Fiji Market, Maya Indian Sweets (Newtown Food Tour Part 2 - 31st July)

        It's taken me so many goes to complete this blog post. Work has been busy so the last thing I feel like when coming home is sitting in front of the computer and blogging (facebook and twitter surfing doesn't count but I don't even go on that much at home). After a long day at work, I just want to come home and lie on my bed and watch TV all night until bed time. Also trying to motivate myself to get back into a gym routine which is so bloody hard after slacking off for months. Anyway I should at least try and blog once a week, and I guess I should really finish off this post so that I can move on to some of my other ones.

        So this is a continuation from my first post on this Newtown Food Tour. After our little adventure at The Pastizzi Cafe we continued to trek down the south side of King Street Newtown to a place called the Fiji Market. Apart from Asian grocers I havn't really been to any other culturally influenced grocer. The Fiji Market is a combination of Fijian and Indian products - spices, condiments, cooking apparatus, etc etc. There was just so much too see, you just wanted to stop at look everything, inspecting, touching, reading, smelling, it was like we were kids unleashed into a candy shop.

Ohh look shiney stuff.

Massive blocks of rock salt which caught Ryan's attention.

Some pretty hanging things.

        Dried dill tips, have always seen fresh dill but never really though about dry dill. Didn't buy these but I picked up some candy coated fennel seeds and some pink peppercorns.

        Spices in bulk - by the kilo (or 5). The heavy aroma of spices is all that my nose can pick up and it gets quite overpowering but I stick it out because there's just so much to see.

Ryan spots some Guava paste.

Coconut grater.

Some more pretty things.

        After spending what seemed like an eternity in the Fiji Market we cross the road to a small indian store which was part sweet shop part grocer part video shop. There is this big neon sign in the shop window - Maya Indian Sweets, not sure if this was actually the name of the shop though.



        As soon as you walk in the door this is what you are greeted with. Immediately I just wanted to sample everything!

More sweets!



Ohhh look there's goat meat in the freezer.

        Ryan is quite amused by this giant wok - "it's big enough to fit Angie in!"

        So we leave with a selection of sweets to try. Can't remember exactly what they all were or what they were called but the two preferred ones were the diamon shaped one in the middle and the ball directly in front of it. They were nice in texture, flavour and wern't too overly sweet. The red spiral was heavy with palm oil and sugar syrup, wasn't too fond of it. The other two were a little strange, tasting like wet cheese.

        Funky looking erm 'sign' that caught our attention while we stopped to sample our treats.

        A non food related distraction on our way around Newtown. We passed by an antique shop which caught our attention so we popped in and had a snoop around. Check out the cool old style cameras. Had to literally drag Ryan out of here as all the others started to head off ahead of us. We passed by Buppa's Bakery however no photos were allowed and we were quite sugared out and were looking forward to stopping for lunch so kept going. Stay tuned for Part 3.