I have already written in passing of the beautiful food in Canberra. That was in the summer and the brightly coloured, sharply felt descriptions make me smile now as I nestle by a fire in the middle of winter. Banish thoughts, dear chaps, of cosy small stoves and feet on the hearth. This is Canberra, and my fire is a somewhat peculiar pile of stones in the middle of the room three metres away circled by a chaise longue style of cushioned stone bench in a swanky hotel.
I ain’t complaining.
I have always judged the sophistication of an eating establishment by the prevalence of nouns or adjectives in the description of a dish that I don’t understand. Back in 2009, I was impressed by the promise of initiation into the secret, sensual world evoked by ‘jus.’
So when I sat down for breakfast last month at Industry Beans in Melbourne, I had to re-evaluate. Contemplating between avocado smash with beetroot dust, or juniper berry sous vide salmon with Japanese (please) seaweed, edible sand and sea foam, it was clear that cuisine poncery had aggressively ratcheted up a notch.
To date, I still have no idea what most of that means. But I can tell you that it, and surprisingly, toasted black beans and puffed quinoa (what?), are bloody lovely.
There is a book by Richard Glover; The Land Before Avocado that explores Australia in the seventies; debunking some of those nostalgia myths about ‘the good old days’ (poverty and inequality are always shit, even when you’re young), and tracking the country’s modernisation in culture, transport, leisure and style. And as the name suggests; starting with a reflection on the ubiquity of iceberg lettuce (there was no other kind – sound familiar, countrymen?), it charts Australia’s education and debutante ball into the world of flavour appreciation. But if there indeed is a bad cooking skeleton in Australia’s closet, it’s more repressed than whatever Aunt Ada Doom saw in the woodshed. Australian food has had its therapy and has sprung into the world fully adjusted, and open armed to wonder.
I don’t know if it’s the company I am lucky enough to keep. Let’s not forget Brook who freestyles Ottolenghi; chums who genuinely fight over Swedish moss in world class Danish restaurants, and creative Morris friends who make their own sauerkraut and kimchee. But there is a real appreciation of ingredients, of cultivation and origin that I’ve not seen since Italy. But with a real love of multiculturalism that is treated as a specialisation. In Britain, I think of our multicultural cuisine. Where your Thai is a plate of beige fried stuff, outdone in colour and vibrance by the blue and white crockery it’s served on. Your Indian has been sanitized; new dishes like Tikka Masala invented to appease the bland British palate. And any restaurant you go to, you know exactly what you’re going to get.
In Rice Paper Scissors (huh!), a charming Vietnamese restaurant on Melbourne’s Brunswick street, I got food that blew my mind and changed my life. From now on, all I ever want to taste is lime, coconut, chilli and coriander. I have found perfection – why go back? And paired with beautiful white wines. Wine pairing is a fancy unreachable thing in Britain; only comes on taster menus that are £100 a head and you’ve been meaning to do it for your birthday for years, but never got round to it. Here, it’s standard, and your young, trendy waiter will be able to tell you which will go best with what. A far cry from being asked what a courgette is by your checkout kid in Tesco. They’ll also accurately memorise the entire order from a table of five, while I twitch and reach for my notebook, imploring them to write it down. Young people here snack on rice paper rolls for lunch, dosas and banh mi (it’s a filled roll, it’s a fucken roll) in the way that the average teenager back home clings to Gregs for comfort and familiarity. I’m not saying Australian kids are better than British ones. Just that they have better palates. Sweepingly. In Canberra. Probably.
Yates and I have eaten in Taco Taco. These are also amazing. It is now the year of the Taco in London (I know because Daily Mash told me), but I agree with the satire of the article, that being three months ahead of the food-fashion curve don’t justify the house prices, and I reckon it’s better here anyway. And it’s cheap. We’ve also had a wonderful evening at Terra (which is very helpfully next door to Taco Taco), with the help of its ‘taster’ menu. Yeah, I dig that. I’ll pay you, and you just keep bringing me out dishes of your choice and I’ll trust you. Because you can here! Yates loved that. Great charcoal cooked meats, eggplant salad, roasted cauliflower, seared greens. And a charming shiraz to wash it all down. We also had a less successful, but very delicious, meal at the unpronounceable Mocan and Green Grout, which prides itself on having local artisans hand make the plates they serve ya food on and that sort of shit. It’s beautiful; all wood structures, snuggly little corners and fun metal coat hooks in the shape of little hands. We ate miso eggplant; crisp, fresh zucchini with pickles, cous cous and tahini yoghurt dressing, pork belly, roast quail. I had an oyster. It was wonderful. In my birthday joy, I turned smiling to Yates, lyricising on the flavour of fresh, sea air. He looked at me sardonically and sighed a rabbit sigh. Yes Chris, that’s exactly what I don’t want from my food. For it to taste of fresh air.
Which is what pretty much summed up the evening, because despite five eye-wateringly expensive tapas plates of delight, we left feeling a bit peckish and Yates got up to eat Weetabix at four in the morning. We grimly reflected on the part of Good Omens where Famine gleefully watches a fabulously wealthy (and hungry) model enjoy a first course of lavender scented air. Was a bit like that. There are plenty of places about that will serve you Yates-insufficient quantities of very delicious food.
Then there’s the other side of it all. Maybe this is a throwback from the pre-avocado times. Surprisingly, Australia is the country of pies. Everyone raves about ‘little bakeries’ in ‘little country towns’ where people queue out the door to buy pies for lunch. I have literally seen this. I waited in that queue. It was a really good pie! These country towns are fucken weird; they remind you of pioneer frontier shit out of wild west films; square buildings with corrugated iron roofs and a rickety veranda that surely ought to be filled with red petticoated prostitutes or something. And in the local bakery (it’s not glamorous or anything), you can get hearty, no nonsense little pies of pretty much any meat and combination. And they’re bloody good! I’ve never been a pie fan, really, but as a sort of developed-and-more-nutritious-sausage-roll, they’re pretty damn sufficient. I mean, Australians gotta do weird shit like eat it with ketchup and argue over the best way of applying it, but you know, they got good hearts.
Adoption of European words for food is also as interesting as it is utterly random. Rejecting the Italian term ‘Milanese,’ any breaded food product is ubiquitously a schnitzel, or ‘schnitty.’ Which is charming. But in an obscure reversion to Italian, there is your pub grub classic; the ‘Parma.’ Its full name is ‘Parmagiana’ but there is not a fecking melanzane in sight. Imagine my dismay when spotting it on the menu and thinking ‘oh, how lovely,’ to be warned by an Italian heritage friend; ‘oh no, Chris, it’s not what you think.’ So what is this? Well if you’re used to a charming lasagne style layering of sugo, melanzane and mozzarella, get to destination fucked because this is an abomination. It’s a chicken schnitzel (see above), with a layer of tomato sauce, then a slice of ham (what now?) and cheese.
Right.
Why it persists in being called a parmigiana is utterly mysterious. And apparently, your choice of abbreviation to either parmA or parmI says a lot about ya. Quite what, I don’t know. It doesn’t come up because I don’t eat the fecking thing. But you must understand that’s only because I was expecting the delicious construction that Raffa makes me, not chicken and ham. But if that actually sounds delicious to you, then you won’t be disappointed because there’s always a lot of it. So go forth!
So if you’re a poncey eater, like me, or you dig the more bog-standard no nonsense of meat and chips, you can get it all here in Canberra. But what unites us all is wine.
I’ve been lucky enough to go on two wine tours. They are glorious heady trips of joy, unmatched anywhere. I know Piemonte advertises itself as a wine region, but I just don’t think you can jolly about it drinking in the same way. There were some fantastic tax laws in wine making which may have led to the prevalence of purpose built ‘cellar doors,’ where the wine maker is always on hand (who the hell is harvesting or making the stuff then, remains a mystery) to pour out dribbles of wine to half drunk, smiling enthusiasts who then part with huge sums of money to take it all home. But a day out wine tasting is wonderful. The first time, dear Ed drove and I always go back to the charming vision through the window of ‘Helm’ wines; Ed and Paul striding purposely through the vine bowered garden to set out a glorious picnic with deliberation. We ate smoked trout, pate, breads and cheeses, stuffed peppers, tempura. The second time, lovely Amy drove the fun bus (put your seatbelt on Yates, it’s not that fun) and we drank wine all day, finishing for food in a cosy old restaurant with roaring open fires. All day, drinking wine and smiling and talking about the soils and the climate, and the grapes and the flavours.
So if you want to get on any of this shit, come and visit.