Parramatta Dining Scene

As I wrote in my previous post, there isn't a shortage of food places in the Parramatta area. The above dining guide lists almost 300(!) restaurants around the area ranging from Chinese, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Italian, Lebanese, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Thai, and Vietnamese.


Church Street alone is littered with restaurants.

Even in the dead of winter, people still love to dine alfresco.

And this is how they do it: with clear plastics all around to ward off the cold wind and at night, heaters would be working to give off much needed heat (one of these days we'll dine alfresco at night and I might be able to take pictures then - hopefully).

It'd be impossible for us to go to all these restaurants in 8 weeks (not to mention how much that would set us back!) but we were able to check out a few.


Pho ben restaurant just a short left from Church street that serves Chinese and Vietnamese dishes. You can check out their website for their menu.


As you can see from the picture above, Pho Ben is very casual and even feels a bit like an eatery/carenderia but I would say that I was more than satisfied with the food. Though I found the beef noodle soup to be too sweet for my taste (not what I was used to back in Manila), the beef was very tender. I forgot what my husband ordered but suffice it to say that he was also satisfied with his dish. This is on the rather expensive side (for us anyway, after conversion) as we easily spent more than $20 for this one.


Another eatery is Zucchini at Marsden Street (this time a short left from Church Street). I pass by this eatery everyday and decided to have lunch one day. They serve European(?) dishes. Pictured above is pasta with bits of ground beef wrapped inside in tomato soup (forgot the name). It was new to me but I did not dislike it. Might I add that the tomate soup wasn't sweet at all bordering on sour even which made me realize I am no longer in the Philippines. Below is chicken in honey mustard sauce. Nothing special and surprising. Of course with honey, it was sweet. I think we spent about 16 dollars for both.



But the cheapest for us when dining out would be these takeaway boxes usually priced at 5-6 dollars mostly available from asian restos in the nearby Westfield shopping center (if we wanted something cheaper, then we cook at the apartment). More of the dining scene at the Westfield Shopping Center in future posts!