The OzAsia Festival is back! This annual event showcases the best of Asia through theatre, contemporary arts, dance, music, food, and cultural events. One experience in particular, excites us the most! The ‘Lucky Dumpling Market’, has made camp on the beautiful River Torrens next to the Adelaide Festival Centre and offers an array of flavours that spans all across Asia. With an impressive line-up of delicious foods, this festival also offers, beer, wine, and sake, along with live music, that can’t be missed. Be sure to immerse yourself in these festivities from 17th October – 3rd November 2019.

Now, we couldn’t think of a better way to spend a spring afternoon than to have a gastronomy food adventure. With empty bellies and eyes bigger than our stomachs, we tasted, munched and feasted our weight in food.

Here’s some of our favourite food vendors.

Ragini’s Spice – While standing in front of Ragini’s spice stall, your eyes are drawn to the charcoal fire, which holds rows upon rows of chargrilled chicken pieces. The smell of spices linger and your mouth starts to salivate without you even realising. First up, we ordered Nannchos! Who could resist? Crispy nann, chicken tikka, butter chicken sauce topped with torched cheese. The chicken tikka was succulent and the crispy nann made the perfect spoon to scope up mouthfuls of sauce and melted cheese. We also ordered Butter chicken dumplings and Butter chicken with Ragini’s spice rice which were cooked to perfection. We loved these fusion dishes.

Soza’s Sri Lankan – This beautiful stall, stands tall against the rest. Dressed up in black and yellow. This eye catching vendor offers amazingly delicious food. We order the Hot Butter Squid and Chicken Kottu. Needless to say, the Hot Butter Squid was a personal favourite. The squid while being perfectly cooked was light and crispy. The highlight, was the batter. The batter was savoury, delicately sweet, and boasted a mild kick that really elevated this dish. In addition, the Chicken Kottu is a popular street food found in Sri Lanka, that’s made up of a mixture of cut up roti, shredded vegetables, and your choice of protein, stir-fried in curry spices. An outstanding dish we had the pleasure of tasting.

Toly Vietnamese – Decorated with rainbow lanterns, colourful festival flags, bamboo hats and string lights, this stall emits Vietnamese culture while teasing your taste buds. The smells of Teriyaki chicken skewers over a charcoal grill was heavenly. While waiting for your food, you can watch the skilful chef’s move and flow around their work space, working the wok and enjoying the show of blistering flames, dancing around before your eyes. We order the Teriyaki Chicken skewers and bao’s served three ways. The Teriyaki chicken was tender, had beautiful burnt charcoal marks sautéed in a beautiful savoury sweet sauce that left us wanting more. To entice your hunger even more the trio of bao’s consisted of Lemongrass chicken, imperial bbq pork and crackling pork belly. A favourite amount many festival goers.

Bubble Bus – With owners as bubbly as their drinks, we knew we were in for a treat. Feeling like something cold and refreshing, we gravitated towards the fruit teas. The Mango and Lychee oolong to be exact. The teas were subtle, boasted amazing natural flavours and had the perfect amount of sweetness. We were also advised that the Honey Dew and Taro are must orders. Make sure to give these guys a visit when you’re feeling thirsty.

The Lucky Dumpling Market is an event not to be missed. Come along with friends or family and feast your way through the many vendors, tasting your way through Asia. With many activities for kids and adults throughout the festival, there is something for everyone. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and hope that you come and enjoy the Lucky Dumpling Market for yourself.

Words by Tien Thach from TastyTag

WHERE: Adelaide Riverbank Precinct in front of the Convention Centre