Alerted by a new blog I've started following, Simon Food Favourites, on Sunday I went to Bairro Portugues. A Portuguese food and wine festival in the suburb of Petersham. Two streets close to the station were filled with food stalls and crowds of people searching out a spot of lunch.
I decided to go for a seafood paella. The stall had four massive paella pans on the go, one ready to serve the customers and three others in the various stage of being cooked. They were making it look all so effortless, but I'm sure it took quite a bit of skill to get the timings right. The paella was tasty, but not extraordinary, filled with a generous amount of squid, prawns and mussels.
Having read a couple of reviews of last year's event I decided that a custard tart from local patisserie Sweet Belem was a must. I think you get a lot of average custart tarts, but this wasn't one of them. The pastry was flaky and crunchy, their was a sprinkle of cinnamon on top and the egg custard was rich, firm and a deep yellow.
The festival was good, but I was hoping for a bit more diversity than just stalls selling take away food. I would have happily bought some chorizo or other Portuguese delights to take home and cook with during the week had any been on offer.
glad you got to go. thanks for the link, much appreciated. i'm always dubious about festival stalls in terms of quality and freshness so i usually end up going to the local shops to get it straight from the source. naughty of me but that's the way i roll :-) glad you tried the sweet belem. i think they had sold out by the time i got there late afternoon as i couldn't see them but i got one from La Patisserie down a few shops which are good as well.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE SWEET BELEM's portugese tarts!!!!! :O)
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