Hot Dog Feast: Chester Hill & Villawood

If I had a guide dog puppy, I'd name it Chester. 

Chester Hill (Part 1)

My Chester Hill adventures began by leaving Old Guildford and crossing the wide and busy Woodville road on foot,

and heading into this back alley.

This took me into yet another Western Sydney suburban street. 

Do we really need me to describe what Western Sydney suburbia looks like again?

Big houses,

small houses,

cute houses,

not so cute houses.

It's all suburbia.

After a small stroll through residential Chester Hill, I hit our first mini commercial centre - this shopping strip.

This isn't the most exciting shopping centre in the world, but I did get a kick out of this Middle Eastern grocery,

that imports Arabic Pepsi. Is it different to Australian Pepsi? I wasn't about to purchase a slab of Pepsi to carry around with me to find out. 

Carrying on southward,

I noticed this row of identical houses across the road. 

Checking my map made me aware that those houses are in another suburb. Naturally, I crossed the road and began on the bonus suburb.

Villawood

If your knowledge is in line with my own, Villawood is an immigration detention centre. Well it's also a suburb that a number of non-detained folks also live in. This fine roundabout marks my entry into the suburb.

Crossing the roundabout put me in what I can only describe as the border of people's gardens and scary government land. 

I assumed that the scary government land was the detention centre itself, however Google Maps tells me that it's actually the National Archives of Australia. Neat. 

And the houses? Well it's a new housing estate,

with, for some reason, a pastel design.

Continuing on through this gender-reveal party of a housing estate, 

I soon reached the end of free-roam suburbia, marked by some scary fences, 

meaning it was time to loop back into our main suburb for this post.

Villawood: Am I being detained?

Chester Hill (Part 2)

Guess who's back in the suburbia of Chester Hill?

My resumption took me past the offices of the local Tupperware consultancy,

some more new builds,

and a continued fair share of standard Western Sydney suburbia. 

Eventually, my gallivanting resulted in my landing at Chester Hill's actual CBD, the starting point which is marked by this café. 

Downtown Chester Hill is fairly typical for Western Sydney, 

between the Lebanese bakery,

cloth store,

and homewares. 

Other interesting businesses include the local Islamic lawyer,

hobby shop,

and discount store selling knock-off spidermen. 

Another thing that caught my eye was the unique and colourful facade of the shops across the road from the main strip.

But having travelled four suburbs today, I was ready for some lunch. A place called "Blazin Grillz" appealed to my carnivorous side today. This place mainly does burgers and hot dogs.

The best hot dog I ever had in my life was a street dog in Chicago with mustard, pickle and tomato (at a cart called Kim and Carlo's, should you ever find yourself in the windy city). Ever since that day seven-odd years ago, I've chased that high. Naturally, when one of the hot dogs on the menu was sold as a Chicago Dog, I thought I'd give it a go. 

Their rendition of a Chicago dog involves a beef sausage, onion, pickle-relish, mustard, ketchup and beef-bacon (27% of Chester Hill were Muslim as of the 2016 census). Tasty, but my yearning for the true product of Chicago remains. 

I had the meal with some standard shoestring fries and a (sadly non-Arabic) Pepsi. 

Now, I wouldn't normally have dessert right after lunch, but this very kitschy Middle Eastern sweet shop a few doors down caught my eye with their special of two baklava and a coffee for $5. We're in recession so it was only natural I do my bit to stimulate the local economy. 

It sure looks the part inside.

Sadly, the baklava did not deliver and was average at best. I don't know if it's all their sweets or if they just cheap out their "special", but their baklava was essentially just pastry and sugar, and didn't taste too fresh either. I'll plug some better Middle Eastern sweet shops on this blog some time. Sadly, this ain't it. 

With lunch and dessert in me, and two more suburbs checked off the list, I was ready to call it a day. From the local shops, Chester Hill station is just across the road.

Chester Hill: Home of the Arabic Pepsi.