Local cultural cuisine on national TV screens

BALLARAT’S food culture will soon be displayed on national television with local restaurants to appear in an upcoming series highlighting Australian’s characteristic cuisine.

The city will be the star attraction in the SBS On Demand series Adam and Poh’s Great Australian Bites which is set to premiere next Tuesday.

With the show aimed at exploring Australia’s food identity, Adam Liaw, one half of the connoisseur duo alongside Poh Ling Yeow, said the pair enjoyed a plethora of Ballarat offerings.

“One of the focuses while we were there was the Golden Crown Chinese restaurant,” he said.

“They’ve been operating that for 40-plus years and it’s just the kind of thing Poh and I like. Then we had some great food at Moon and Mountain. We had some dim sims at Louey Soong’s.”

The pair’s visit also took them around Lake Wendouree, where they did some filming with chef and author Elizabeth Chong whose father William Chen Wing Young invented the dim sim.

Ballarat will feature in the series’ fourth episode, with other releases to showcase Gippsland, Alice Springs, Launceston, and Sydney.

Liaw said Ballarat was the perfect place to encapsulate the episode’s theme of Chinese food in regional Australia.

“Ballarat has such a long history with the goldrush and the Chinese migrants that came there,” he said.

“It’s almost the epicentre of a lot of the early Chinese-Australian cuisine that in my view has become truly Australian cuisine.

“You can’t go anywhere in the country without finding a Chinese restaurant. It’s as part of our history as much as a pub or a bakery might be.”

Adam and Poh’s Great Australian Bites’ Ballarat episode will be available to stream on Tuesday 29 August on SBS On Demand and on SBS Food.