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Mark introduced me to the sushi train at the Sushi Bar at the
Sydney Fish Markets. We've eaten there a couple of times since, and
it's some of the better sushi, at least in variety, that I've had. I'm not
a fan of sushi trains but here, at peak times there's good variety and
you're not watching the same few items pass before you, like the dull bits
of your life, for half an hour.
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Madam, I suggest you don't visit a sushi train
with any child old enough
to reach the passing
food and who doesn't understand 'No'. |
I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't been to the Fish Markets for couple of
years, when I did some work at Channel 10 just across the road. (It was a
regular Sunday visit when I lived in Sydney many years ago.)
Then it was just a grouping of individual shops and now with the addition
of the new market
building it feels much more exciting.
It's noisy, crowded, and that adds a buzz. I'd forgotten a few protocols (such
as when ordering, paying at the cashier's counter, then returning for your
wrapped fish), and the regular customers seem to use the place for social agendas
as well as seafood ones. People eat there as well as shop.
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Yes, we do requests. |
One change that was obvious was that there's now a big Asian (customer and
staff) contingency and a not so big European one. I stepped aside just in
time, making way for three old ladies in head scarves laden with carry
bags, each with 'don't mess with me kid' expressions, intent on the
serious business of the week's fish shopping (or maybe they were bag
ladies for an extortion racket). There is a range of colours, smells
and laughter. It felt cosmopolitan and part of a big city. Which it is.
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Yep, that's prawn and tuna and fish roe
and
avocado.
Nice too. |
Because it was a Saturday and I was driving back home to Bungendore after
our lunch meeting and I had the freezer bag in the car boot, I had
no excuse not to buy some fish. Mark suggested the Ocean Trout so I bought
two big fillets. I stopped short of getting a few dozen large Pacific
oysters, fresh shucked and ridiculously cheap (compared to Canberra
prices).
At home, I did the routine of using tweezers to remove the bones and we
found a recipe in Jill Dupliex's Simple Food which was for Atlantic salmon but figured the textures were similar.
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And you have to have one
fish look you in
the eye to remind you where your food
comes from |
It
was a simple herb
and spice mix coating that was ground up (in the old electric coffee
grinder we keep for the purpose) and tasted a lot like a 'dukkah' so maybe
you could substitute a prepared dukkah if you didn't use the cumin,
coriander and fennel seeds in Jill's recipe,.
It went on the skin side only, making it crisp and tasty when pan fried,
and the result was great.
Mark lives five minutes away from the markets in Glebe, I live three hours
away in Bungendore. I could handle living closer to the Sydney Fish
Markets. FH
Links
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A trompe l'oeil jetty at Sydney Fish Markets. |
The Sydney Fish Markets have a
website (and a strange one it is too - put your cursor over that
'aquarium' banner) and the individual businesses there have some
too.
Doyle's Bistro at
the Fish Markets (another strange website)
De Costi Bros.
(nicer but slow)
Read
Elizabeth Farrelly's article in SMH on the Market's future.
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