We went to the Footscray Lunar New Year Festival recently - Chinese New Year is tomorrow, but the Festival was held a couple of weeks ago. It was a hot and windy day, so we showed up at Footscray early in an effort to beat the heat.
We did a quick lap of all the stalls, and then decided we would have yum cha and then return to the Festival. We headed to our usual yum cha haunt - Dai Duong.
We pretty much ate all our usual stuff. The first two things we had were pork buns and radish cake. Alastair ate both the pork buns, so I don't know what they were like, but the radish cake was good.
Bro said yes to a basket of tripe. The tripe was really good - lovely flavour and not too chewy. I know most people don't like tripe, but it's really so good! We also had some pan fried pork dumplings. I love these with red vinegar.
Next up was a basket of steamed dumplings - I think these had prawn and garlic chives. They were fantastic. The wrappers were smooth and thin, and they had big pieces of prawn in the filling. We also had beef cheong fun, which were fine.
Yum cha isn't over until Bro has eaten a basket of chicken feet (normally a whole basket by himself) whereas I don't leave until I've eaten an egg tart. There were only two egg tarts per plate, so we had to get two plates so everyone received one. I got to eat the extra one. Wahoo! Alastair finished off with a bowl of dessert tofu.
Read about a previous visit to Dai Duong here.
After filling up on yum cha, we went on a walk through the festival and took some photos. Unfortunately we were too full to eat anything! Waah! There was lots of grilled stuff going on.
More grilled stuff.
I was full, but still bought a drink - this was a basil seed drink with what I think was grass jelly. It was kind of strange. The seeds sort of looked like tadpoles!
There were lots of dodgy looking rides and games.
Some kids looked like they were having fun on the rides, but I don't know if I'd trust my life on them!
The MFB had a tent, and they were giving out paper models of fire engines - complete with road cones and little paper firemen! Squee!!
We arrived just in time to see the firecrackers being lit, but unfortunately there was a crowd and I couldn't manage to get a photo. Afterwards there was a lion dance. A stall was also selling funky balloons.
Some more drinks on offer.
And more grilled stuff - corn, betel leaves and meat on skewers.
There was also dried squid hanging up for sale.
This was a big pile of betel leaves stuffed with beef.
And egg cakes (I think! Someone correct me if I'm wrong!)
I have no idea what this was, but it was GREEN. And HIGH. How could I not take a photo??
Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day! We aren't doing anything for CNY (I haven't even cleaned the house - gasp!) but we are going out tomorrow for a late lunch/early dinner. More later. I hope everyone has an auspicious and love filled day!
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