khiemtran | First Taste, Hurstville

Surprisingly, for Hurstville anyway, the characters do in fact read "First Taste" (or at least "First Taste Soup"...)

To make things just a little tricky, they've used the traditional characters. I would have recognized the first one straight away if it had be written as 头 (tóu or "head"). I had no idea the traditional character was so different, although it does contain dou ("bean") which I guess supplies the sound.

The second character is dàn ("taste") and the third is tāng ("soup"), again in the traditional form, but not that different from 汤.

So, what to expect from "First Taste Soup"? Well, lots of herbal soups, of course. Although we ended up trying the bakuteh instead, for a Chinese-Chinese take on this Malaysian-Chinese dish (lots of ginger, only a fraction of the garlic), and these delicious Chilli Wine Prawn Balls below...