Answering some frequently asked questions about food and fashion in Melbourne
What happened to all the hipsters? Would ‘chicken feet’ be under Animal emojis or Food? Are proms narrative dysfunctions? And other embarrassing silences.
Not even three months into my new Aussie life I managed to tick a few big-ticket items off my to-do list:
Open a bank account, an esoteric experience in itself? Check.
Buy a laptop, after my previous one nearly exploded and turned into a 90s time machine? Check.
Get a phone sim with data? Check.
Not being able to talk to anyone on said phone because of time zones? Also check.
Watch every season of Lost? Bonus points.
New Year’s resolution? With Mercury retrograde I need dark magick, not wishful thinking. - I’m pretty sure my Rising Sign is, in fact, blood pressure.
Mostly, my days consisted of sitting in front of my new laptop, either trying to come up with an acceptable résumé to find a job, or blogging. I considered it a good day when I got to pretend to be a city-girl and venture out into the city. The boyfriend called it ‘the CBD’. That’s when I learned the acronym CBD also meant Central Business District, not only the chemical in cannabis. I was discovering so much about the ‘Big Smoke’. Coincidence?
I loved that Melbourne had a defined city centre and not just a square and a church but, as an Italian, I have never been more lost. I needed points of reference, a north star, spiderweb-like streets that converge to the belltower, and moss on tree trunks.
Moss is supposed to grow on the North-facing side of trunks because there’s less sunlight and more humidity. That’s not always the case in deep forests, as I learned when I qualified last at an orienteering competition one year at Summer Camp. Actually, second-to-last. The very last kid got a consolation prize and I was oddly jealous of that.
Lost seems to be my default status.
I appreciated a well-planned city with a purposeful human-centred design. Alas, Melbourne’s main square didn’t have any purpose. No protests. No Christmas markets. No drug deals. No cathedral. The square wasn’t even in the middle of the city centre. Heck, it wasn’t even on the map! Most importantly, the city centre’s streets formed a neat grid but didn’t go north-south. Insert Italian hand gestures. Why? How could anyone find their way around? The boyfriend tried to explain with a patronizing and matter-of-factly tone:
“Oh it’s easy, the parallel streets are named King, William, Queen, Elizabeth, in order.”
Or
“Look at that skyscraper with the red line, when you see it you know that’s South.”
That was as efficient as moss on trees! Thanks to cars and trams driving on the wrong side of the streets I walked around like there was no earthly way of knowing which direction I was going. Luckily, there were a few shops I used to orientate myself.
You see, we the Millennials, had just moved away from UGG boots and Juicy Couture velour tracksuits, yet, two things still held immense power over us: MAC cosmetics stores, and Starbucks. It’s no wonder, I saw those as synonyms of metropolitan civilisation. Comparable to 7-Eleven, or America if I were a family of Russian mice.
There were no Starbucks in Italy and the streets were paved with cheese.
When lost, I would walk into Starbucks repeating my order mentally to keep up with my city-girl narrative. I wanted to sound casual yet decisive. CouldIpleasehaveamatchalattewithskimmilk. CouldIpleasehaveamatchalattewithskimmilk. CouldIpleasehavea…
“Next!”
“Hi, could I please have aaaah matcha latte? With skimmy milky, please?”
I felt all appearances collapse when the so-called barista started asking me random unfathomable questions.
“Hot or cold?”
“Hot?”
“Size?”
“Normal, the medium one. Ah, there’s six of them? Errrr tall?”
“Name?”
“Matcha latte?”
“…Your name”
“OH! Barbara.”
After some small hiccups that may have given the “barista” some insight that I was, in fact, not a city-girl, I was handed my hot matcha latte.
They wrote the name PABLO on the cup.
Sat on a comfy chair near a window I went through multiple delayed conversations with my friends from home and their important queries.
Do people ride kangaroos?1
Are there spiders everywhere?2
Do people put shrimps on the barbie all the time?3
Do all guys look like Thor and the guy from Hunger Games?4
I decided I was competent enough to answer two questions:
What do people wear?
What do people eat?
The short answer to both was: everything all the time all at once. I’ll elaborate.
Melbourne had the unique geographic benefit of being located, scientifically, ‘in the World’s ass’. It was so far down that it was closer to Antarctica than the Northernmost city in Australia. In Melbourne, there were two main seasons: cold and less cold.
Why are shops advertising “shackets” and “coatigans” like they’re real words?
I was ready for cold weather, after all, I was a mountain girl. I had to walk to school under several centimetres of snow. At times even delayed by herds of sheep on the street. It was common to wear two scarves and to fold your pyjama pants inside your socks to lock the warmth inside. Yet, Melbourne presented me with a different set of fashion challenges.
Having four seasons in a day is a fitting definition and that will always be referenced. People needed to be ready for anything. On the plus side, nobody had to do a seasonal wardrobe change, and every day there would be an hour or two when the weather was juuust perfect.
What the World calls ‘Summer rain’ is nothing compared to that day when we had a rainless thunderstorm with heavy wind, extreme pollen level, and a temperature of 39 degrees. It was like standing in a dusty hair dryer.
Despite the cold and the stubborn lack of insulation in houses, Melbourne retained a somewhat laid-back style inspired by British prisons and Mediterranean/Irish mafia families.
Due to the historical influence of immigrants, Melbourne has always been filled with diverse and exotic cuisine.
This melting pot inspired National delicacies such as spaghetti on toast, Vegemite, dim sims, meat pies, fairy bread, coffee in a half-avocado shells, pavlova, and chicken parma. The horror.
For the lucky ones who don’t know what chicken parma is: imagine an abnormally large chicken schnitzel under a thick slice of gelatinous ham, covered in tomato sauce and/or ketchup, topped with mozzarella. Then roasted (?) until no ingredient was discernible from the others by colour, taste, or texture.
When the boyfriend and I went out to eat, my go-to rule to separate legitimate Italian restaurants from the rest was spotting grammar mistakes. Much to my surprise, there were none on the menu I was perusing that night. But then I noticed a few extravagant dishes I would hardly classify as Italian: Penne Alfredo and Chicken Alberto. But a dish, in particular, grabbed my attention: Chicken satay. That’s right, the one from Indonesia. What just happened to the world? And no grammar mistakes? The owner must be a fool to think they can trick customers like that. Or a genius for actually doing so and staying in business.
Eaten by curiosity, I tracked down some online reviews:
Fritz states: “It’s an Italian restaurant and I couldn’t work out why satays were on the menu”.
Oh Fritzie, neither do we.
Paul, a human non-vampire connoisseur says: “I had chicken satay and carbonara ravioli. My wife had fettuccine amatriciana. All really impressed. My only complaint was the garlic bread was a little too garlicky”.
YanW had it even worse: “Two family members got quite sick from food poisoning a few hours later during the night, vomiting and diarrhoea. Still quite sick even after 24 hours. Most likely due to the sauce for dips, but also had pasta, risotto, steak and duck confit”.
KittyKat couldn’t care less about Italian cuisine and says: “My daughter enjoyed her fish and chips and I loved my chicken satay”.
Brisbane123 speaks directly to my heart and writes: “Never before have I been to an Italian restaurant and not served freshly grated Parmesan cheese… I was terribly embarrassed!”
Sean couldn’t make up his mind: “Food wasn’t bad but definitely not great. Some staff friendly, others unwelcoming”.
Such is life, Sean.
Such is life.
Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence:
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The "baristas," the horror of fairy bread 😂🤣, the questionable italian food. The flavor-less produce, and, if you have kids, the never-ending "pass the parcel" nightmare of a party game that sent me to the bottle for consolation!! Oh, I miss Oz! Fifteen years is R-Adelaide, and it was absolutely the best time of my life. How lovely to hear your take... I was really disoriented when I arrived, too, but Oz is so damn laid back (even in Melbourne, I'd say) and that is good for the soul. Thank god for VPN's and not having to watch the ABC. Having said that, we use VPN's to watch AFL here in Paris... once you have kids there, it's hard to avoid it! 🤣 Good luck, mate. ❤️
Great read 😀. I have visited Australia a few times now because I have family living there and whenever I've visited Melbourne, I've only enjoyed it immensely. It's definitely in the list of cities I would love to live and work for periods of my life. Except the time I had to drive in Melbourne and got flummoxed and panicky about the hook turns. Also the trams looks cute and quaint only from the outside. The last time I was in one, I briefly did not hold something and it took off with a bone rattling jerk. I literally fell on the lap of a nice lady who was sitting. My 4 year old nephew couldn't believe that a full blown adult could be doing this.