Cho Express A Taste of Taiwan ~ Zetland

There was an excellent-but-sad article on the struggles of Sydney's Chinatown in Gourmet Traveller last week. On top of the mentioned zombie invasion woes, Chinatown now also competes with surrounding suburbs for bums on seats.

Ten years ago if inner-west wankers like us wanted a good Chinese feed, we either had to leg it to Chinatown or hit the trains and head west. Nowadays there's b-kyu gold from Broadway to Mascot, even Newtown has a couple of beauties. Our latest favourite food strip is Gadigal Avenue Zetland, a stretch of fantastic new restos running between East Village and Dank Street shopping centres. There's a good dozen places we are busting to try along this strip. We feel a little guilty for doing so few Chinatown posts of late, but we have mainly been visiting old favourites and too lazy to write them up.

We did little sharts of excitement when we found a new Cho Express outlet on Gadigal Avenue. It's the same deal as the most excellent Taste of Cho in Chinatown - only without the constant monster queue,  and you can actually eat inside.

On our Taiwan travels, which seem a lifetime ago now, our favourite feeds were at the economy rice type places, which is what the Cho folks do so well. The bainmarie-of-love is where the action is. There's plenty turnover so the food is always fresh and it's so good. If we had a gripe it would be that they never seem to do braised Chicken leg, Shawn's fave, but their sweet and sour pork makes up for it. And oh how we love those beans. It's as close as we can get to a Taiwanse auntie cooking for us.

Throughout the zombie invasion we have been paranoid about eating indoors but there's a couple of great parks on and behind Gadigal Ave, complete with picnic tables. If you have little kiddiewinks they are going to love the slide in this park, it's a corker.

Cho has a few dishes that aren't in the bainmarie of love, such as cold chicken noodles.

Some fried chicken to make up for those healthy veggies...

And more sweet and sour pork.

And some stewed pork belly on rice, a rippa lunch for only $8.50.

Cho Express A Taste of Taiwan is on Gadigal Ave, we're not sure what number, it's kinda in the middle, more towards the southern end.

If you are into walking - you can follow the strip north up through the Dank Street area, then follow Bourke Street all the way down to Woolloomooloo, then around the park to Circular Quay. It's a beauty.

Superbowl, how we loved you!