SYDNEY: HUNTER/C**TER VALLEY
If, like me you have bestowed upon you the title, Sir William of No Mates, then joining a tour group is something to be avoided. Those in family groups or, even worse, canoodling couples, tend to view you with a suspicion normally kept in reserve for convicted child molesters. There is usually pointing involved and often a few suppressed giggles.

Still, when I decided to leave Sydney for a day and head up to sample the delights of The Hunter Valley, I had precious little choice, given that the wineries of the area are some distance apart and the police of New South Wales take a strangely dim view of bald men swerving around the country roads on scooters slugging wine out of opened bottles of Shiraz.

So it was I found myself climbing aboard a small coach outside The Sydney Marriott Hotel at 7.30am to join a tour of The Hunter Valley. Me and 15 others.

True to form, I was the only single person on board as I joined a handful of young couples and a group of Filipinos who spoke hardly any English but seemed to have decided to go on a wine tour purely on the basis that one of them had watched “ Sideways” on the plane over. Prospects of a good time and some communal bonding were bleak and I prepared myself to hide my blushes in the pages of a hard boiled crime novel.

Fortunately, the driver of the bus, Steve, turned out to be a very amiable and amusing man from New Zealand and, recognising my plight, cleared the seat next to him so we could chat on the two hour journey to The Hunter Valley.


The Australians take their wine very seriously and I have lost count of how many people told me that the reason all Australian wine in the UK is vile is that they keep all the good stuff for themselves. Well, I can’t speak for all of Australia, but they certainly don’t keep it in The Hunter Valley. But, more of that later.

The area has a poor reputation with its more urban Sydney counterparts who refer to it as The C**ter Valley and have renamed Cessnock, its main town as Cesspit because of the preponderance of crime and drug abuse. Lovely eh? And, I didn’t find this out until I was on the bus and having it all explained to me in gory detail by Steve.

The tour consisted of visits to two boutique wineries which bookmarked an extended visit to a winery resort, a new(ish) concept of building a small themed area within walking distance of a number of wineries so you can have lunch, buy wine related gifts, try tastings at all the cellar doors and even stay over night if your heart so desires.




It is all harmless fun. A decent lunch came thrown in and there were enough free tastings to give even my jaundiced liver a bit of a buzz. But in truth the wines I sampled did not impress me at all and, by 4pm, I had tasted enough over oaky Chardonnay, fruit bomb Verdelho and figgy Semillon to last any number of lifetimes and was ready to give the last winery a miss and stay on the bus with my book.

Fortunately, Steve came to the rescue. During the drive up there, I had been complaining loudly about the paucity of decent beer in Australia. God it’s dreadful. Tasteless and full of gas (there is a joke in there somewhere, but I plan to go back to Australia someday, so I am not going to make it) brews like VB, Carlton, Toohey’s etc are an abomination and being forced to drink them could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Steve agreed with me and mentioned that, near to our final official stop was a small micro brewery called, with a huge imaginative leap, The Hunter Brewing Co.


Fortunately, the beer showed a lot more imagination than the name and, after Steve had dropped the handholding couples and camera clicking gaggle of Paul Giamatti fans off to taste yet more of the same, we high tailed it to the brew pub.

He, of course, was far to sensible to drink on duty, but sat patiently watching me work my way through a paddle tasting of four very decent beers in about ten minutes before we had to rush off to collect the throng of pointers and gigglers who waiting patiently outside the final winery for the trip back to Sydney.


Another two hour journey during which most of my, by now, close companions snored loudly as they slept off the freebies they had hoovered down during the day.

Me? I just sat happily burping to myself, quietly pleased that I had finally found some decent beer in Australia even if I didn't like the wine.

SYDNEY: TAKE A HIKE, BABY
If I am being brutally honest, I spent the next few days of my time in Sydney being slowly less than whelmed at its reputation as a great foodie town.

That is not to say that I did not have some decent meals and some good things to eat, I did. But I found it limited in a way I had not expected.

The food courts and the offerings of Asian food are, of course, astonishing and I spent a number lunchtimes wandering around Sussex and Dixon Sts sampling some of the places that Helen Yee had deemed worthy of visit. I had little reason to doubt that she would be correct and, as I suspected, she was bang on the mark.

BBQ King is a bit of a local legend not least because it is open until the wee small hours and is a hangout for off duty chefs including, Tetsuya. A plate of BBQ pork & rice was very good, but ( as Helen warned) over priced at $15 but worth it for the “you finish, you leave now” theatrics which saw my plate whisked from my grasp the moment the last piece of dead pig hit my mouth.




The Silk Road restaurant introduced me to Chinese cookery from a region new to me. The people from the Urgyur region are predominantly muslim and specialise in lamb dishes which the serve with noodles more akin to pasta than some of the other offerings in the region. Also, fantastically, eye wateringly spicy skewers of tender lamb.




Golden Century offered the opportunity to point to a tank and benefit from the untimely death of the inhabitant simply prepared with chilli, ginger and garlic.

Harry’s Café De Wheels is a local legend. A small van by Pott’s Point that has provided meat pies to celebs, bikers and workers alike for over 70 years



The restaurant scene “ proper” is another matter. There are some good restaurants, of course. Some great ones, in fact with some of the Three Hat places, like The Pier, Bacasse and Tetsuya, comparing favourably with anywhere in the world. It is in the mid range that I found a lack of depth. I had some enjoyable meals at Bistrode, Bentleys and Fish Face but little to make me imagine I would crave revisiting them when I am back in London. Obviously, I did not get to try all the places I would have liked as time and budget did not allow, but my overriding impression is of a city that is, in dining terms, not as great as it likes to think it is.

Where Sydney is every bit as good as it likes to think it is ( and trust me that is a hard thing to achieve) is in its assertion that it is amongst if not the most beautifully located city in the world. It truly is and damn, don’t the aussies know how to make the most of it. I have seldom seen a city so filled with people making the most of what a city has to offer. Jogging, cycling, surfing, kayaking, windsurfing, every person in Sydney seems to be obsessed with at least one of these pastimes and few places on earth give them such a chance to exercise.

It may surprise those people who only know me through my love of food, but I am actually a reasonably fit chap. I love to run and, as a qualified Personal Trainer in my spare time, I spend a lot of time in the gym. Most of all, though, I love to hike.

Yep, hike. That hobby which in the UK means , woolly hats, leather boots, dubbing and weak lemon squash.

I first got a bug for it during a walking holiday in New Zealand a few years ago and now, whenever I am travelling for EAT MY GLOBE, I always try and fit in some serious walking.

Well, there are few better opportunities than in Sydney. A short ferry ride from Circular Quay finds you in Manly, one of Sydney’s many weekend playgrounds and the location of the Manly-Spit walk (about 23km round trip) which takes in some of the most breathtaking coastal scenery I can ever recall. A fabulous way to pass four or five hours.


Similarly, 10km from the city brings you too the legendary Bondi beach where I spent a happy four hours hiking from the beach to Coogee along a benign but scenic route along some of New South Wales’ spectacular surfing beaches.



If the food offerings were, on the whole, a disappointment, they did at least give me the opportunity to meet some fantastic people.

At Fish Face, the scene of one of the better meals on my trip in Sydney’s achingly trendy Darlinghurst, I met the Chef/Owner Stephen Hodges. A hugely abrasive, witty man who took great delights in telling me how many people he had fallen out with in his career and who invited me downstairs to his fish processing area to watch him gut a kingfish.


There was Simon Thomsen, the coruscatingly witty food critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, who invited me to join him in a long and booze infused supper at Bentley’s which resulted in me having to spend the rest of the next morning in bed.


Charlie, the young mixologist at The Bayswater Brasserie, plied me with four lethal cocktails and restored my faith in Sydney’s ability to mix a decent martini.

Finally, and perhaps best of all was Jeanette. An irascible Mauritian who, supposedly was the cleaner at my hostel but who seemed to spend most of it being rude to the guests. She seemed to hold me in particular opprobrium and had my card marked as a “whining pom” which, it appeared gave her the right to yell “POM” at the top of her voice every time she saw me while waving the palms of her hands at the side of her head in a satirical imitation of my own large and flappy lug holes. Apparently, this meant she liked me and, when she heard why I was off around the world, she questioned me about my knowledge of Mauritian food. Fortunately, my mumbled reply of “adobe” and “curry goat” passed muster and every day for the rest of my visit, she brought small parcels of food for me to eat as she hovered clucking over me looking for signs of approval. Very good it was too and, I like to think that, by the end the Mauritian and the POM formed a bond of understanding. Not enough, of course, to allow me to take a picture of her as, she quite rightly explained “ I am not a f**king freakshow” fantastic.

DAY THREE: GRABBED BY THE BLOGGERS
EAT MY GLOBE is, if anything, about the people I will meet and, when I decided to head off on my travels, the one thing I decided to do was to get in touch with all of the like minded bloggers around the world and ask them to show me around their city or at least to point me in the right direction.

Some, quite rightly, ignored my mails as the ravings of an internet loon. Others gave me some helpful suggestions and a few even took the risk of agreeing to meet me face to face.

First up was Sydney’s very own Helen Yee, author of the foremost Sydney Food blog GRAB YOUR FORK.

We swapped a handful of e-mails and then she suggested we meet for a late lunch in Chinatown with very firm advice that I was not to miss the opportunity of seeing Sydney’s Grower’s Market before hand.



Now, I am usually, profoundly wary of grower’s markets. There are only so many stalls selling apple juice and badly made cheese I can look at in a life time and, to be honest, Sydney’s is not much different. A lot of exceedingly well meaning people standing behind little stalls with freezer boxes full of stuff that I am sure is all very tasty but, well just a little bit dull. I will probably be drummed out of the Blogger’s union for having the temerity to say so, but Hey Ho!


Great location, mind you, right by Darling Harbour and, once I given the market the obligatory once over, I bought a copy of The Sydney Morning Herald and found a nice quiet spot to sit and catch up on the World’s news. Rather a good paper it is too, by the way and, its Saturday edition was about an inch thick and occupied me for a good couple of hours (as opposed to the twenty five minutes I had given the market)

By now, it was rapidly approaching meeting up time and I wandered to the bottom of Sussex St to find Helen waiting as planned by a strange little gold painted tree that symbolised the Earth’s mating with the sky or something like that.

Now, Helen is what I would call an uber food blogger.



One of those who puts what Dos Hermanos do to shame. GRAB YOUR FORK is a very lesson in how to create a foodie resource for your city. Links aplenty, good writing and pictures, well the pictures are another thing altogether. Whereas Dos Hermanos whip out a small digital for our blurry shots, Helen lunges into her bag and brings out an entire studio’s worth of paraphernalia. She carefully sets up the shot and takes multiple shots just in case. A true professional.

Now, all of this could be a little bit weird if it was not for the fact that Helen really loves her grub. She really knows her grub too and she gave me a detailed and loving tour of the area around Sydney’s impressive Chinatown. There are restaurants here for regions of China that I didn’t even know were regions. There are great Korean restaurants, noodle bars, sushi bars and all points in between.

Perhaps, Sydney’s greatest treasure is its food courts. Unlike their UK equivalents which are to be avoided, here you get whole floors of shops offering a bewildering variety of Asian fast food much of it coming in for under AU$10( about £4.50) Helen has views on this too, well of course she does. She gave me a tour of the three main food courts telling me which were worth visiting and which were not. Then a tour outside to show me her favourite places for seafood, dumplings, sushi, BBQ pork and any number of others.

Now, Helen is a woman after my own heart and, despite the fact she had just had Yum Cha with her family, she was happy to indulge in a late lunch. We lighted upon a Vietnamese place because Helen had found out my secret shame that I had never had a Bahn Mi ( a Vietnamese pork Sandwich) She, of course, had views on which was the best place for that, so we ended up in a small, empty little café chowing down on a crunchy baguette filled with salad and three types of pork. It was fine, but my life would not have been any the worse if I had never tried one.



Much more interesting was a well made beef pho and the fixings for some hand made beef rolls.



Helen was an expert at these and, while I made something that looked like a tampon for an elephant, she created delicate little cylinders which she then dipped in sauce before plopping into her mouth. All the while, I was busy trying to scoop my mess off the table.





She was too kind to mention it, but I blushed when she handed me a perfect example of one just in case I starved.

A couple of hours after I met her, Helen had to whiz off to get ready for her own trip to Japan, so we waved goodbye at Central Station.

This is exactly what I was hoping for when I first came up with the idea for EAT MY GLOBE. The food AND the people all thanks to the power of the internet and a mutual obsession with shoving stuff in our gobs. Even if, like Helen, they do it with so much more grace than me.