Staying true to their roots

Adelaide's Chinatown offers some true Chinese home-cooking dishes, such as beef belly and tendon stew (top), lettuce wraps (above) and whitebait omelet (below). Photos by Pauline D Loh / for China Daily

The Chinese are widespread throughout the world, and where there are people, there's food. Pauline D Loh looks at how they eat Chinese in Adelaide, currently host of the country's most prestigious food festival

Adelaide is the food city of the moment. International chefs and local celebrities are gathered in this capital city of South Australia to celebrate Tasting Australia, one of the country's largest and most popular food festivals.

For a full 10 days, culinary media from all over the world will explore, experience and appreciate the food, wine and fresh produce from the region, including the seafood sanctuaries of Limestone Coast, Murray River Basin and the Eyre Peninsula and the wines from the famous Barossa Valley.

However, on the day we arrived, three Asian journalists decided to explore the Chinese food in the city. We began by checking out the broad aisles of Central Market, gasping at the huge array of fresh vegetables - aubergines the size of a football, tomatoes ruby red and busting with juices, huge green avocadoes with a shiny sheen on their skins, huge mandarins, polished brown chestnuts, red peppers, green peppers, yellow corn on the cob - it was a real feast for the eyes, and it wasn't long before we began to feel hungry.

Next stop Chinatown. As we walked down Gouger Street just outside Adelaide's Central Market, we were amazed at the number of quality Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants along the stretch.