Sizzling Skewers: A Sunnybank Delight

Have you ever walked past people in places of the world with street food carts or stalls? I've travelled through Thailand and Japan and one of the commonalities street food areas around the world share are the popularity of food on a stick. Its simply just a practical way to try things generally in a cost effective manner - but all skewered food is different. Theres skewers that are cooked on hotplates, charcoal grills and skewers that are fried. Recently, on one of my trips to Market Square in Sunnybank, I noticed a new fixture - a fried skewers place where you can pick the skewers you want in front of you as opposed to order off a menu. I've seen this sort of thing on Youtube where people in China can grab a handful of skewers and then the shop will cook it. Naturally, I was surprised to see it here but also excited at the same time.

The fast food store is called Kuafood Fried Skewers which is part of a chain from China. As of December 2021, Kuafood Fried Skewers has 2,000 stores worldwide with most in China but expanding to various cities like Melbourne, Sydney, New York and London. It is exciting to start to see these chains entering the Australian market and seeing more and more people embrace them.

As you can. see there is quite the variety to choose from with vegetable options throughout. The meat options are good but one should really not downplay how good some of the vegetable options can be. The enoki mushroom skewer wrapped in a small bit of bean curd is a great vegetable option and cost per skewer is not too bad for the Australian market. Street food in Australia now exists in food vans or food stalls but alot of the time the quality doesn't match the price. The food tend to typically be overpriced - you are often paying as much as you would for the same thing in a decent restaurant. However, this place I thought the price was fairly reasonable maybe because its fairly new.

When you do choose your skewers and place them in your plastic tray, bring them to the counter and then you can choose how spicy you want them. Mild for me was still spicy but not blow your socks off spicy. The seasoning seemed to be a combination of cumin / chilli and 5 spice powder - I'm probably missing some ingredients but you get the idea. Its a powder seasoning that has a bit of kick but also good flavours throughout. This time I went I got the following skewers:

• Zucchini
• Lotus Root
• Cumin Lamb
• Chicken Hearts
• Enoki Mushroom

When you receive your fried skewers they come out in a cup, best to grab a serviette or two as your hands will likely get a little bit greasy but its worth it. My opinion of how it all tasted?

The lamb was pretty good - the cuts they used were not too chewy. The vegetable were tasty but the only drawback was they tend to slide off very easily when you're eating so you probably should watch out a bit just in case. This really is quite an easy meal to have and then afterwards to settle your stomach you have a variety of options around such as Ice Cream or Chinese dessert which are both really good choices.