Saturday at Northbridge

Northbridge is a suburb that has always been a popular place for locals and tourists to visit for a long time. It's popular for its night spots like the Dean, The Shed, Brass Monkey and countless others that congregate mainly around James St, Aberdeen St and Francis St. At the same time, there are countless restaurants and eateries around too and this is also where Perth's Chinatown can be found albeit a very small one.

For my wife and I, we will go to Northbridge because that's where most of the Asian restaurants and supermarkets can be found. They are all over Northbridge although most can be found along William St. Besides Asian restaurants, there are many other nationality of food that can be found here like Italian and Eqyptian to name a few.

Yesterday after our usual tai chi lesson, we went to Northbridge for lunch and we always have a problem in that we can't decide on what we want to eat although there many restaurants around. As we were driving along William St, we saw a queue outside one of the Chinese restaurants and we though we would give it a try. We had to circle around the area a couple of times to find free parking. On Saturdays, it is free parking after 12.30 along the streets but if you decide to park in the many available private parking lots like either CPP or Wilson Parking, it's going to cost you about more than $3.30 per hour.

The restaurant we went to is called Dim Sim Cafe (3/297 - 299 William St, Northbridge WA 6003 Tel: 08 93289388. Open from 9.30 to 3 daily except Wed)) and like it's name, they specialise in dim sum. We had to get a number from the waitress and was told that we had to wait for 20 minutes. I thought to myself that the food must be good or the price must be really cheap if there is such a queue and everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, but frankly after the lunch, I was full but not very impressed. The thing I like about the dim sum here is that they still use the push cart to bring the food to you and then you decide whether you want them or not. In Singapore, most restaurants stopped that and I think that it's a pity. I love to look at the variety of food and then to pick and choose instead of just looking at the menu and pick the food based on just words, especially when they give weird names to them and then you have to decipher what you are eating.

We had 8 different dishes altogether which included our usual char siew bao, siew mai and prawn cheong fun. Besides those 3, we had fried fish ball, Steam bean curd pocket stuffed with fish roe, Xiao Long Bao, fried radish cake and prawn and chives dumpling. The food was okay but nothing to rave about. I liked the bean curd the best, it was very tasty. For the bun, it was way too much dough and not enough meat and the meat was a bit too fatty for me (there will be some who likes fatty meat). The cheong fun was too thick when it comes to to dough part and it doesn't melt in the mouth like it is meant to. The fried radish cake was okay although it could have been fried slightly longer, I like mine very crispy on the outside and soft in the inside. At the end of the meal, we wanted to try the dao fu fa (bean curd dessert) but it was sold out. Although the food was okay, the service was pretty good and efficient. The waiters and waitress try to ensure that the turnaround was fast and they are always bringing food over to recommend. At one stage, one of the chefs came out and helped explain and recommend the dishes to some of the Caucasian. The meal costs us $36.50 for 8 dishes which I guess is pretty standard for Perth.

After lunch, we went over to Emma's Seafood (319, William St, Northbridge WA 6003) to get some groceries done. Emma is an Asian Supermarket that is popular for their yong tau foo, fish cakes and fish balls. You can buy them seperately in packs of 1 kg or 500g or like for me I'll buy a combination pack which costs around $14.56 instead. It's enough to make 3 meals for the 2 of us.

After getting our stomach filled and the groceries done, we went over to Wing Loong News and Books (268 William St Northbridge WA6000) to rent some DVDs. There are 3 video shops that I know of around William St and they rent Chinese, Korean and Japanese serials and movies. Over in Wing Loong, they costs $2.50 per disc per day (max 7 dyas) so usually we'll get 7 discs so that we can return them the next week when we make our weekly run to Northbridge. Usually I'll go to Video & Comic (Rear 101 James St Northbridge 6003) to get my videos instead. It costs $2 for each DVD but the range is not as good as Wing Loong. What I like about V & C is the price and unlike Wing Loong, if I borrow 20 discs, I'll have 20 days to return them. It is not easy to spot this place as it is along an alley but as you walk along James St heading away from William St, you'll see an alley on the left just before James Street Kitchen restaurant and just follow the lane and it's on the left.