The last evening in Sydney
Jan 23rd, 2008 by Nick
And finally, we arrived at the last night. Not sadly, it’s time to go home. But I wanted the last night to be a time of reflection before getting back to the chaos. When I toured Europe alone for a similar length of time in 1993, I spent most of the final evening on a long stroll through some of the nicer parts of Madrid, ending up just off the central square down the street from my cheap hotel for a couple of orders of tapas. It wasn’t a planned walk, it just evolved into a three hour adventure.
Last night ended up being a similar type of night. This is the longest post of the entire blog, so I’ll put the little link here for continued reading ->:
The most important thing was that the weather cooperated perfectly, low 70s with a little wind. My original plan was to poke around the Surrey Hills neighborhood and then eventually find someplace for dinner from about a half dozen options. I caught a southbound bus outside my hotel and got off at Central Station, then headed southeast into Surrey Hills on Devonshire Street. At that point, I remembered that the name had the word Hills in it, and thought this might not have been the best of ideas! But the walk was leisurely through an interesting neighborhood, and I eventually ended up on Crown Street.
Crown Street is the center of the Surrey Hills neighborhood, and I hit it pretty much at the halfway point. I headed south toward Cleveland Street, as I had read that there were a number of Indian restaurants in that direction. This section of Crown Street was a mix of ethnic and alternative groups, with Thai being the predominant ethncity. The typical sharpness from the clustering of city shops, food dives, and proper restaurants was offset by a row of very large trees on either side of the street. For those who like Vietnamese food (I do not) the restaurant Red Lantern looked very nice and had received positive reviews on various food boards.
I arrived at Cleveland Street and found an Indian contingent, but Devon Avenue in Chicago puts it to shame so I passed and instead stopped into a BP station for a bottle of Coke Zero. Then I headed back north on Crown.
The section of Crown north of Devonshire was a bit more upscale, less ethnic and more alternative, with more restaurant choices. A couple of places on my list were on there, Billy Kwong for fusion Chinese had a wait and was not what I was looking for, and bills (but I’d be going to their Darlinghurst flagship the next morning for a farewell breakfast). There was a Nepalese restaurant that looked very good, but they were emphasizing family-style ordering which does not work for a solo diner. Along the way, I stopped and killed a half hour lingering over a beverage at a cafe.
North of Foveaux Street, the neighborhood changed again, and suddenly the skyscrapers of downtown Sydney started to come into view. I had left Surrey Hills and entered Darlinghurst, and it was as if somebody threw a light switch. Another couple of blocks and I hit Oxford Street, one of the two main east-west streets in Darlinghurst. Oxford Street is your typical fun trashy street, with places advertising $7 steaks mixed in with more upscale restaurants. Two more restaurants on my list were at the corner of Oxford and Crown, but neither appealed to me. After walking east for a little while until I got close to St. Vincents (thus almost connecting to the walk from the night before), I headed back on Oxford, which turns into Liverpool. I was back to the area I’d been walking through most of the time I’ve been at the Hilton.
After a quick stop at Coles for a bottle of water, I pondered my dinner choice. Go back to Capitan Torres and risk a disappointment if the meal didn’t match up to the previous one, or try Golden Century, a Chinese seafood house with a perpetual line and open until 4am? I decided to go to Golden Century, and if the wait wasn’t bad, eat there.
Surprisingly, there was no line, and I got a table right away. Golden Century’s speciality is fresh seafood, with fifteen tanks of live fish. Service is known to be spotty, but I found that being forceful and summoning one of the supervisors (in suit/tie) when the waiter couldn’t be found was very effective. By this point (9:45pm) I was starving. I had some noodle soup and an appetizer portion of BBQ pork to help add volume, and ordered 1/3kg of fresh prawns, fried “salt-and-pepper” style.
The price looks imposing at A$108/kg. I really wanted crab, but the price was about the same and the smallest crabs were going to be almost a kg… But once you include the tax/tip you’d pay in the US, it comes out to a US$38/lb menu price. For fresh and cooked to the order, that is a steal.
The prawns were on the small side - I got 24 of them, and there were probably 35 to a pound. The only drawback was that they were fried whole, and the coating was on the shells. In Chicago when I’ve ordered this dish, they make it with the peeled shrimp and a little bit of batter. The Sydney version was a lot more work, but it was worth the effort.
After a complementary dessert of watermelon and cookies, I trundled the six blocks back to hotel. When I left the restaurant at 11:15pm, there was a line of over 20 people waiting for tables….
