If you’re looking for the cheapest and finest food court around the Sydney CBD, make your way to Hunter Connection, right across Wynyard Station on George Street.
You know you’re right outside the entrance to the food court if you see an optometrist on the right hand side (and St. George Bank right next to it).
My favourite is the Chinese/Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall that sells 3 for $10 packed lunches – perfect if you’re with friends. Otherwise, you can still get one packed lunch for $4, which gets you roast pork with rice and vegetables, steamed chicken with rice and vegetables (and egg if you want) to Vietnamese rice noodles and spring rolls.
What makes this particular shop different is that it always has a constant stream of people buying from them so the dishes are almost always just out of the oven, so to speak.
Like most food courts, the food is discounted after peak lunch time. One late afternoon, I went there around 3pm and found that one of the Japanese take-away shops sell bento boxes for a bargain price of $4: that includes Japanese rice and three choices (I chose deep fried tofu, eggplants and teriyaki beef).
If you don’t feel like a heavy meal that includes rice or noodles, the food court also has two Vietnamese shops where you can buy pork rolls (almost as good as the one in Bankstown but the upside is that the Hunter Connection one looks more hygienic!)
As a city worker, I’ve been to many take-away joints and trust me, the shops I visited at Hunter all passed the taste test. There’s no point buying cheap meals if they taste disgusting. At Hunter, it’s a win-win situation for your pocket and your stomach.