This is probably going to be my final Sydney post and I've been putting off writing it because it means that my time in Australia is really over. No more wallabies, considerably less delicious vegan pies, and no more hanging out with my friend Amanda. Making friends online can be the absolute best because it's a really cool and easy way to connect with people who you have a bunch of stuff in common with (you also get close fast because people like to overshare online!) but the flip side is that sometimes your favourite people live in Sydney, or Austin, or Vienna, or somewhere else far away and you hardly ever get to see them in real life.
I try not to get too sad about it because it's so fun to be able to meet up with people whilst I'm travelling but my dream is to live somewhere and have a bunch of awesome vegan friends living nearby so that we can have potlucks, and brunches, and sleepovers, and pizza parties, and go for hikes, and get involved in activism, and eat my carefully crafted pick 'n mix together at the movies. One day! I'm also getting to the point in my travels where I can't wait to be settled somewhere so that my friends can actually come and visit me for a change. I miss that!
Amanda and I have one final dinner date planned during my layover before I fly to Hong Kong and I definitely will not cry when we part ways like I did in Portland that time! I spent about seven days in Sydney and as well as visiting MAKER, one of the best vegan businesses on the planet, a couple of times and exploring everything that Newtown, Glebe, and the CBD have to offer (blog post here) we managed to squeeze in visits to a bunch of other cool places including Pineana in Avalon Beach, The Hold in Manly, and Funky Pies in Bondi.
I try not to get too sad about it because it's so fun to be able to meet up with people whilst I'm travelling but my dream is to live somewhere and have a bunch of awesome vegan friends living nearby so that we can have potlucks, and brunches, and sleepovers, and pizza parties, and go for hikes, and get involved in activism, and eat my carefully crafted pick 'n mix together at the movies. One day! I'm also getting to the point in my travels where I can't wait to be settled somewhere so that my friends can actually come and visit me for a change. I miss that!
Amanda and I have one final dinner date planned during my layover before I fly to Hong Kong and I definitely will not cry when we part ways like I did in Portland that time! I spent about seven days in Sydney and as well as visiting MAKER, one of the best vegan businesses on the planet, a couple of times and exploring everything that Newtown, Glebe, and the CBD have to offer (blog post here) we managed to squeeze in visits to a bunch of other cool places including Pineana in Avalon Beach, The Hold in Manly, and Funky Pies in Bondi.
Pineana specialise in Asian inspired bowls and they have six options for you to choose from meaning that there's something for everyone. Even I was able to order without making any modifications which is a little unusual!
Options include the Bali bowl, the Hanoi bowl, the Malay bowl, and the Bento bowl and I went for the Bento bowl (front right) which was full of so many of my favourite ingredients. Rice noodles, salad leaves, edamame, tofu, mushrooms, nori, pickled ginger, and a miso dressing. It was delicious and when I'm not living out of hostel kitchens I would love to eat more food like this, it's just kind of impossible to keep all of those ingredients fresh whilst moving from place to place every few days y'know. Avalon definitely isn't on the tourist trail but if you're a YA fan then you should definitely visit to eat bowls and check out Beachside Bookshop which has shelves and shelves of YA lit.
On one of our very first nights in the city Nick and I took the ferry over to Manly to meet Amanda after work so that we could try the new vegan menu at The Hold. This is a regular meaty burger joint but they've gone to the effort of veganising every single burger on their menu. Whaaaat?! Amazing! This photo is terrible because I was too busy chatting to take multiple shots but this was seriously one of the best burgers I've ever eaten.
I had to e-mail ahead to make sure that I would be able to eat something and when they said that I could eat almost all of the components of their Captain Jack burger including the vegan mac and cheese I was ecstatic - I only had to replace the BBQ sauce with ketchup which isn't too disappointing a switch. If getting over to Manly didn't involve a ferry ride I would definitely have visited The Hold more than once because the burger was super flavourful and stuffed full of deliciousness. It's definitely up there with one of my favourite burgers in the world.
Amanda, Nick, and I also managed to squeeze in a visit to Bondi where I had my heart set on trying some Funky Pies. It turned out that there was only one pie on offer that I was able to eat but it was their Eezy Chic'n Cheezy Pie which is blatantly the one I would have chosen anyway.
It was stuffed full of faux chicken pieces, broccoli, and mushrooms in a deliciously creamy and indeed cheesy sauce. Their pastry was very impressive too, I hope to learn how to make pastry this good one day! Nick insisted on ordering the pies with mash, peas and gravy as we were sharing but after our packed day of eating I was definitely a little too full for all of that food so I just stuck to pie and Nick devoured most of the sides.
Have you ever visited Sydney? Do you have a favourite off of the beaten track eatery that I should be recommending to people? Let me know in the comments! If you want to see more of our Sydney eats you can check out Amanda's video of our foodie adventure right here on her You Tube channel.