Festival Series - Night Noodle Markets

http://brisbane.goodfoodmonth.com/noodles

In a month that just kept getting better and better, for the first time Brisbane was host to the Night Noodle Market. As part of the Good Food Month, the Night Noodle Market pulled together a heap of Queensland and interstate eateries to South Bank for an Asian Inspire hawker style market.

Taking over the cultural forecourt at South Bank, the Night Noodle Markets has added a fresh new event on the annual calendar, which this year coincides with the annual Regional Flavours event (see post here).  Bringing together over two dozen food stalls and bars, the Night Noodle Market became a beacon of great food and fun drawing people from all around the South East.  

We decided that we would head over to join in with the festivities and check out some yummy Asian cuisine on a chilly Sunday afternoon.  Arriving a little before sunset, we were able to slowly wander around the markets and get a sense of the food available.  Near the entrance of the markets, we bumped into Jake Harris, formerly of My Kitchen Rules, running Chitty Banh Banh, who'd been surprised by the success of the markets.  Jake explained that on the previous day, they'd sold out of Banh Mi within the first two hours - thats over 900 Vietnamese rolls in short order.

As we slowly wandered around the market stalls and soaked up the atmosphere, the sun set and the Night Markets really came alive, with the lights of the stalls, the colourful lanterns and the various bars taking over from the natural sunlight.  It was quite spectacular to witness.  The only problem was with the departure of the sun came the drop in temperature!

We sampled some of the lovely Asian food on offer but the highlight was definitely the chicken curry from Sydney's Longrain, which had set up a stall.  Amazingly, we found the queues to Longrain to be really short and we were munching on the very tasty chicken curry in minutes.  What really took us by surprise was the incredibly long queues at Mamak, which I'd never heard of at the time but have subsequently discovered is one of Sydney's favourite Malaysian restaurants!  Given the queues, it seems like it was a secret only to myself as just about everyone I've spoken to since has said it was the highlight of their Night Noodle Market experience.

We had a wonderful time at the Night Noodle Markets, which included eating some great food but the highlight was hanging around at the Thatchers bar area and listening to the DJ spin some awesome and funky tunes.  Standing there with food in hand, listening to tunes and people watching with the CBD as the perfect backdrop - bliss.

The Brisbane Times Good Food Month is onto a winner with the Night Noodle Markets and I'm positive from this years response that it will only get bigger and bigger.  Bring on next year I say!

I hope you enjoy a collection of photos and memories from the Night Noodle Market

@FoodMeUpScotty