Streetlessness – a stationary concern

Streetlessness – a stationary concern

by | 21 Sep, 2011 | consumption, food

I think we’re selling ourselves short. Way short. Australia has some of the best food I have eaten. Sure, this comment can come across a little small-minded, even jingoistic, but I think there are many ways to justify this, which I hope to remember to go into on a post soon. However, regardless of the quality of our food, I don’t think we’re integrating it into our lives in a memorable and distinct manner. We have kept the act of eating at arms length from our lives.

A list of my most memorable meals, would have a splattering of family gatherings, weekend bbqs, a wedding or ten, and perhaps a few of life’s key moments, (queue the tears of joy, saddened longing stares and elated embraces). But once you normalise the equation of life, and focus on the food and atmosphere, then one thing stands out for me… the streets.

I recently got asked about my favourite meals ever, and of the top of my head the first few seemed to be consumed outdoors, standing up, walking or leaning against some railing dividing me from the adventure beyond it. I’m not, as it might be appearing, suggesting that I’m the outdoors type, but become one at feeding times.

I’m not entirely sure of the reasons behind this. Perhaps it’s the high results-to-expectation ratio, the russian roulette game being played with salmonela, or that any meat appears to be smoke-cured thanks to the passing traffic, but street (or market) food excite me like no other. I, like many, consume most of my meals at home, an eatery (includes restaurant/cafe/bar/etc), or glued to my work-desk. But whilst travelling, much like my modern cohort, I try to include a generous sprinkling of the outdoor variety.

Banana Crepes – Ho Chi Minh City
Unfortunately not only for tourists, but more so for locals, street food is a no-show across Australia!
Our travel guides are full of stories of where to get the best 20 baht pad thai, (Victory Monument – BKK has my vote), how to best match a pilsner to a bratwurst in Vienna, or how many tacos one can get for $2 in Guadalajara, but try picking up a bite on the run in Oz and you’ll probably end up scooping a pie at the 7eleven, or one of the trillion McChickenHuts conveniently located by your right foot.
All this despite a growing demand for these cuisines, with every second restaurant opening in Melbourne offering hawker style food, much like ‘tapas’ recently infested every restaurant and bar in the country like flu-carrying conquistadors. Street Thai, and now Street Vietnamese, are some of the biggest selling recipe books on the market, (and they’re not even a MasterCheff spin off!)
Unfortunately, when trying to bring the streets to Melbourne, they skip the pavement, jump a lane way, climb a staircase, and bring out the linen… a-la-carte anyone?
Chin Chin, one of the latest wonders of Melbourne’s culinary elite, has been described by Broadsheet (http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/food-and-drink/article/thai-diner-chin-chin-opens) as “street-inspired Asian food”. This much is surely true, but by the time you waited for a free table (20-50 minutes), viewed the menu (1-15), heard the omnipresent spill explaining how the menu is “designed to be shared” (waiter-dependant), ordered and received the plated food, the street cart which inspired this whole situation has crossed 12 red lights, smoked half a packet and sacrificed 7 chickens at the altar of palm oil!
Similarly overcooked is the menu. Unhappy for us to suffer through mediocrity, it’s quality produce throughout. The soups include blue swimmer crab wontons, Hopkins River beef, and Yamba King Prawns. And as wonderful as I assume they all are, (I’ve only tried 1), they were missing the key ingredient: asphalt.
If Chris Lucas were to stand on the corner of Collins and Russell Sts, serving his delightfully sticky caramelised pork with chilli vinegar, sans fanfare and half the price (seeing as the overheads would be nothing but blue skies), then I’d be heading to my nearest Flight Centre and getting myself a piece of that pie! Conversely, Australian cuisine will continue to be a technically proficient orchestra… there’s just no one dancing.

Two Eggs and More

by | 10 Sep, 2011 | food

So in the last couple of weekends I’ve had two very different breakfast experiences: one, a top of the pops, fashionable who’s who of Melbourne eateries in the inner north, where the wait-staff seemed to have walked straight out of the sartorialist, the coffees’ design matched the décor, and the high ceilings within the recently renovated warehouse could have housed art worthy of the price I paid for the meal; the second an outer suburb coffee shop, complete with coke advertising, a TV showing the latest hits of the 90’s (which coincidentally was the last time they updated the menu), clientèle who can remember the “talkies”, and genuine pre-mining boom prices.
Surprisingly, I probably won’t rush back to either. One because it was a dire disappointment, and the second because the outer suburbs are just too far to drive to on a lazy weekend morning.
At first appearances, everything from the atmos to the menu looked tiptop at Three Bags Full. Having dealt with the internal demons which momentarily suggested my worthiness of breaking bread with such high-society was in question, we sat at the communal table, where the shared sense of fortune at having scored one of the last empty seats was not only palpable but almost suffocating. Sure I have TheAge online readily available at home, but my world knowledge is all the better for having read the communal copy from which countless others, much like myself, fed on throughout the morning. I could almost absorb their intellect by osmosis.
Unfortunately, much like the Sistine chapel, by the time the meal reached my taste buds, the weight of expectation built by walking through all the previous corridors, for hours on end, proved too much for the toasted muffins to carry.  Having moved through the process alike the 5 stages of grief, by the time I got past the anger, I finally walked into the tiny room, looked up at the ceiling and thought: “are those the eggs I’d heard so much about?”. Also, much like the Sistine, everyone seems to be taking photos of the main meal, though at the cafe scene this is not discouraged, but rather seen as free advertising. It would have taken Michelangelo himself to paint on my coffee for me to be somewhat impressed.
In the outskirts of Melbourne, however, my super crispy bacon and eggs, with butter-drowned toast, was nothing short of predictable, the hash-brown a side of deep fried goodness, and the service so forgettable I’m not convinced it wasn’t a mirage.
But after all that, I walked out satisfied I’d gotten not only what I was after, but what I expected. There’s little hope of such a shop, with its pungent aroma of nostalgia for my Brisbane bistro breakfast days, would inspire or even excite me. It fulfilled its role, which was to be a backdrop to the morning’s conversation, and absorb the leftover alcohol that a good night left behind.
Unfortunately for most noteworthy cafes, the build up is bigger than the messiah’s (first, second or third) coming, (depending on what book you follow). I can’t for a second suggest that had I received my Three Bags Full meal at the suburban version, I would not have contemplated becoming a believer myself. But as I cannot completely dissect my experiences, I’ll either have to learn to re-calibrate expectations, or move out to Frankston.
Sometimes, however, even if somewhat seldom, one walks into the St Peter’s Basilica, and as the crowds dance through the marble floors around you, the twice cooked fat of istra bacon makes its way down your throat, and you think “holly ….”. That’s worth a second mortgage.

Hunting menus and plagiarizing collectors

by | 4 Sep, 2011 | food

So I find myself committed. Tomorrow I’m to cook for a few friends, and as always I’m trying to plan the menu in advance. I’m uncertain if this is hereditary, but my grandmother moved around the kitchen like a chess board. I remember us having breakfast one morning as she thought out loud “What will we have for dinner?”. She was always thinking two moves ahead…

Tomorrow’s will be a set menu, I feel a-la-carte would be pushing it.

Preparing a menu is an interesting process: how many other things are so clearly a mishmash of stolen ideas? In some ways it is like playing with a covers band. I’ll be serving someone else’s food, but trying to add my individual touch. And the audience appreciates the familiarity. Particularly on a warm Sunday evening, when, beer in hand, a rendition of Crowded House goes down much like your mother’s roast.

I’m fairly comfortable with culinary plagiarism, and practice it on a daily basis.

Perhaps of more interest is the amount of time which many, like myself, spend thinking of what our next meal will be. My own repertoire is certainly not worth considering at such lengths. Traditionally, however, we evolved obsessed with where our next meal would come from. Should we walk kilometres and kilometres to pick fruits and root vegetables, or perhaps organise a mob to hunt down a deer. Days upon days wandering the woods in search of such a prey, no doubt spending most of the time in a state of near-starvation, anger and delirium. Now, being well aware that Coles has a nice range of meats, veggies and enough carbos to feed Djibouti, surely we no longer need to preoccupy ourselves with where our next meal is, but somehow we’ve substituted it with what our next meal will be. I’m not sure if that is evolutionary empathy, or culinary baggage.

I think tomorrow I’ll take all the credit. I single-handedly caught the barramundi, picked the lychees, brought the coconuts down from the trees, and while I waited for the rice to grow, I invented Thai food. Why not?

Sans salad

Sans salad

by | 27 Aug, 2011 | food

As much as food these days is somewhat of a social lubricant, or in my case, an opportunity for others to speak while the food interrupts me, it hasn’t always been such an enhancer of my social life.

Argentinians are known to be a carnivorous bunch, having only recently relinquished a long held mantel of highest beef consumption per capita to Uruguay. But even in such good company, I stood out for my disdain towards fruit and vegetables, and in particular, the common salad. This side dish mostly made up of lettuce, tomato and onion, with a light dressing, has long tormented me and has impacted on my personality and quality of life far more than desirable.

As a young lad, I hesitated and desisted to go to my friends’ for dinner and sleep-overs, as invariably “it” would be served at the table, and the shame I felt at having to ask for a dish with meat or pasta, but no salad, made the rest of the evening an exercise in self castigation. These became some of my earliest memories of anxiety, a feeling I still get every time I eat in public.

Unfortunately, my condition was not very well accepted by the community in the 80s, and there were certainly no support groups for it, so I suffered alone. The social isolation which ensued still lingers in my psyche. I can still smell the balsamic dressing in my nightmares. While the other children laughed and played, and happily rejoiced on the wonderful memory-making moments that slumber parties, school camps and outdoor picnics presented them, I was putting a down payment on my first box of Aropax.

As I grew older, I somewhat made peace with my eating disorder. I also vastly enlarged my range of consumables, but the social anxiety persists. Catered work lunches are a particular occasion when the cold sweats and enlarged pupils occur. No doubt in an attempt to justify the prices, caterers ensure that every sandwich on the table has at least three colours within the slices, and such artistry can only mean pain, suffering or starvation for the rest of my afternoon. Under such circumstances, which usually find one holding a sandwich with nothing but a napkin or a slight paper plate, not even Houdini could make the salad disappear without destroying the meal, or making a scene. Especially as one is usually simultaneously conversing, or ‘networking’, in close proximity with those who one is trying to impress, or in the very least, not disgust. And so, the torturous salad is once again consumed… bite by bite. Or more predictably, end up discarded untouched and hidden, amongst the rest of the over-catering, which no doubt occurred.

The backyard bbq provides the social equivalent to the work morning tea, with the added bonus that these events are not catered but rather a physical manifestation of your friends’ effort, love and affection for each other. And so, as the makers of said salads mingle nearby, their leering so intense it could re-heat the fried onion, (which I certainly do partake in), the salad avoidance dance is taken to almost professional levels.

By my late twenties I had become a lot more adept at dealing with such situations, carefully avoiding the wrong queue at a buffet, purposely ensuring to be last serving oneself in order for the portions to have run out, or filling the plate with enough bread so the lack of salad doesn’t raise much curios inquisition, but occasionally, when you least expect it, in a moment of distraction, someone selflessly hands you a plate with a whole side of it. And as I look down unto such a plate, almost with a balsamic-drowned resignation, I curse, “Oh salad, why hast thou forsaken me!”

I think I’ve stretched enough…

by | 23 Aug, 2011 | food

So for a while now I have made food a huge part of my life. Some call it a passion, others whisper obsession… I think it’s more of a socially accepted addiction.

Much like others, I can remember the first time I realised I had a problem. Sure, I’d noticed that I ate on a daily basis, but it was only when I joined thousands around the Australia, raising money for the needy, in a selfless moment of teenage altruism, that a mere 6 hours into my first and only “40-hour famine” I realized I was an addict. And I have been dealing with it ever since.

Many years ago in an attempt to justify, or perhaps disguise my addiction, I made it work for me, or possibly more accurately, I worked for it. Hospitality fed me throughout my university life, as I hop-scotched my way through many versions of food and drink disposals: pizza joints, upper-middle class suburban bistros, student cafes, chic bars, the omnipresent tex-mex, and 24-hour casino eateries. I have worked my way around the various formations of what globally feeds those who won’t feed themselves. But throughout this whole career, I never succeed in seducing (or working for) one of my life long loves: McDonald’s. My unrequited relationship with the golden arches will always represent hope and regret, neatly wrapped up in a perfect happy meal.

So, towards the end of my hospitality careers, in an attempt to put all those moments of “I could do this better” which I had had into action, a mate and I decided to open a tidy little restaurant. And so we did. At the time we could both had been described as foodies, coffee wankers, pretentious gits, or perhaps just young and good looking, and so our restaurant reflected these qualities. The place tried to push a few boundaries, which back then in Brisbane it was not hard to do. Brisbane’s restaurant scene was little more than an expanding food court: a carvery, fast-food in every shape and size, a couple (at most) of worldly options so assimilated, they made the white-Australia policy seem positively open minded; and the obligatory Coffee Club. (For non Queenslanders, The Coffee Club is to coffee what Nickelback is to music…) So, putting ingredients like saganaki, israeli couscous, kangaroo or chermoula on the menu was seen as risky and challenging, or dare I say it, unAustralian. Mind you, like many other restaurants, in times of trouble, insecurity or discomfort, one could always utter the safe-words… “I’ll have the chicken, thanks.”

After leaving hospitality I moved to Melbourne and joined the many behind a desk. I ate out at some of the city’s best and ordered aplenty. I made the most of what living in Australia’s culinary capital has to offer: a combination of multiculturalism, amazing produce, and an exploding cultural desire to prop food up to the realms traditionally reserved for war heroes, film stars and sports-folk. But now, driven either by my contrary nature or my fiscal conservatism, I am moving further and further away from this world, and now struggle to justify or even enjoy all that jazzed-up grub.

So, I thought, in order to better understand my views on food, and my relationships with it, (I use the plural because I also have issues with commitment, and most dishes I’ve had would not have made it past a first date), I would start this and see where it goes. At this stage, I only have a vague idea of where that might be… There might be some introspection and autobiographical over-sharing, the occasional rant, reviews and praise for various places which I frequent; along with opinions on how either I, society, or the government, should challenge the status quo… There might be some research, or fiction based on something I wish had happened. But overall, it will be an exercise in embracing my online persona, which for so long I have kept conservatively quite, repressed and case sensitive.

I also hope not to get too hurt in the process.