to dig into most of it. Between two of us we settled on a few plates to share, starting with these pretty decent pork pot stickers with chilli sesame glaze and rather large spring rolls filled with Peking duck squirted with hoisin. Not bad.

The lacquered roast pork is succulent and caramelised on the edges, much like the stuff you get in Chinatown, with some curious toasted almond flakes on top. My favourite plate of the night was the salmon, tuna and Albacore tataki. A trio of seared fish draped over three different types of seaweed. Just brilliant. The final savoury dish is the TAO angry dragon roll, filled with eel and cucumber and topped with avocado and kaboyaki sauce.

Dessert. What to have? Chocolate spring rolls? Mochi tasting plate? Six-pack of chocolate buddhas? How about the giant fortune cookie? Standing about 15 cm tall, this thing is like a mini mountain dusted in sugar and filled with white and dark chocolate mousse. Theatrics aside, it’s nothing more than ordinary mousse with a great big pastry wafer parked on top of it. The lemongrass crème brûlée is much more interesting in my books; perfectly set, perfect sugar crust and nice little macadamia biscotti on the side. Oh look, more fortune cookies with the bill.

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Once or twice I asked myself this question: where do the locals eat? I can’t imagine the locals would waft about with the tourists at the plethora of casino buildings that are packed with (predominantly themed) restaurants. For the short time we had in town we didn’t explore Vegas enough to find any areas away from the Strip and downtown that may be brimming with beaten-up eateries, or some really good ones, that just the locals went to.

I think the closest we came to a local eatery was Taco’s el Gordo. There are two of them in town and the one that we stumbled upon is not all that far from the north tower of the Wynn complex. Finally, some food in a place without the bells and whistles. The formula at Taco’s el Gordo is simple. There may be one kitchen but it’s separated into specific areas with certain people looking after specific ingredients. Want the offal? Then go to the cook that looks after it. Want the adobada? Then head for the dude with the big knife standing at the rotisserie. You simply order what you want from each person, wait for it to be constructed, then move on to the next station if you want something else. Grab some radishes and fresh lime from the condiments bar, don’t forget to grab a plate of roasted peppers and spring onions, a drink from the fridge and finally pay up before sitting down.

The taco’s here are perfection. Taco de suadero (beef shoulder), taco de lengua (beef tongue), both filled with glorious meat, onion salsa and sauce. The tostada de cabeza adds some crunch to the lunch set; crispy fried tortilla loaded with coriander and beef head. Yes, that’s meat from the head of a cow. Meltingly tender and rich. I reckon the most popular taco is the adobada. Marinated pork cut straight from the rotisserie and lovingly finished with salsa and avocado sauce.

Fri-Sat 10am-5am

I couldn’t go to Vegas and not try one of the famous buffets. While there are many to choose from the one that we settled on can be found at the Wynn. It really is geared for the crowds with wide walkways and sprawling self-service cabinets and counters. I started at the charcuterie corner, sampling the cured and smoked meats and herbed parmesan crisp bread with pesto and roasted mushroom relish. The most popular item at the buffet had to be the Alaskan Bairdi crab; constantly topped up by kitchen staff as people piled their plates high with the golden legs. I couldn’t see the appeal as I found the meat dry and water-logged. Clearly frozen and of average quality.

Tandoori game hen was next, tumbled with mango relish and naan with a couple of glasses of salads. Thai beef and Greek style. Cornflake chicken is always a winner. Crunchy, deep-fried goodness.

The dessert area has a room of its own, tucked off to the side of the main service floor. It’s almost like walking into a patisserie and despite the array of sweet offerings I thought the one I created was the best one. Chocolate gelato sandwich. Grab a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the cookie counter, ask for a scoop of chocolate gelato and sprinkle over some M&M’s. Voila! Now I just needed to try and eat it without making a mess of myself.

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Thanks, Vegas, it was fun. Would love to hang around but we’re off to the airport to pick up a rental car and hit the road. Nevada, here we come!

The very first time I left Australia’s shores was for a five-day trip to Hong Kong. It was exciting to say the least. I was about 22 years old and had only just moved to Sydney, met my partner and caught the travel bug. Who would have thought I’d be taking trips overseas every year since? It’s true what they say. When you get the bug for travelling, you’re hooked.

I barely remember that first time to Honkers other than doing touristy things like The Peak tram, Lantau buddha, Tai O fishing village, Stanley Markets and Macau. Out of all the touristy things on that first trip I had a nagging feeling this time around to get back to Macau and see what was going on there today. A lot can change in 18 years and when our boat approached Macau I could already see loads of new towers and reclaimed land where there was once just water.

A whole new arrival terminal that was still under construction and a confusing bus station that lacked helpful signage didn’t make getting into town all that easy. As the original Portuguese settlement is swallowed up by some hideous Vegas-style hotel monoliths, there’s still much to see and explore in the narrow back streets. Colonial pastel-coloured façades, cobbled streets and squares, temples, murals and a crap-load of shuffling tourists.

Of course we had to revisit the city’s most popular icon, São Paulo Cathedral, fighting for space on the winding street leading up to its steps. Forget having breakfast before getting to Macau as you’re sure to fill up on all the free samples of jerky and chalky almond cookies on the way up to the historic cathedral façade. The ubiquitous pastéis de nata can be seen just about everywhere you look with its sweet custardy smell hanging in the air. I find them much eggier than their Sydney counterparts.

The original area of Taipa is supposedly the place to find many of the traditional Portuguese restaurants but rather than head back over the bridge past the nasty casino buildings, we settled on this place just off the busy tourist trail. Restaurante Platão is tucked away in a little courtyard and dishes up the typical Portuguese fare you can get in Macau plus a bunch of Chinese options to keep the locals happy. A couple of chilled Sagres make way for some charred Portuguese sausage, heavy in garlic and the most delectable bacalhao soufflé I’ve tried. Forgetting the copious amount of butter used, it’s strong in bacalhao flavour, creamy and soft with a crunchy crust.

In true Portuguese style, my grilled pork neck comes loaded with garlic with simple sides of sliced tomato, fries and lemon wedge. The meat is supremely tender and just delicious. I couldn’t help eyeing off, and tasting, the gorgeous spicy chicken. This is one of Macau’s signature dishes, apparently, also going by the name of African chicken A jointed ½ chicken spiced-up with piri-piri and cooked with eggplant, smoked sausage and gherkin until tenderly soft. The one at Platão’s is truly amazing. With a little room to spare I ordered the torta de laranja, a soft and refreshing cake I made at home quite a while ago. A great end to an excellent meal and nice little day trip from Honkers.

Laneway snap shots