Richmond Night Market

Went to the night market tonight! Haven't been in at least 3 years - it's an annual market that gets set up over the summer months and opens on weekend evenings. Originally just one row of stalls in an empty parking lot selling mostly junk (I think I bought 2 mechanical pencils from there in its first year), it has evolved to become more of a food market with all sorts of street food, mostly of the Asian (and by Asian I mean South-East Asia/Oriental) variety.

Stef wanted to go tonight so we braved the crowds by going early-ish and being very methodical in our food search - first we went up and down the 3 aisles to fully peruse the offerings before choosing what to use our precious stomach space on. In the end we settled on the following:

Some Chinese dimsum - curry fishballs for Stef (not pictured), pork siu mai for me:

We then moved on to a new experience for me - the Hurricane Potato. Apparently this was introduced last year and this year multiple stalls were copying it. Rightly so, it is genius. The Hurricane Potato is a whole potato sliced thinly into a corkscrew, slid onto a skewer, and then deep-fried. Can't picure it? Not to worry! I have a video, complete with Hurricane Potato man chanting about the merits of his potato throughout:

 It is then dipped into ketchup or mayo or a variety of flavoured powders. They took it to a whole other level this year by sticking a hot dog in the middle of the potato, so of course we had to try that. Stef kept hers simple with ketchup topping and I ordered sour cream and onion flavoured topping on mine (in hindsight, a slight mistake, because it just made the potato taste a bit too much like chips/crisps). This is a winner - I will definitely have it again:

Last but not least, I wanted to try a okonomiyaki (japanese octopus pancake) - potato, cabbage, and octopus pan fried and topped with shaved dried onions, mayo and a special sauce - a thicker and sweeter worcestershire sauce.

All to be washed down with a nice mango drink - mine was mango with tapioca and coconut milk. We queued at least 25 minutes for these bad boys, all the while commenting on the stall's production process and lamenting that we could do it faster and better:

But don't forget, the original intent of the night market was to sell junk products. So of course I had to pay $2 for a comedy eye mask. Look! I have pretty anime eyes!

p.s. did you notice the girl behind hurricane potato man had a fake hurricane potato skewer in her hair? if not go back and look again. also comedy.