2023 Adelaide City Asian Street Food Festival | Exclusive Interviews with Stall Owners

We're very passionate about our cultures. One of the things that we love to share is the authentic food that we're really proud of. We said to our vendors, if you can cook the dishes, it tastes delicious, and it comes with love for your children, for your wife, for your husband, then we would love you to showcase that to our local communities in Australia. I think that is one of the primary reasons that we started all this. We have 35 vendors, together we have more than 200 Asian dishes across Asia at this festival this year. We are from the community, Indonesian community. We encourage people to know our culture through the food and through the music. We are a Filipino restaurant, actually we are a family-owned restaurant in Boracay. One of our famous dishes is the sisig. It's a street food in Manila, because Filipinos like to stay in the streets and have fun with the people. It's made with our pork cheek and chicken liver. We get the recipe from my mom, she made it through my grandmas and grandmas. Our business is a Singapore delicacy, so it's your family cafe. I think our Singapore Signature Laksa is a money-back dish. This is our seafood laksa, and it's full of Singapore flavours in them. All our laksa is money-back. If you don't like our laksa, bring a bowl back, we'll give your money back. This is how good we think we are. We are doing a few major events, because it's a family thing. The reason why we do this business is because we want the children to be able to experience multicultural food, and the atmosphere as well, because they grew up in Australia, but we want them to remember where they come from. It's actually very nice to be out and do something outside instead of just sitting in your room doing nothing. Singapore delicacy, flavour of Asia, come see us at Asia Oasis. Our store's name is Bali Ceylon, and we are doing fusion food, a mix of Sri Lankan and Indonesian food. Signature dish is hot butter calamari, squid fried in a butter-based batter, and mixed with the chillies and onions and some herbs. It's a spicy dish, we are not fixed into one location, so we move around. Fusion of flavours from the five western islands. Our business name is Chef Kim, Korea, and we do provide the Korean street food. It ranges from fried chicken to mandu, which is dumpling, the chicken rice, and then kimchi pancake, and we do have our own recipe, which makes the chicken softer and tastier, savoury. I'm coming from the BBQ home, where I got a shop near the Adelaide City, Chinatown area. We got a charcoal grill, we got a grill lamb, and a grill chicken wing, and even a grill whole lamb. Food is our love and our power, and we want to make our customers happy and make our staff happy. Special dish is grilled squid and sticky tofu. Well, if you see it's sticky, but it tastes so delicious, it's very popular in China. I'm doing Vietnamese food, street food. I have a restaurant, and also doing this for the past over 10 years, doing Asian Vietnamese street food. My signature is the noodle soup bowl with grilled pork, lemongrass chicken, and our signature fish sauce. A lot of customers come back, second or third time, they actually enjoy my Vietnamese food. Restaurant is also called Manila. We have a physical store along Semaphore Road. This is a family business here, so we are offering authentic Filipino street food to other cultures. Like for example, this roast pig, which is the most popular, and in the Philippines, this is always the star of the show. The flavour of our food is vibrant, everything that we cook is from the heart, so you will feel it from the food that you will eat. We cook it with love. I got the shop in Norwood, and the name of the shop also same the name over here, Siamai Thai Street. The highlight in my restaurant is boat noodles, because they are very rich broth, and full of flavour of the herb. Also, crispy chicken pad thai is very popular in my store, so everywhere I go, they say, oh, you know, your pad thai is the best. Now I'm trading as Lira Indian Cuisine, because we have got a variety of Indian menu in our restaurant. The famous one is the chicken dum biryani. Cooking the biryani is, the raw meat will be cooked, put on the bottom, and there will be half cooked, maybe around 70% cooked rice will be put on top of it, so the meat and rice, everything is cooked on the steam. The normal time for cooking that one would be 40 minutes for the chicken, and one hour for the lamb. It's just on a slow steam. A lot of effort behind that dish. Yes. We work in the restaurant we have, but we also attend family functions, and all these festivals as well, and we have a food truck as well. At the moment, the main favorite food is char kway teow, which is Indonesian food. It's made with glass noodles and some seafoods and eggs, so people love that one, and also the homemade momos, which we have like chicken momos, so it's basically mixed with meat and some spices on it, and we give the side of tomato sauce. People really like that one. We sell fried skewers, so inspired by our Asia trip, we went around and, you know, really fits with the theme of Asia Oasis, where it's all about Asian street food. Basically, the idea started, you know, we got sick and tired of, you know, your general fast food. The boys, we wanted a snack, a good snack. What goes well with a beer, right? We knew that a lot of people like their fried squid, so, you know, when I went to Taiwan, I feel like there is, you know, it just looks really attractive, so we thought, you know what, let's chuck in the fried squid, and to be honest, it's been our most popular dish So we marinate it in gluten-free soy sauce and mirin, so it's like Japanese rice wine, and a lot of Asian spices, like five spice, Sichuan pepper, cumin. We tenderize it, and then we fry it quickly, and we serve it, we baste it with our signature stick sauce. Just sticks! We are represented at VinoCellar, VinoCellar is South Australian gin distillery producer, and we produce vodka, our own vodka, we produce our own gin, we produce soju too, you know, like, yeah, focus sometimes on the Asian style. We have the coconut feast, where we use a natural coconut juice, and coconut, no? So we have these signature cocktails. We are called Miss V, we're located in Prospect, so we are probably the first one to open Vietnamese dessert in LA, like street food, small portion food, like cornstarch fry, deep fried squid, specialized in coconut milk and stuff. Our best seller is the fruit cocktail, like our main ingredient is coconut jelly, and all the fruit, like lychee, longan, and pendant jelly, and our special creamy sauce is the sauce, kind of topical flavor, but with coconut milk. I own a business called BBC Adelaide, family owned and run. We focus on events and functions, private weddings, yeah, everything to do with beverages pretty much, yeah. So our signature drink is the lychee mule, yeah, it's got a bit of tang, a bit of dryness to it, yeah, it's very nice, very refreshing. This is Fufu Lab, it's a Japanese dessert store which we specialize in Japanese, like traditional dessert, like mochi, daifuku, and we've got like matcha, and all those Japanese flavors dessert. Souffle pancakes, which is like one of the crowd favorite so far. We're gonna have a store soon. Yeah, so we do catering, but our souffle pancakes is made to order, so every serve we made it when people actually order it, so we don't pre-make them. We are Happy Bear, our signature food is the onigiri, which is the triangle shaped rice bowl. It's like, kind of like sushi, but not sushi, it's in a plastic wrap, we're mainly doing events. The whole family is here at the back, at the kitchen, and my mum is here, my sister, and it's my partner, and my sister-in-law. We are from Malaysia actually, yeah, we all love Japanese food. When you go to Japan, when you go to the convenience store, they have onigiri on the shelf, so convenient for people that just go by, and you don't need to sit down, you just hold it, you can take out the plastic and just eat it, and different flavors, different fillings, and we are like, oh no one is making this in Adelaide, we should make this. And we are doing it as a family gathering, which will, all of the family members will be together, like once or twice a year, to do the things together. Because we used to make this for picnics, like when we go out, and we share to friends and everything, and everyone loves it, so we're like, okay, we should try to sell it. We've been running Hong Kong Street Food, we're originally also from the street food culture. People know about, when you visit in Hong Kong, street food is one of the main things. We do it right now, it's a homemade delivery, and we also run it in Sunday market as well, hot food stuff. We only do it on site, every time for events, but apart from that, mostly the dessert, like the traditional mochi, or the mango sago, or the sticky rice pudding, tiramisu, we do it like one day or two days prior order, and then we're gonna deliver, or they come pick up from our home. Yeah, we're actually the exclusive one that in Adelaide, that we can sell all the Hong Kong traditional street food, we are the only shop we got. We basically sell one of the Asian unique street food, it's called the Coin Chee Waffle, so it's made of mozzarella, stretching cheese, so it's quite attractive to teens, and for older generation as well. It starts from Korean, Japan, they're very famous about it, and then now it's rolling out to the rest of Asia, including Vietnamese, so yeah. The signature one is mozzarella, basically the battering is just from plain flour, and then we have some of the marinated as well, so of course eggs, and then we have our butteries, and stuff like that as well. We sell Thai ice cream, we make the fresh ice cream, then we bring fresh ingredients and create it into ice cream for everyone to enjoy, it's quite unique, and it's one of those Asian street food that people love, and we're bringing the flavour to Australia. We mix some fresh ingredients on an ice cold plate, and the process just take itself and turn it into ice cream. Yes, they can contact us by request for any events, like parties, weddings, birthdays, anything that, or just an ice cream party or something like that, we will make them on site. So we are selling frozen yoghurt, just like ice cream, we sell four flavours, strawberry, salted caramel, mango, toppings, sauce wrap, mango pearls, strawberry pearls, rainbow jelly. I think we sell like more kind of original flavour, like it tastes like very natural. We're representing the Uyghur culture, so from East Turkestan, we're selling the traditional kawap, the lamb and the chicken skewers, together with a variety of sweets. We're a non-for-profit organisation, a community-run organisation, so this is where we showcase our culture, food, and traditions. We're selling some Vietnamese street food, the memory of the younger generation. Yes, so firstly we're selling the stir-fried corn, stir-fried corn we make with spring onion, and fried onion, and butter, and also the fried spring. We make with love and all the passion to introduce our Vietnamese authentic street food to all the lay people. This is the food from Malaysia, it's traditional food, it's like nasi lemak and pisang goreng, something you can't find in Australia. We're from Ponyo Island, it's like the east part of Malaysia. This nasi lemak is like a traditional food from our ancestors, they do like a sambal paste and rice, they cook it with coconut milk, there's anchovies, peanuts, it's savoury, a little bit spicy, but we try to lower the spice in there. I'm the owner of Fat Head Bubble Tea. My wife is Vietnamese, so we contacted our supplier in Taiwan, where bubble tea originated from, and we import our own product which is a premium Taiwanese bubble tea product. A very high quality standard of bubble tea, we're very fussy, so we make our own tea bags, we import our own tea, all of our water is triple filtered, so we don't just use regular tap water. Yes, we've been travelling around Adelaide for about 8 years doing various events, and catering, weddings, you name it, we do it. And our ingredients contain no nasties, and on top of that we don't add extra sugar like fructose. We believe that bubble tea, you're meant to actually taste the tea. Hi, I'm Jean from the Asian Kitchen. We serve Thai dishes, Chinese dishes, and Filipino dishes in our restaurant. Our savoury dish, the most popular one for us is the pork and chicken skewers, and we also dip it with a Filipino sauce. We are serving Indian street food, basically North Indian food. So my favourite one is soya tikka, or soya chaap. What you need is fresh cream, yoghurt, spices, I'm going to keep that a secret, alright? Just marinate it overnight, cook it on slow flames, chicken momos, Indian dumplings, people are going vegan nowadays, we also have vegan options. I think our culture is not just food, traditional food, cuisines, but also about performing arts, and also as you can see we have arts and crafts stores, which sells Asian traditional items. Actually we do henna, it's made from the henna paste, henna powder, we mix with the essential oil and the sugar and lemon, it's pure organic, and we do henna on our hands. It's come from India, we put henna in our occasions like marriage anniversary or something, in baby shower as well, it's like a special for us. I make handcrafted jewellery, I make most of them mermaid themed and ocean themed. Dream from since I'm a little girl, so I just make it become true. I also love mermaids, that's how my shop comes, yes. Mostly I use gold filled, they are safe for the skin and last for a long time. My proudest design will be the car hanging, it will be like this. So whenever you drag it will spin. I got the concept from the galaxy, it takes one hour to work on, yeah. When it comes under the sun, it will really pretty as a sun catcher as well. I just work from home, because I have a little nine months old baby. I have paintings, resin work, and some resin on the wall, it's my dot painting you can see. There's my sketches over there, everything is handmade. And we have performing arts at night time from 6 to 10, and we had so many other different cultural groups showcasing their music, their dance, and it was really beautiful, so. And then you will stand right here, so that we have a big picture of everyone, okay? You're the first face, the first face! It really adds up to the atmosphere, the ambience, when you eat the traditional food, you enjoy traditional music, and also some modern music, and also some of the beautiful traditional arts and crafts items as well. We aim to have our events every year, this is our main event in December, otherwise our mini events, for example next year in February we will have our Asia Street Food Festival by the beach, and it will be held at the Glenelg foreshore, so that one is also something that we really look forward to. And next year we will have this event in Melbourne City, so it's going to be, I think relatively quite big compared to the ones that we have in Adelaide, because you know of the Melbourne population.