sometimes (though not often!), you may not want an inventive maccha-infused, bean-studded bun from a shiny modern asian bakery. sometimes, the exercise of walking the edge of chinatown in search of a printer capable of spewing out a two-metre wide poster will put you in the vicinity of the grimy little chinese bakery perched above the burlington supermarket.
you may have already bribed the child to get back in her pram again, after the half-hour wait for the bus, and the half-hour busride, and the half-hour spent looking at polypropylene samples in the backroom of said printer, with the promise of a bunshop.
so there you have it.
where the newer bakeries may have 20 or so cases filled with all manner of bundom and flossy bread, this one — and i have no idea what its name is; i just call it “the chinese bakery on top of burlington supermarket” — has a small wall of nine. but the nine cases hold more than what we need. it is always difficult to choose just one, from the bank of old-skool classics: pork with pickled mustard bun, ham bun, curry bun, taro bun, pineapple bun, pineapple custard bun, pineapple red bean bun, chocolate bun (filled with solid slabs of chocolate in lieu of the chocolate creme patisserie you might be expecting), those tall spongy cupcakes…
but here is an empty case, containing none of the bun i really want: the best ever baked charsiu bun, with a sweet sticky glaze and a sweet sticky filling containing actual bits of meat (rather than bits of fat and gristle). i looked around, panicked, those minutes passing all too slowly until a cheerful girl emerged from the inner sanctum with a fresh tray.
they were still warm.
i tonged one, and then two, and then a pineapple red bean bun, and then an afterthought, this ethreal “sticky rice with custard”. a soft, moist mochi (even a day later) in a coconut coat, with a pale yellow centre. it was sweet and delicate, and why have i never bought one before??
we ate the pork buns on a park bench, before a steadily advancing arc of seagulls, pigeons and ibises. at the end, maeve wore a joker smile of red and sticky.
10 Comments
Just passing by..your entry is funny about the buns 🙂
Mmm buns. MMm pork. Mmm warm pork buns.
I absolutely love these, St Honore also has these with a red bean or peanut centre. So delicious and filling due to the rice!
after i missed you at st victoire, and after i tried the phone at woolies, and after i went into the pub next door and left a frantic message on your voicemail i crossed the street and went to the only bun shop open on darling street at 6:35pm, bought myself a cheesey mite scroll and walked all the way up to about life to find that it was closed. hope the evening at the cottage was full of hot tea and tasty snacks!
deb! crap. we missed each other by minutes. i played the “should i stay? should i go?” game for aaages… and then clearly made the wrong decision. i’m so sorry. 🙁
such is the fate of plans when there is rain and no phone. don’t be sorry… it was my fault!
i was thinking about heading over to toby’s estate sometime next week for a latte bowl of hot chocolate … could i shout you one to make up for the time you spent outside victoire?
[p.s. you might be amused to know that while munching on my cheesey mite scroll i spent a few seconds looking at the empty shelves of victoire and inside the shop was a boy text messaging on his mobile phone! argh!]
there isn’t many bun shops on the gold coast 🙁 but today i had one of those glorious bakery moments: the presenting of a fresh, warm tray. if you strung that 10 second feeling of joy and excitement together into a minute, then an hour, then weeks – im sure thats what heaven is like. or maybe i am just really into my food. P.S i have been visiting your site forever and although my dad finds its strange his 17 year old son has such a fascination with food and especially an online food blog with ‘cutesy pictures’, i am loving it all. thanks 😀
Heh! That bakery’s name is Furama and i have been meaning to do a post on it sometime soon (must cover all Asian bakeries in Chinatown… for puresly selfless reasons of course!).
They do the best ever mango pancakes. And the banana pancakes – well with bananas at their current prices they are a bargain treat indeed!
difficult to choose, tell me about it! I was at St Honore on my recent Sydney trip and it was absolutely packed out. And I had to look at everything twice befor emaking up my mind what to get.
ooohh — mango pancakes — heaven! I am so there