thai food festival

I had a great weekend in Canberra. On Sunday, my grad friends and I explored the grounds of the Thai Embassy, as they were hosting a Thai food festival. Here’s what it was like: it rained in the morning but the sky was mostly clear and had a warm shine. The air of the Embassy was filled with foreign languages, spices from a distant memory, the voices of intrigued people and deep frying oil.

The hustle & bustle of the festival was near perfect. It was a lively but chilled atmosphere and there were no majorly long queues that you’d get in larger cities.

The food that we got/saw included: pad thai, hokkien-like noodles, chicken pad siew, deep-fried bread and beef skewers covered in zucchini. I enjoyed seeing the diversity of food – it (expectingly) broadened my knowledge of thai food which was confined to restaurant menus. There was a ‘street-food’ culture that came through in the festival. 

No meal is complete without a sweet addition. My friends and I bought these crepe-like pancakes. They differed from French crepes as they were flaky (lard was probably added to the crepe batter) and chewy (probably due to asian glutenous flour). The pancakes were drizzled with condensed milk and a chocolate sauce. We also enjoyed a coconut jelly pudding which had kernels of corn throughout it. I’ve never had this before and it was sweet comfort food yet exciting.