Shallot pancake from Grape Garden Beijing Cuisine. Lunch and dinner daily; Harbour Plaza, 25-29 Dixon Street, Haymarket. The ramen at Gumshara (phone: 0410 253 180) is proof that quality, soul-nourishing home-cooked food can come out of a food court. There is nothing humble about its signature bowl of broth, the tonkotsu pork sparerib ramen ($15.50), which begins life as 120 kilograms of pork bones, water and miso, all boiled down to a heroic collagen-rich soup that makes your lips tacky and conversation stop. I prefer the lighter Hakata-style noodle soup ($10.50), a watered-down tonkotsu that reminds me of the soups my mum used to make, with tender slices of pork belly, nori sheets and crunchy pickled radish. For something lighter, pick at a whole crispy fish ($10.50), deep-fried into a bronzed sculpture on the plate, from At Thai Cuisine (phone: 0423 630 854), or graze on smoky north-eastern Chinese skewers at Red Charcoal BBQ (phone: 9211 8825). Everything from beef ($5 for three), butterflied quail ($7), enoki mushrooms ($5) and sweet garlic chives ($5) gets basted in a fiery cumin, sesame seed and chilli paste, and is then grilled to order over coals. Look for the "Friday Market BBQ" signage and on "rainy days", they offer 20 skewers for $20 (although the signs are only in Chinese). DIXON HOUSE Lunch and dinner daily; corner of Dixon and Little Hay streets, Haymarket.

Chirashi from Sushi-Nagashima. Consider this food court a big jet plane (albeit a worn one with mirrored ceilings and a wood-panelled fuselage) in which you could fly around Asia in 15 food stalls. First stop is Dongbei province in north-eastern China with juicy cumin-chilli lamb leg skewers cooked over coals ($2 each) at Anna's Kitchen; followed by stopovers in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, then back to China for northern dumplings at Oriental Dumpling King (phone: 0432 238 880). Made-to-order dumplings at the peak of lunch-hour madness might seem, ah, mad, but rustic half-moons with frilly edges are turned out dextrously, 16 to a plate ($9.30). The white-flour wrappers, more delicate than the run-of-the-mill kind, are filled with juicy minced pork, prawn and chives. What at first seems like a great wall of dumplings disappears as quickly as they're made. The braised pork burger bun is nothing more than pork belly slow-braised in dark soy, roughly chopped, and sandwiched with a few rings of green chilli in a house-made bun. The pork is satisfyingly moist and the bun, slightly sour, is spongy and pan-toasted. For me, it is the Asian equivalent of the glorious Florentine lampredotto - piping-hot braised tripe, salsa rosso and salsa verde stuffed in a fresh panini. With the yang must come the yin, so with the pork belly must come the tonic in the form of honeysuckle tea ($3.50) from De Juice. Sweetened with honey and infused with goji berries, this medicinal tea is said to have a cooling effect on the system. SUSSEX CENTRE Lunch and dinner daily; 401-430 Sussex Street, Haymarket. Pickles and fermented foods are some of my favourite things and Korean kim chi is no exception. At Wooree BBQ (phone: 9211 5988), they take kim chi and use it as a base for a soul-satisfying soup with tofu, pork and bean sprouts ($9.30); their hotpot beef bibimbap ($9.50) is fried rice squared.

BASEMENT, 303 PITT STREET Lunch Mon-Fri; basement, Pittsway Arcade, 303 Pitt Street, city. When this underworld hotpot of Malaysian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Cantonese, Korean and Indian cuisines is packed, the atmosphere can be stifling, but it's worth enduring to sample the peasant-style Cantonese dishes at Vincent BBQ & Chinese Food (phone: 9264 6757). Order from the handwritten menus (instead of the backlit board) and you'll find a worthy fried rice ($9.50), generously dotted with lup cheong (Chinese pork sausage), fat prawns and shreds of fluffy egg. I've never met a bowl of congee (rice porridge) that I didn't call a friend, but it's a rare find outside Chinatown and even more so in a food court - which makes the one here with century egg, chopped pork and fried wonton crisps ($7.50) doubly special. I like to eat lots of different titbits in a meal and the nasi lemak ($8.50) at Sayong Curry & Laksa (phone: 9261 3623) embodies my eating style all on one plate: coconut-perfumed rice, rich beef rendang, well-toasted peanuts, spicy chilli sambal and - the best bit - sweet caramelised onions with crunchy salty ikan bilis (fried anchovies). THE GALERIES Lunch daily, dinner Thu; lower ground, 500 George Street, city.

The newly refurbished surrounds of The Galeries food hall is not the only thing to get a makeover. At Madame Nhu (phone: 9283 3355), the classic Vietnamese pho (rice-noodle soup) gets glammed up with thick slices of grass-fed Tasmanian beef brisket ($9.50) swimming in an aromatic mahogany-hued broth. Across the way, Chat Thai (phone: 9283 5789) has one of the most varied and best bain-marie menus (from $8.90 for two choices) I've tasted - the battered choo chee fish curry on Thursdays is a winner, and they know how to balance sour, salty, sweet and spice in their boat noodle soup ($10.90). Ichi-ban Boshi Express (phone: 9264 7780) is also in the running for the gong for the best bowl of noodles in this food court, but you'll have to go up to the restaurant proper on level two to try their tantan tsukemen ($13) - refreshing cold noodles that you dip in a spicy sesame sauce. WESTFIELD SYDNEY Lunch daily, dinner Thu-Sat; Level 5, 188 Pitt Street, city. There's not a bain-marie in sight at this shiny temple to street eats. Construct your own Asian mini-degustation beginning with little puffs of Shanghainese steamed pork dumplings ($5.80 for four) from Din Tai Fung (phone: 8246 7032). Then shimmy into a scarlet leather booth at Sassy's Red (phone: 8072 8072) for crisp lohbak rolls ($6) - a spring roll with a twist (minced chicken wrapped in deep-fried bean curd skin) - before wandering the Streets of Saigon (phone: 8072 7050) and sampling its prawn, pork and pickled lotus stem salad ($12.90). It's refreshing and wakes the palate for main course: back to Sassy Red for either char kway teow ($13) - thick-cut rice noodles tossed with dark soy - or the Sichuan-spiced dan dan mian ($10.80), which translates to "carry pole noodles", named after the way they used to be sold on the streets. HUNTER CONNECTION

Lunch Mon-Fri; 7-13 Hunter Street, city. This two-level food court is filled with bargain eating (a hot lunch can be had for as little as $5), but Sushi-Nagashima (phone: 9223 9962) stands tall among the bain-marie crowd. Chef Hiro-san slices his sashimi, from snapper and mackerel to scallop and squid, and places them atop brown rice with seaweed for an unassuming bowl of chirashi (from $6.80). His chanko ($6.80), the traditional stew eaten by sumo wrestlers, is hearty and rustic and worth braving the lunchtime crowds for. LEMON GROVE SHOPPING CENTRE Lunch and dinner daily; 427-441 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood. Order one of everything at Grape Garden Beijing Cuisine (phone: 9411 3933), a modest-looking stall run by husband and wife team Gau Lun and Jie Zhang (aka Noodle Master and Shallot Pancake Queen respectively). With a surly look but a twinkle in her eye, Jie Zhang deftly rolls her shallot pancakes ($4.50) to order. They're crisp wedges of dough with a pillowy centre, and are just one of the many recipes passed down from Jie Zhang's grandfather, along with the coil of hand-pulled noodles ($8.50), which are slippery and silken yet chewy, all the better for some spicy dan dan sauce to cling to. The mapo tofu ($9.50), deep crimson like a monk's robe and mouth-numbing from Sichuan pepper, is feisty and honest. They also have a bricks-and-mortar restaurant in Willoughby.

Tips to navigate through gloppy sauces and MSG overload • The more concise the menu, the better. A stall that specialises in a particular dish or cuisine from a specific region will often be more authentic. • A handwritten menu, especially one in a foreign language as well as in English, can be a good indicator that what's on offer is the real deal. • "No added MSG" means exactly that - but that doesn't mean they don't use bottled sauces that already contain MSG. • If you order a wok-fried dish, particularly noodles or rice, it's best to eat it immediately, rather than have the meal packed up in a takeaway container. The first few minutes that a dish is turned out of the wok offer the best eating, as you can taste the essence of the wok in the food, its wok hei.

• The best time to visit a food court is in the morning, from about 11.30am, before the lunch-hour crush snowballs. Advertised opening hours are not necessarily strictly followed, and if you arrive too early or too late, you may find that the food's not ready or, worse, all gone. • For a sweet and cleansing treat, the black sesame ice-cream at Passionflower (Shop G12, Capitol Square, 730-742 George Street, Haymarket; phone: 9281 8322) is like Chinese 70 per cent dark chocolate. Or cool down with a toasted brown rice ice tea at Chatime (Shop 5016, Westfield Sydney, 188 Pitt Street, city; phone: 9232 2968). Source: the (sydney) magazine