Lucky country

Australia has the best Chinese food outside Asia. Better than London, New York, Paris or San Francisco. Better even than Vancouver. We can enjoy steamed prawns that were live a few minutes ago, fresh mud crab, pipis in XO, Cantonese duck and Tung Po pork. We can even get very Cantonese dishes like steamed pork cake with salted eggs or squid with fermented prawn paste. There are fiery dan dan noodles from Chengdu, big Beijing dumplings perfect for a freezing morning, lion’s head meatballs from Shanghai and dishes the Chairman himself may have eaten from Hunan.

But it wasn’t always this way. Before we had Lee Ho Fook or Mr Wong things were pretty crook. It took the work of many passionate and talented Chinese Australians