Curry Lovers: Epping (3rd Anniversary Special)

You all seemed to enjoy equal-third place Barangaroo. As such, I am thrilled to give you equal-third place Epping. 

As a suburb, Epping's one I actually know pretty well, having grown up in the general area. As a result, I have no idea why people wanted me to come here. Let's see if visiting this place with a new outlook will change my view. 

Epping

Epping sits in the city's northwest, and takes anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes to get to from Central, depending on which train you manage to catch.

 

I took the shiny metro in due to trackwork on the Northern Line, 

and emerged onto the street. 

Once a sleepy suburb centre, Epping CBD is now a sleepy suburb centre with some huge new apartments. Some would criticise this, but as Epping is a suburb with good public transport, this seems as good a place as any to plonk down some towers.  

Otherwise, this side of the station has a few local shops and restaurants,  

a couple of heritagey looking places, 

and this suspicious walkway,

which I followed, 

to end up back at the station. As I was planning to do most of my exploration on the other side of the tracks, this was perfectly okay. 

Interestingly, outside of Epping station is this collection of directions informing the intrepid traveller how far they'd need to hike to get to some points of interest along the Great North Walk. Newcastle is just a cruisy 226km stroll from here. 

That being said, you can actually enjoy some more reasonable local bushwalks from here without going all the way to Newcastle. A few years ago I did a much shorter short bushwalk from here to neighbouring Eastwood (one of my favourite suburbs, by the way) along the Lane Cove River. You can see that route on Wildwalks should you wish to do it yourself. 

But alas, today was a bit more urban (well, as urban as a place like Epping can get), so I crossed the station, 

over the always busy Beecroft Road, 

and made it to street level. 

Similar to the other side of the tracks, this side also has local shops and restaurants, such as the local kebabbery where you can get a burger and snack pack combo (affectionately named The Seizure), 

as well as an assortment of mainly Asian eateries,

and some less than inspiring other shopfronts. 

The restaurants at this side of Epping are cursed with the same issue that Beverly Hills faced: who wants to hang out on such a busy road? 

But this seemed like as good a time as any to grab some lunch. As a fan of hot dumplings, I chose to eat at Hot Dumpling today,

an almost-literal hole in the wall. 

On their specials menu were these. Because I'm crap at this, I forgot what these actually were, apart from prawn and pork (and green, apparently). 

What I do remember is that it tasted good, although I think I was the only guy here to put his sauce in that little circular crater in the plate. Did I commit a dumpling faux pas? We may never know. 

Here's a completely unrelated story. On this strip in Epping is a restaurant called Curry Lovers. As immature highschoolers on the bus to tennis, we would go past here. As a result, every kid on the bus had Curry Lovers saved as a contact in their flip phones, because it was hilarious at the time. Hell, a trip to tennis wasn't complete without some 15 year old with patchy facial hair giving the good folks a call. I'll be honest, it's still kind of funny. 

When I was planning this outing, I thought it would fun to finally give Curry Lovers a try after all these years. Unfortunately, it turns out they're only open for dinner. 

Anyway, I continued on, full of dumplings, and not curry. 

This looped me off of Beecroft road, and onto a secondary Epping street (Rawson Street, for those playing along at home). 

Along here, I passed this Korean restaurant/HSC tutoring house, which is about as Epping as it gets. 

Satisfied I'd covered enough of commercial Epping, I continued on,

to Boronia Park. 

Tucked away behind Epping Shops, Boronia Park is a surprisingly excellent park that I'd somehow never been to. It's got plenty of trees, 

a war memorial, 

the Amazon River,  

some sports thing, 

and a pretty fun looking playground, if I do say so myself. 

Passing through the park, 

I next found myself in residential Epping,

where the streets are almost as green as the park.  

I saw this giant metal lizard, 

and houses that in a past life were regular houses, 

but today are, for some reason, worth many millions of dollars. 

I enjoyed this one's fence. 

Continuing on through the heavily wooded streets of Epping, 

led me to another, smaller strip of shops, 

which I ignored and headed past.

Soon, I reached an intersection with another main road - the also busy Carlingford Road. 

It was here that I met an old nemesis - intersections without pedestrian crossings. Dammit Sydney. 

Because I couldn't be bothered going the long way around (I had an infrequent bus to catch), I eventually managed to safely run across the road in order to continue through suburban Epping. 

This took me to this house with a wagonwheel out front, 

and more importantly, West Epping Park. 

Like Boronia Park (but also very different), this park is also quite excellent, 

with basketball courts and another really fun looking playground, 

as well as this.

I think it's a soccer pitch with artificial grass. Does that make it technically an outdoor indoor soccer pitch? But more importantly, where are the goals?

Leaving the park with more questions than answers, I hit the road once more, 

soon reaching the bus stop that would take me my next suburb. 

Epping: Green streets, green parks, and green dumplings.