The next day it was rise and shine in time to see the morning dew – and by morning dew I mean dew of the Tullamore sort. It was St. Patrick’s Day after all.
It should also be noted that I have 3 favorite things in the world. They are: drinking (of course), eating and traveling. I only actually need one of those things to survive, so despite doing a few shots for breakfast the next order of business was to fill our Gatorade bottles with whiskey and head off to the Sydney Fish Market.
Walking into the Sydney Fish Market I think I have an idea what it’s like to be a male in a strip club for the first time. Instead of tits and ass everywhere I was immediately struck with a culinary boner for the pornographic array of fresh seafood. After years of seeing foods like this on the internet and in magazines, here they were in person! There were dozens of fresh shucked oysters on the half-shell sitting on ice. Raw and cooked prawns as big as my forearm in beautiful shades of pink and orange. Lobsters the size of infants. Fish that could stunt double for Moby Dick. My head was spinning and I couldn’t figure out where to first direct my attention. But going with the whole porn analogy, I went with the obvious choice of raw Tasmanian Pacific oysters.
After sucking down a tray of oysters garnished only with a squeeze of lemon, we headed into a few of the other markets with equally amazing arrays and then into the food court. Entering the food court I felt at home. Or at least like I blended in really well. All the counters were packed with Asians oogling the food displays. Throngs of Asians in a food market is as good of an indication of awesome food as walking into a restaurant and someone taking a dump on your plate is an indication of a bad one. And with that strong endorsement we agreed on a mixed platter, which sadly was kind of a disappointment. If I had been wiser I would’ve just looked at the nearest happy looking Chinese table and pointed to what they had but instead we went with the delicious sounding lobster Mornay platter – which for your safety, if you ever go to the Sydney fish market is a lobster covered in mashed potatoes and cheese. Yes. We fucked up. On the bright side, the jumbo prawns were delicious as was sucking the juice right out of their heads. And the BBQ baby octopus sprinkled with garlic was awesome as well. Stupid potatoes and cheese ruining a perfectly good crustacean.
Post lunch, another order of raw oysters and a few swigs of the Dew later we decided to finally join the rest of the Westerners in their celebration of international drunk day. I wouldn’t say St. Patty’s Day quite compares to the one in New York, but it’s not a bad option. While there weren’t shitfaced people in green carrying beer bongs everywhere – there were still quite a few of them in certain areas, especially in the Rocks. (In case you’re not familiar with Sydney “The Rocks” is an area. There weren’t little green drunk men crawling around on rocks. That would be creepy.) We started off at Lord Nelson as recommended by a beer snob friend, moved to a second pub, tried to move onto another but found out they have a dress code (lame) and then ended up at Fortune of War, the oldest pub in Sydney where I proceeded to get drunker and make friends with some drunk Italian dudes. And speak with them in butchered Italian and Greek. #drunkrisaproblems
Sometime later we decided we needed food and obviously I wanted to go to Chinatown, and assumed the Italians would know where it is since Chinatown is next to Little Italy right? Wrong city? Sorry. Either way, Chinese people invented noodles. Suck it Marco Polo. Unfortunately, we ended up not being able to find Chinatown but I swear while I’m drunk I have a homing device for soon-do bu and quickly found a Korean restaurant. Sweet. I got good food and drinks all day in a foreign city. Favorite things, check, check and check.
If it's there, I'll do it 