Category Archives: Blah blah blah

Dal-ing, may I check your pulse?

10 Comments

Until very recently, the happily growing number of years we have spent in our current abode have found us – well, me actually – falling into slothful habits when it comes to food storage.

Thus it became routine when a new bag of pulses, beans, lentils were acquired from one of the Indian groceries in Barkley St, to fling the opened bag in a corner of our kitchen where it joined many others.

I was a little more careful with grains – rice and oats and so on.

But still, it was a sloppy look and it had to end.

The mice made sure of it.

I was finally spurred into action one recent night when I heard, while trying to fall asleep, a bunch of the little buggers obviously not just eating … but having a grand old time, a real party, as well.

I found four of them, immobilised and trembling with fear, behind one of our chopping boards.

They looked small and pitiful. But I knew, too, they were the party animals I had heard, for they were all wearing shades.

I did what I could that night, vowing to get some food container action going at the first possible opportunity – probably on the coming weekend.

In the ensuing few days I discovered, however, that while mice may prefer other goodies, when push comes to a shortage of yummy grains, they will indeed consume pulses.

In this case, they turned to a bag – yes, an opened bag – of those small, dark chick peas.

They were dragging them out of the bag, shelling them with paws or teeth and scarfing the innards.

The dark shells were washing up in the benchtop corner.

The resultant detritus reminded me of a bar near where I used to stay In New Orleans, in the days when I travelled there regularly.

O’Henry’s was not the sort of place in which me or my Crescent City friends frequented, it having none of the funky music or food we were into. It was a sort of burger ‘n’ beer place, and I only recall spending time there to watch major league sports events.

What they did offer patrons was an unlimited supply of peanuts in the shell, consumed in vast quantities along with equally vast quantities of beer. The peanuts were, of course, pristine but the shells were salted – meaning thirsts were inflamed.

By closing time, the shells were damn near ankle-deep throughout.

Happily, our storage woes were solved in a single stroke by Peter from Yoyo’s Milkbar, who provided us with two boxes of plastic containers that formerly housed Gum Balls.

I read somewhere a while ago that archaeologists examining ancient human remains can tell whether any given corpse is from the upper classes or the peasant class simply by amount of meat (in the former case) or pulses (in the latter) they have eaten.

We eat meat, but we’d like to think we keep the pulse count up very high.

Of course, it’s the norm that peasant/working class food traditions sometimes work their way up the, ahem, food chain.

Hence the ongoing use of puy lentils in some of your pricier restaurants.

Our minimal exposure to such food – and the use of lentils and other pulses therein – leaves us no doubt that for us such food is a bit flaky and unfulfilling when compared, say, to the recent foul meddammes I had at Al-Alamy.

Nor does it do the job, or have the same oomph, as the many pulse-based dishes we make at home.

We have red beans and rice, New Orleans style, made with a ham hock, ham bone, bacon bones or – at the very least – bacon fat.

We have southern-style backeyed peas the same way. Nice and smoky even without the porky bits!

We use red beans, too, in dal makhani with black lentils, channa dal and perfumed with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, garlic and chilli powder.

We have all sorts of other dals, using mung dal and many other varieties, most often with roasted cumin seeds, ginger, lemon juice, fresh green chillis and fistfuls of fresh coriander.

White beans – sometimes canned – go into minestrone and other thick soups and stews.

Ever since reading many years ago a very evocative passage in a crime book set in the Florida Everglades describing a simple lentil soup/stew heady with cumin, I have been trying to recreate the same.

With only limited success, it has to be said, as the more roasted ground cumin I use, the more bitter becomes the flavour. Generally speaking, Bennie likes the results more than his father.

But my most recent pulse project involved the simplest, and in many ways best, concoction of all, the result of a little ongoing whisper in the back of my mind banging on like a mantra: “Red lentil soup, red lentil soup, red lentil soup …”

Onion, garlic in olive oil, throw in a mashed can of good tomatoes, a cup of red lentils, water, salt, freshly ground pepper.

So simple, so very tasty – with a tangy flavour attained without the use of lemon juice – and so incredibly cheap.

We love our pulses!


40 Melbourne kebab shops in 500 pages? Book of the year!

9 Comments

Derham Groves is a man after my own heart – he’s passionate about things.

Quite a few things, actually.

Let’s see – architecture, on which he lectures/teaches at the University of Melbourne; rabid Geelong Football Club fan; really big on crime literature, with a special and obsessive penchant for Sherlock Holmes. And that’s just for starters.

But I’ve wandered on to the surprisingly expansive and unfamiliar surrounds of the university campus to talk with him about his latest “baby” – a 500-page book concerned solely with an in-depth survey of 40 Melbourne kebab joints.

After a few wrongs turns and helpful guidance along the way, I meet Derham outside University House, in to which we scuttle for a couple of outstanding coffees.

As we sup, I hear the fascinating story of how Kebab Shops In Melbourne – An Architectural Survey came about.

In 2010, Derham visited Iran for three weeks, courtesy of a travel grant from the Iran Heritage Foundation, to look at Iranian brickwork.

As he moved around the country, he needed to eat – as you do – so found himself in many kebab establishments.

Quite apart from the no-doubt delicious food of which he partook in such places, he often found himself befriended, offered food to share and otherwise engaged by the locals.

All this got him thinking … about kebab shops, their role in the community.

And it got him thinking, too, about their equivalents back in Melbourne.

Back home, he initiated a project in which the 90 students in his Popular Architecture and Design course – in teams of two – dispersed across the city, with each team given the task of profiling a kebab shop.

The result is Kebab Shops In Melbourne – An Architectural Survey.

It’s a beaut read, by turns entertaining, revealing and – for the likes of your blogger – absolutely riveting.

Because of the quick turnaround time, the students’ work is unedited and as presented.

Not only do their individual voices comes through loud and clear, but so, too, do those of the small business folk and families who run the kebab places – which in Melbourne, as in Iran, are a ubiquitous yet rarely studied or even appreciated beyond the sometimes urgent needs of a quick, cheap and delicious feed.

This came about because the students were given marching orders that not only covered topics to be expected of an architectural project – fittings, furniture, signage and so on – but also interviews with the operators.

As a celebration of the every day, the book closely mirrors the evolving ethos of Consider The Sauce.

So, too, does the journey undertaken by the students.

Derham tells me that 70 per cent of the students on the course are Chinese. How wonderful and enriching, then, that they ventured out of whatever CBD enclaves, peer groups and noodle shops they ordinarily frequent to meet another vital part of Melbourne’s make-up.

Of course, unlike in Iran, Melbourne’s kebab shops are dominated by families of Turkish and Greek heritage, but that didn’t stop Derham’s students from taking to their tasks with relish – and enjoying some magnificent food along the way.

Included among the 40 kebab shops is long-time Consider The Sauce favourite Footscray Best Kebab House.

Crazy Kebabs in Mount Alexander Rd gets a guernsey, too, but other than that the books finds Brunswick, Sydney Rd, Melbourne’s CBD and Fitzroy heavily represented.

Derham’s students may not have become life-long kebab fans and may duly recall their study sojourn in Melbourne as merely a step on their life journeys, but he tells me that nevertheless when each of them was presented with a copy of the book, it was notable that many of them carried them clasped to their chests, front cover out and clearly visible.

Heck, I’d be a bit proud of such an effort, too!

Kebab Shops In Melbourne – An Architectural Survey is published by the Custom Book Centre of Melbourne University and is available here or from the university’s book shop.

As an academic exercise, it could be argued that the work of Kebab Shops In Melbourne – An Architectural Survey has already been done.

Derham harbours a suspicion, however, that it could go “feral” and become a cult classic.

Me?

I think it should be a bestseller.

A wrap on Derham’s Iran trip – including pics of particularly succulent looking kebabs – can be found here.

Thanks to Derham and his students for letting me republish here a couple of the kebab shop surveys.

 

Pie carts and pumpkins

2 Comments

Yours truly started writing record reviews and music pieces for a New Zealand “underground” freebie rag while about halfway through high school.

Soon after, I started interviewing music folk for the same publication and moved into the newspaper game on a professional basis.

Since then, for several newspapers and various music/entertainment publications in two countries and for 20 years on Melbourne public radio station PBS, I have conducted hundreds – maybe thousands (who’s counting?) – of interviews and written countless reviews and feature stories.

The music passion burns as brightly as ever, but has very, very happily become a more or less private obsession, shared with just a handful of like-minded souls in Melbourne and, online, in the US. I pay for all my music these days and love doing so.

Nevertheless, for most of my life the pleading, spinning, cajoling requests, letters, phone calls, gifts and bribes from PRs, record and film companies, big stars and desperate artists of all kinds has been a ubiquitous part of my life.

Thus it was a strange thing indeed to find myself on the other side of the neverending cycle of those desperately desiring media oxygen and those in a position to provide it.

Consider The Sauce was about 30 posts old when I decided there was enough heft and substance on our blog showing what we were about to go looking for some publicity.

After some research, I fired off numerous emails – including links to Consider The Sauce – to the editors or chiefs of staff of numerous suburban press mastheads.

A little while later, those efforts paid dividends.

The message passed from editor to chief of staff to reporter.

The journo in this case was a capable woman named Anthea Cannon, who has since become a colleague of mine at the Geelong Advertiser.

After picking up Bennie from school one day, we met Anthea and a photographer at La Morenita.

Over coffee and sweeties, I delivered my spiel.

It took a couple of weeks for Anthea’s endeavours to hit the street, during which time I wondered if I’d said too much, been too candid, if the reporter would convey my words accurately, if I’d cringe at the results and live to regret being such a blabbermouth.

An unfamiliar feeling indeed for me, with the shoe firmly on the other foot!

Anthea’s efforts resulted in a wonderful two-page spread in the Maribyrnong Leader featuring not just Bennie and I and our blog but also the wonderful Footscray Food Blog and even a nice piece about a baklava baking class undertaken by Anthea herself at Yarraville Community Centre.

But to my mortification, I learned that I had indeed been a little impolitic – all my own big fault, as Anthea a had scrupulously reported exactly what I’d said!

There it was, right next a photo of father and son, and near the end of the story about our foodie efforts:

“I grew up in New Zealand in a mono-culture, Mum was such a bad cook but she didn’t know any better,” Kenny said.

I waited a few days before phoning my mum in New Zealand.

After even fewer pleasantries than usual, I asked: “Did you read that?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’ve just been telling my neighbours, ‘My son’s told a newspaper that I’m a lousy cook’.”

And then, to my relief, we had a good laugh about it.

For the truth is, we’d discussed the childhoods of myself and my sister, and the food and cooking we grew up with, several times before.

A visit to the Kiwi-influenced vibe of Yoyo’s Milkbar in Sunshine got me thinking along those lines again.

The childhoods in question took place in the 1960s and mid-’70s before the Weir siblings went off into the wide world.

They took place in the deep south of the South Island, in Dunedin, a city that was once a successful gold-fuelled burg that was even then feeling the chill winds of a changing world as its once vibrant industrial landscape faded to dust.

Dunedin has since found its feet as a university, tourism, heritage town, one in which I’m sure I would find immeasurable delight.

At the time of my departure in 1977, though, I could barely wait to get the hell out – even if that was for reasons much more musical, social and cultural than anything edible.

Those childhoods took place in a country that, unlike the very clever Australians across the ditch, had kept a very tight and whitebread rein on post-World War II immigration.

There was no large-scale intake of people from Greece, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon and other Mediterranean and European nations.

There was no olive oil or garlic or flat-leaf continental parsley or pita bread or takeaway souvlaki.

So it was indeed a mono-culture, and even more so in the nether regions of the South Island.

From primary school days, I can recall just a single Maori classmate; from high school days, a single Chinese classmate (more about him and his family later on).

In our home, any discussion about fibre was likely to focus on the various kinds of rope or fishing gear that went with summers of boating and water skiing. Though Weetbix was one of the breakfast options.

Any meat – and there was a LOT of meat – that was pink at the centre would’ve been deemed undercooked or even raw.

There was a lot rabbit, my dad and his younger brother being partial to shooting the loathed critters in the hill country outside Dunedin and in the wild, beautuful landscapes of Central Otago.

We only ever had them, though, as stew or – later on – in a sort of rather tough and chewy pan-fried version.

With slow-cooking and marinating skills being unknown, it was accepted without question that only the very youngest of rabbits were cookable or even edible.

Many years later, when my dad, John Henry Weir, visited me in Melbourne he was astonished almost beyond words to discover at Victoria Market that a medium-sized rabbit cost more than a small one, and a large rabbit more again.

His eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw hares were being sold!

Curry meant, of course, “curry powder” from a small bottle or tin.

We only had it two ways that I can recall – currried mince and curried sausages with heaps of thinly sliced onions and lots of sultanas.

Gosh!

Irony: Many, many years later a real-deal Indian establishment opened up right next door to the family furniture store in Dunedin’s CBD.  This may have even been the city’s first.

I’m inclined to remember that salad meant only one thing – finely sliced iceberg lettuce with rich homemade mayo, sliced tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs.

In truth, though, there was another kind of salad that was rolled out for larger gatherings – one of sliced tomatoes, cucumber and onion, not just dressed in malt vinegar but SWIMMING in it. No – DROWNED in it! No olive oil, remember?

The fruit situation was a huge winner.

How I miss cox’s orange apples!

We had tree tomatoes stewed or fresh on toast with honey – before they were renamed tamarilloes.

We had fresh chinese gooseberries on pavlovas – before they were renamed kiwifruit.

Even now son and mum, on a rare visit by father and son to New Zealand, both delight in revisiting the pleasures of stewed gooseberries.

The peaches and other stone fruit from the Central Otago orchards were outstanding, either fresh or as jam.

Through factors way out of our control, the cooking may have been grim but the baking was – and is – spectacular.

Old-school cookies, cakes, slices, the aforementioned pavs – all to die for.

We may have been geographically challenged, but we had chocolatey afghan biscuits, each topped with a sliver of walnut; we had belgian biscuits, too, heavily cinnamon-scented halves with jam filling and topped with pink icing. Delicious beyond words!

Vegetables of all kinds were routinely boiled to mush.

To this day, that practice produces an instinctive gag reaction in me when it comes to pumpkin.

Mum to me about 10 years ago: “Kenneth, you haven’t touched your pumpkin.”

Me: “Mum, I’m 45 and I’m allowed to eat what I damn well please!”

(More laughter …)

The roast spuds and parsnips were always bloody good, though!

Spaghetti, of course, came from a can, though I have vague recall of a baked casserole-like dish that involved real spaghetti and mince.

More often than not peas, too, came from cans, as did asparagus – more gag reflex!

Mushrooms could not be bought, but were plentiful and easily had in season on picking outings. In those days, they were sole delight of our father before my sister, then I, succumbed to their charms. They were only ever pan-fried in butter.

Happily, fish was a staple – flounder, blue cod, trout and more, all caught by our own hands.

I cannot recall any other way of cooking them than pan-frying, although we did eat a lot of boiled smoked fish. An under-rated delicacy that does, however, pong the house up!

Eating out? Weird, wonderful, whacky and – so it seems now – somewhat surreal …

Fish and chips were a regular, mostly sourced from the neighbourhood F&C joint a few blocks away.

This was run by the Chan family, whose son Raymond was a high-school classmate.

He was one of the brainy ones – they call them geeks these days – and seemed destined for medicine or science or a Nobel Prize or some such.

I find it staggering, then, to know the he has since become a big shot in the wine world and even has a flash website to promote his activities.

I have no recall whatsoever of the Chan fish and chips – wrapped in paper, of course, there being no cardboard trays – other than the family ritual involved, so have no way of knowing how they’d rate when compared to the flash and fresh versions found around Melbourne today.

The Chans also purveyed Chinese food of a kind, which only became part of our family landscape in high school years. My recollection is of starchy sauces in dishes with the rice already mixed in and served in tin foil takeaway containers.

I can still vividly recall the giddy joy of discovering unimaginably exotic and flavoursome black bean sauce when I lobbed into Wellington for a stay of several years in the early ’80s.

The Chan family later, long after I had split, opened a more formal Chinese restaurant across the road, but in that they were actually late on the scene.

There were places such as the Nanking Cafe around for yonks, but they never featured for our family.

Only later, in teenage years in which beer became a factor, did such eateries enter my picture – and it wasn’t for Chinese food!

No, these places always had an alternate, Western menu to which me and my mates gravitated.

Steak and chips, for sure, with an entree of thinly sliced sandwich bread, buttered, folded in half and doused with worcestershire sauce.

I suspect in smaller towns around New Zealand and Australia it remains possible even today to order steak and chips from the local Chinese.

Dunedin did have quite a lively scene of old-school non-espresso coffee houses.

I recall many visits to one in particular with mother and sister.

It was on the main drag, downstairs and cave-like.

It was called the Little Hut and served up delicious cheese rolls. Using the same bread as the Chinese joints, they’d stuff it with really cheesy cheese, roll it up, grill/toast it, slather it with butter. Very good they were!

More special occasions were spent getting on the trough at an upstairs place, also on the main drag, called the Savoy. Of course, we had no idea just how unoriginal the name was. My recollection is of food no better or less stodgy than what we had at home.

And then there were the mighty pie carts!

From what I’ve been able to discover there may be a few survivors of this phenomena in New Zealand and maybe even Australia, but mostly I suspect franchise places with late-night hours have done for them.

Even smaller towns such as Alexandra had their own pie carts.

I’d love to know more about pie carts, which were overwhelmingly converted buses, although I’m sure there were variations.

When did they start and why? Were pie carts ever a staple of countries other than Australia and New Zealand?

I suspect their beginnings and prosperity may have had something to do with the notorious six o’clock swill and the need for commercial travellers and single men to find cheap feeds somehow.

Pie carts may’ve sold such exotica as burgers or fish and chips, but what they ALWAYS sold was pea, pie ‘n’ pud – a pie topped with mashed spuds and mushy peas.

What happened next?

KFC and then McDonalds hit town.

Kenny and then his sister, Judith, left.

One of these days Bennie and I will return to Dunedin just for the momentous fun of it.

From what I can tell it’s pretty cool place, but where once there was a pie cart or two now there will Subway outlets.

Some things are universal.

GRAM Magazine – a Good Thing

Leave a comment

It was never the intention that Consider The Sauce should generate income – well, not directly anyway.

But certainly it was and is part of a broader strategy to re-invent myself after a long and wearing-and-tearing tenure in the hurly burly of metropolitan newspapers.

Happily, there have been numerous and unexpected benefits.

The pleasure and smiles that greet us when returning to little migrant eateries about whom we have written.

The quiet satisfaction of giving one in the eye for those who continue bang on about “illegals” and so on.

The profound and enhancing affect our blog has had on relationship between father and son.

Through it all, I have been keeping a keen eye out for opportunities for myself and Consider The Sauce beyond the blog being merely a glorified business card.

As I became more and more familiar with the food blogging scene, it became clear that certain things just weren’t going to work for us.

Our current blogging platform precludes the use of adverts and so on, but from what I’ve been able to learn the income they generate – for food bloggers anyway – is so miniscule that they’re barely worth the bother.

Add to that the certain fact that they compromise blogs so drastically and awfully on a visual and aesthetic level, and it’s a firm case of No Thanks!

Likewise for giveaways and paid posts, in which bloggers are paid for writing posts about products or services.

I have been approached by a handful of PR companies spruiking products or inviting me to product launches and the like. One of the invites actually appealed, but I couldn’t fit it into my dance card.

As for the rest, it’s impossible not to dismiss as spam epistles that start with immortal words such as: “We are contacting you because we know you are an influential blogger …”

Yes, well, ahem, excuse me while I ROTFLMAO.

I have no moral objection to these and many other related practices.

I’m a life-long career newspaperman with long involvement in the entertainment industry under my belt, so am well acquainted with doing deals and the art of compromise.

It’s just in the case of blogs, food blogging, food bloggers and Melbourne food bloggers in particular, bloggers are being had.

Read about it at the Deep Dish Dreams posts Food Bloggers as Marketing Puppets Part 1. Evolution and Food Bloggers as Marketing Puppets Part 2. Marketing Tricks and Psychology.

I may well have a price, but if so it is a bloody long way short of being mentioned to this point.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to stick to our version of the high road while looking for ways to leverage our blog in ways that keep our self-esteem and integrity intact.

A restaurant dude said to me a few weeks back: “Kenny, you should understand – people trust your blog.”

Put that up against piffling Nuffnang dollars and PR-fuelled hackery and it’s no contest.

In any case, I was intrigued when – last year – I received an email from an outfit called StudioCea announcing a new monthly Melbourne foodie magazine called GRAM.

It’s aim was to “collate” the work of Melbourne bloggers, supply links back to the blogs of origin and get A3 newsprint copies around the city. Part of the deal involved barcodes to scan with mobile devices linking punters to the blogs involved.

I was fascinated – perhaps here was something that could be an opportunity for me as both blogger and journalist.

Long before the first issue hit the streets, I engaged Roberto and Merita from StudioCea in email and, eventually, face-to-face dialogue.

I liked them, I had some fun with it.

Right from the start, though, I warned them that one of the fundamentals of their approach – paraphrasing blogger posts and then providing links – was doomed to failure.

Unlike others, I believed them in terms of sincerity. The magazine publishing game is tough and I knew enough to believe that the full-page ads in the first few issues were falling way short of making them big bucks or even covering costs. 

I predicted, though, that many bloggers would see those same ads and scream: “RIP-OFF!”

Not a good look either, was GRAM’s decision to let individual bloggers opt out rather than opt in to a relationship with the magazine. Thus a blogger could find his or her work rewritten and used online at the magazine’s website and the hard copy without permission being granted.

All perfectly legal, but hardly the way to make friends with the food blogger community.

And so it turned out to be.

While I went about my business with Consider The Sauce and elsewhere, GRAM became a big talking point, a brouhaha with which I only recently became familiar.

Read about it in this news story at Crikey and feisty posts and comments at Tomato and Sarah Cooks.

After a few issues, the GRAM crew changed tack.

Henceforth, they would use entire bloggers posts and at least some of the photos involved.

Bloggers would be paid.

While the magazine continues to evolve – it’s up to issue number 9 under new ownership – the change in the ongoing relationship with Melbourne’s bloggers created an immediate and substantial improvement in the product.

While inevitably fewer bloggers are being used in each issue, the varied personalities of the bloggers selected for each issue are allowed to breath and shine.

As such, IMHO, it goes pretty close to mirroring the diverse, argumentative and colourful Melbourne food blogging scene.

As Roberto was happy to concede in an email to me, after I suggested the enforced change of structure was very much a blessing: “You are right – I (and others) do think it’s an improvement. It’s funny how these things turn out for the better hey?”

If my own experience is anything to go by, management old and new have adopted a very much hands-off approach to meddling with copy.

What’s that?

“Well, of course, he would say all that, wouldn’t he?!”

It’s true Consider The Sauce has been included three times in GRAM so far. It’s true I’ve been paid at rates that, from what I can gather, are more than fair when compared to, say, The Age’s Cheap Eats Guide or even Gourmet Traveller.

It’s true, too, that recent editions have included several of the Melbourne food blogs I admire and follow – while including none of those I detest!

Nevertheless, it seems to my admittedly biased eye that in a rapidly changing media landscape that affects the dynamics of the hospitality industry as much anything else, GRAM is playing a pretty nifty role in merging the passions of food bloggers with old-school publishing.

GRAM is now owned and operated by Prime Creative, which publishes such foodie titles as BeanScene and Italianicious, and a number of others magazines as well.

Prime Creative management and new editor Danielle Gullaci are letting their new baby continue to operate very much along the same lines as before, despite GRAM being very different from their other mastheads in terms of paper quality, size, distribution, readership and relationship with contributors.

This is both a good and a bad thing.

There’s always room for improvement, but GRAM seems to be striking a good balance at the moment.

On the other hand, GRAM’s distribution continues to be restricted to Melbourne’s CBD and hyper-inner-city suburbs such as Carlton.

I guess for some, GRAM and anything like it will always be anathema just on principle, and others may struggle to ever forgive the publication for those early mis-steps and clumsiness.

I’ve long maintained that the likes of The Age’s Cheap Eats Guide and its bigger and more formal and more big bucks sister are well out of date by the time the new editions hit the street each year.

A fellow blogger was more strident when commenting to me recently: “Mate, they’re out of date even before that!”

In that sort of context – of sweeping change and uncertainty – GRAM may not represent the future but it strikes me as a pretty fine present.

Small is beautiful …

2 Comments

At the weekend, Bennie and I attended a kids’ festival celebration at Taylors Lakes.

It was a nice affair, though the publicised age range of 5-12 seemed a little wide of the mark.

There was plenty going for littlies, but precious little for such an urbane hip kid as my son, let alone a dad more than capable of mixing with our smaller citizens.

Consequently, we found ourselves, after an hour or so, aboard the shuttle bus back to the Water Gardens train station, where we had parked our vehicle.

Before braving the sticky, over-heated car, we decided to check out Water Gardens Town Centre – Bennie’s interest arising from the fact many of his school mates mention it in passing, my own less enthusiastic interest lying in no more than the ability to be able to say “been there, done that”.

Past Max Brenner, Grill’d, Hog’s Breath Cafe we strolled and into the centre, which according to its website has 240 of “your favourite stores all located on the one level”.

Not that we were ever going to stick around to verify the number.

One brief stroll around the food court that was our entry point – Subway, KFC, Ali Baba, the usual suspects – was more than enough.

We didn’t expect to be unnerved or creeped-out, but we were.

Even Bennie, for whom the glittering lights and sounds and displays of hardcore retailing hold the same appeal as for any kid his age, was moved to comment: “It’s just like Highpoint – but bigger!”

The sheer immensity of the complex we fled made me think of E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered.

This book once seemed such an integral part of the wider hippie manifesto that I was surprised, on checking, to discover it was first published in 1973.

Still, I suspect its premise continues to hold up in a way that, for instance, The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich no longer does – let alone the ravings of  The Illuminatus! Trilogy or Carlos Castaneda!

Our Water Gardens experience also prompted me to revisit an eloquent column in The Age by Richard Glover entitled “Hearts of our towns ripped out in vicious mallings”.

In it he addresses the “malling” of the town of Mittagong in NSW and the mall phenomena in general.

This paragraph seems particularly pertinent:

The main competition that’s been brought to town is between shops serving rubbish food. For the first time, Mittagong locals have been afforded every Australian’s birthright – easy access to Michel’s Patisserie, Gloria Jean’s, Donut King and a KFC.

Though this one, too, bristles with righteous outrage:

As the British writer Mark Steel has pointed out, the Marxist left was always attacked for wanting to make the whole world look the same – the internationalist worker’s paradise. Actually, it’s capitalism that’s turned every town into a mirror image of the next.

Look, this is not simply a case of us being smug or snooty.

We fully understand that for many people in Australia and around the world, the ways they go about supplying themselves with life’s necessities are limited by events and circumstances way out of their control.

For many, many more, eating at all is not something ever to be taken for granted.

Nevertheless, we’ll use our recent mall misadventure to reinforce our appreciation for what we have.

Let us never get too glib about the many wonderful eateries we regularly frequent where the food is incredible, made with love and served at affordable prices only by grace of bloody hard work by those who provide it.

Let us cherish the family-owned enterprises in which the kids shoot up a helluva lot quicker than the prices … but nothing much else ever seems to change.

Let us salute wobbly tables, mis-matched chairs, dog-eared menus and places where English is a second language but smiles always the first.

Let’s never take for granted the market spreads like Sunshine Fresh Food Market or Little Saigon Market in Footscray.

Let’s appreciate the likes of Leo Pace and his Pace Biscuits, with which we’ve fallen in love – such good-quality chocolate and prices way below Brunetti’s!

Let’s give thanks for a business like Lemat Injera Bakery, which few may have cause to enter but which has been instrumental in deeply enriching our collective eating habits.

The bakeries, cafes, neighbourhood burger joints, human-friendly supermarkets, kebab shacks, specialist delis and butchers, and all the rest – we are thankful for them all.

Article in The Australian

4 Comments

Here’s another mainstream press article on food blogging – this time in The  Australian.

Since we started our blog, I figure this is the third such article I have come across.

I always like reading them, but as someone who has a foot firmly in both camps, if that is the right word, I am also always bemused.

In this case, I was particularly taken with this paragraph concerning A.A. Gill, restaurant reviewer for London’s Sunday Times:

A.A. Gill, who was in Australia at the same time as White, is more direct. “I don’t read them; I would never read them,” he asserts. “As if I have the time.” For him, the notion that bloggers are doing it for free out of a “love for food” is a falsehood. “Of course they’re getting paid,” he says. “They go to all these events – that’s a form of payment. They get put up in nice places – that’s a form of payment. What they are effectively doing is funding their hobby and not doing it particularly well.”

And this one, with quotes from Natascha Mirosch, food writer for Brisbane’s Courier-Mail.

For many in traditional media, though, the encroachment of bloggers onto their territory is worrying. “I’d be wary about following their recommendations,” says Mirosch, “because you don’t know how reliable they are or whether they have their own agenda. Often bloggers don’t think they are bound by the same rules and conventions of journalism.”

As if so-called professional food writers don’t have agendas. And as if the food pages of regular newspapers aren’t larded with pieces fuelled by freebies and press releases. Ha!

As with the earlier articles, I simply don’t recognise myself or the bloggers I know.

For sure, these comments are applicable to some bloggers. But a long way short of all or even most.

As a blogger, I would wish for more perceptive and nuanced analysis of food blogging and its bloggers.

As an employee of mainstream journalism, I should probably know better.

For a significantly more strident discussion on The Australian article, check out the post at Fitzroyalty.

Melbourne (or Victoria if you must …) is food crazy – and here’s more proof

Leave a comment

Last year, Urbanspoon changed its category for us from Melbourne to Victoria.

Replying to disgruntlement about the ramifications of the change, an Urbanspoon spokesperson posted the following:

There is an SEO perspective which we considered – however, we were expanding the geographic range far beyond the city of Melbourne, and so we felt that “Victoria” was a more accurate designation.  Expanding the neighborhood list (click “See all” under Top Suburbs) breaks down the restaurant distribution into subgroups that include Melbourne City neighborhoods, and suburbs by general area.We aren’t locals, and could well be missing local nuances (let us know!)  We want to reach the most potential diners for obvious reasons.  So far, our site traffic has more than maintained pace in our Australian metros – in fact, Victoria is our second-most trafficked metro, trailing only New York City (which has more than 3x the number of restaurants).  Victoria also ranks fifth in total blog posts.

Blimey – even I’m surprised!

Western suburbs food and Melbourne’s mainstream media

23 Comments

In Anthea Cannon’s lovely spread in the Maryrbinong Leader on Consider The Sauce and Footscray Food Blog, I was quoted as saying: “The Good Food Guide used to be my bible but not one Footscray place is in there.”

Truth is, it’s been more than a decade since I bought a copy – we may as well live a on different planets.

Of course, there’s a very good reason The Age Good Food Guide ignores Footscray completely and more or less ignores the rest of the west, too – the food styles (and prices!) it covers simply don’t exist in meaningful numbers in our part of the world.

Some years ago, the Age coverage of cheap eats was sloughed off to … Cheap Eats, which I presume has a fair number of Footscray eateries and heaps more from the greater west.

I’m ignorant on that matter, too, as it’s likewise been years since I looked at a copy. It’s worthy and no doubt valuable to those who buy it. But when you’re on the ground and regularly out on the food hunt, as we are, I’d find it very surprising if it could enlighten us on a westie food place of which we’d never before heard. Even if that does sound smug!

But these issues got me thinking about mainstream media coverage of food culture, people and places in Melbourne’s greater western suburbs in general.

The heavyweight formal reviewers for both Melbourne’s daily newspapers, Stephen Downes and Larissa Dubecki, have little or no reason to set foot in the west. Sometimes they surprise, but mostly their interests lie elsewhere – geographically, philosophically and financially.

Nina Rousseau recently covered the marvellous Los Latinos in Epicure’s Unexplored Territory column.

But even though I loathe MasterChef, I reckon The Cravat did a better job of injecting diversity and variety into that space.

Rousseau mostly seem to gravitate towards just-so cafes and the like.

More recently, Lauren/Ms Baklover has got a few good western shots into the small Under $10 section that appears on the same page each week. And good for her, too!

That leaves the weekend papers.

The Herald Sun on Saturday carries, as part of its food spread, a section in which hot-shot places are chosen to represent various parts of the city – including the west.

The Age Extra regularly carries “list” features – “Where to get the best canoli”, for instance, or “Melbourne’s best places for lizard turnovers”. The west gets a run quite often there, too.

And between them and the Sunday papers, there are various nooks and crannies, celebrity profiles and so on that provide scope for our region to get some of the limelight.

I can’t help but feel, though, that often where Melbourne’s west does rate a mention, the coverage is only for form’s sake.

And that the authors/compilers perhaps haven’t even set foot in the western places they dutifully include.

This is surprising for several reasons.

One is the rampant growth of the city’s western regions.

Another, especially in the case of the Herald Sun, is the area’s solid blue-collar credentials. You’d think the “people’s paper” would endeavour to get out and about a bit more in the west, no?

Interestingly, but perhaps not all that relevantly, the Herald Sun’s journos remain based at Southgate, but the paper is printed in the shadows of the Westgate Bridge. The Age scribes are based at Docklands and the paper is printed at Tullamarine.

In any case, I have compiled the following list of eateries that between them seem to have constituted a large slab of coverage accorded western suburbs food coverage in recent years.

Many of them are very fine indeed; one and perhaps more, though, I believe to be over-rated.

Moreover, a handful are obvious choices for the likes of Downes and Dubecki, in that they deliver fine dining – or aspire to it – and prices to match.

But I also sense a close-to-deadline “Quick, quick – I need a western suburbs place! I know – Cafe Fidama!” about it.

But the bottom line is they have all received coverage, sometimes a LOT of coverage, while rest of the west goes unnoticed, unseen and mostly unloved.

And not just in the papers, either, but also online.

Have I missed anyplace obvious?

Thien An

Hung Vuong

Touks

Delizia Cucina

Station Hotel

Café Fidama

Corner Store

Caravallo’s

Café Lalibela

Laksa King

Philhellene

Food Blogger Spam No.2

4 Comments

Hi Kenny.

I am Ashley from FoOooOoD. pampering yourself. I have been following your blog for a long time. I must say that I love your blog! I am writing to discuss about the potential collaboration in spreading the word about your blog to more food lovers!

FoOooOoD. pampering yourself connects restaurants, cafes and bars with food bloggers and twitterers, and also food lovers in general. We identified the trend that people like taking photos of great food, and blog, tweet and facebook (share photos on facebook) about them. You as a great blogger are the best example!

You have fantastic food-hunting experience and been doing great reviews for restaurants (free marketing). Although you do it because of passion, we strongly believe that the restaurants should acknowledge your effort and other food lovers’, for example by giving free meals and great deals. That’s what we do. I have been talking to some Top100 Food Bloggers and Twitterers. Besides that, we created a facebook page recently. In less than a week, we have got 119 “like”s and our target is to hit 400 by the end of December! Apart from that, we are also gathering content for our website.

This is the exciting part – our main website concept is to display photos taken by food bloggers. Say we post the photo of your favourite Churrasco at La Morenita. Food lovers are then attracted by the photo, so they click on it. This will direct them to the page on your blog. In other words, we direct traffic to your blog and provide a platform for food lovers to find out more about great food bloggers. The Masterchef Callum has agreed to share his, we would love to have yours too! Could you please share your favourite blog articles with us, so that we could post them on our website to be viewed by our food lovers?

Would really appreciate it if you could consider this. Look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks. Have a great day!

—

Ashley

FoOooOoD

Mobile | +61 433 011 239

Email | food.pamperingyourself@gmail.com

Facebook | FoOooOoD.pamperingyourself

Twitter | FoOooOoDpamp

********

KENNY’S REPLY:

Hello there … Thanks for the kind words about our blog.

However, I have a few points …

1. No one has been following our blog for a long time – it’s only been going since August.

2. Great reviews of restaurants are not the same as free marketing. To say so is twisting the situation to serve your aims. Which is not to say restaurants don’t use reviews for marketing purposes …

3. Your statement “You as a great blogger are the best example!” – is ridiculous. Sending such a comment, the SAME COMMENT, to me and Gods knows how many others is disrespectful.

4. We pay for all our meals; we will continue to do so. If we are offered privileges, we may well accept, depending on the situation. But we do not expect freebies or the like. Nor is that reason we are blogging.

5. Masterchef is not about food – it’s about TV.

6. Supposing for a moment your scheming is sincere and/or your schemes have merit … bombarding bloggers with such a slapdash, informal email is no way, IMHO, to go about winning friends. You sound like a bunch of frat boys chasing a free lunch.

7. Regarding your statement: “We strongly believe that the restaurants should acknowledge your effort and other food lovers’, for example by giving free meals and great deals” – we strongly disagree. Restaurants and food industry folk owe bloggers absolutely zero.

Cheers, Kenny

***

ASHLEY’S REPLY:

Hey Kenny.

Thanks for your reply and thoughts. I apologise if my email offended you.

It’s not solely about marketing. It’s about connecting food lovers, bloggers and restaurants, and creating a mutual situation for all parties. Food lovers love great food, but at the same time they also want to meet “like-tummy” people. We encourage restaurants to express gratitude for the effort of bloggers, not for giving good, bias review, but for visiting the restaurants to try the food.

I appreciate the support from other food bloggers who have agreed to contribute their posts to our website, as they see it as a channel to interact with their blog followers.

I am still following your blog, simply because I love reading restaurant reviews. And, I know that every blogger puts in a lot of effort into blogging!

Merry Xmas!

Thanks, Ashley

***

KENNY’S REPLY

No worries, mate.

I likewise apologise for my snotty reply.

Still, I don’t reckon it’s a good idea to try flattering people with a form letter in which you merely change restaurant X and meal Y.

I’m a bunny, but still know of two people who received the same epistle.

Cheers, Kenny

HAVE YOUR SAY: The best food in the West – Local News – News – Maribyrnong Leader

1 Comment

Maribyrnong Leader spread on Footscray Food Blog and Consider The Sauce … in letterboxes some time this week.

HAVE YOUR SAY: The best food in the West – Local News – News – Maribyrnong Leader.

Food Styling Workshop Revisted

1 Comment
Hi Ken,
I was disappointed to see you have posted the email I sent you as spam on your blog.
It was in fact a message offering you a genuine opportunity to take part in a day long event where you can learn some trade secrets of food photographers – from a chef and pro photographer. This has obvious benefits for you as a food blogger and it has generated a lot of interest.
Feel free to contact me personally if you have any further issues, my details are below.
Kind Regards
Hamish Kirkpatrick
Education & Events Manager
Camera Action Camera House
217 Elizabeth Street
Melbourne 3000
Ph +613 96706901 Fax +613 96025572
hamish@cameraaction.com.au
****

Hi Hamish! My name is Kenny. Just having some fun, mate. If it offends, I’ll remove it. No biggie. However, if you’d taken even a little time to look at my western suburbs cheap eats work, you’d have perhaps realised that the very concept of “food styling” is the very antithesis of what I’m about. I’m sure it has generated has generated a lot of interest, but – you’ll just have to believe me on this – what you are offering has absolutely no benefits to me as a food blogger. At all. LOL! Besides, my cheeky post has got back to you somehow, which presumably means people are reading it. Is that a bad thing for you?
Cheers, Kenny
****

Hi Kenny,
Thank you for your quick reply. The day is all about improving the results of your photographic endeavours. You never know, you might just pick up a couple of tips that will dramatically improve the images you post on your blog. It might be the angle you shoot from, or the camera mode you select, but I guarantee there is something in it for you.
Your post ‘came back to me’ via one of my staff members who was following up with people I hadn’t heard back from. I’m happy for you to leave it there, and I hope you’ll reconsider what you might gain and how it could potentially (visually) improve your blog.
All the best,
Hamish (born and bred in Dunedin) Kirkpatrick
****

Hamish, that’s the spirit!
My take on it may have been negative, but at least its out there you know!
And maybe I’m being too presumptious about the content of your workshop. Send me more info! What date is it?
Mind you, even at the blogger discount rate, I’m a non-starter when even paying the rent is an issue (got a great whacking rent rise in the mail today).
Dunedin, eh? What school, year etc etc?
I watched NZ/Oz schoolboys “test” on Foxtel the other day, and got a kick out of some of the scenery. And I still dream about central Otago and Wanaka. But me mum always reminds that I’ve been in Melbourne a looooong time now and continue to enjoy opportunities that would hardly ever eventuate in NZ, or Dunedin anyway. It would be a drag to pull up stix only to find out Melbourne really is my home – and where I belong. (having a son here keeps my mind from wandering too far as well!)
Cheers, Kenny
p.s. you mind if I put our correspondence up on my blog?
****

Sorry to hear about the rent hike Kenny. The MasterClass is set for Saturday October 30th and is essentially aimed at anyone who wants to take better images of food. From cafe owners, to chefs, to foodie bloggers, to photographers, the class will have benefits for everyone. Not all of it will apply across the board, but everyone will learn something that will ensure they can get better end results. On a personal note – I was educated at OBHS and OU. I have family all through central Otago and spent the school holidays of my youth in Roxburgh, Alexandra, Cromwell, Wanaka, & Queenstown. I also spent three years living in Queenstown in the late 90’s. I’ve been in Australia since 2000 and don’t go back to NZ too much, usually work related or for a funeral – sad but true!

Feel free to post our discussion and I hope you can find the spare cash to attend!

Kind Regards

Hamish
****

The teenage union match I spoke of was at OBHS. Man, when I was captain of the KHS hockey team we used to love beating you buggers – although we allus got creamed at rowing coz your lot had superior equipment. Ho ho!
Central Otago rocks – you know what I mean. My Australian friends have been going to NZ more frequently, but always the Bay Of Islands and so on. Tis a shame for them!
OK – thanks for the info. You never know, I may just front up on an impulse basis. Also, since the Bloggers Picnic I think more of my fellow Melbourne foodie bloggers are dropping into mine regularly, so they’ll know about it, too.
Of course, apart from my son maybe the main, biggest reason I can never leave Melbourne is the funky, cheap ethnic eats!
Kenny (in Melb since 1986)
****

Ah the old inter-school rivalry. We ‘hated’ you Kings guys! I was more of a basketballer than a rugby head but still managed to make my way to the front row to perform the school haka during the 1st XV matches. And yes Central rocks, I am really enjoying the vino that’s coming out of Otago now too. On the drive from Dunedin to Queenstown you certainly notice that there are a lot less sheep, a lot less stone fruit, and a whole lot more grapes. Tell your friends to get to the South Island, the scenery is better, the air is better, and there’s only about 50 people left so they can have the place pretty much to themselves!

Kind Regards,
Hamish

email: food blogger spam!

Leave a comment
Food styling? The trouble, I find, with glossy magazines is that they’re kinda tough!

Blimey – some of the places we eat, “food styling” could be interpreted as the absence of cockroaches!

****

Good afternoon,
I’d like to make you aware of an up-coming photographic session you may be interested in: Photographing & Styling Food, with visiting Chef and professional photographer Dario Milano form Sydney.The cost is $249 for the day and includes lunch, but there is a special price for foodie bloggers of just $199. Please let me know if you’re interested and I’ll email the flyer.

I hope to hear from you soon.
Kind Regards
Hamish Kirkpatrick
Education & Events Manager
Camera Action Camera House
217 Elizabeth Street
Melbourne 3000
Ph +613 9608 6932 Fax +613 9602 5572

Busted in Footscray: The Epilogue

4 Comments

Dear Sir,

Your email has been noted.

Since 2000, we do not permit the taking of photograph within the premises of our Market.

Footscray Market is a privately owned property.

We regret that we are unable to accede to your request.

Best Regards,

ALLAN KONG

Busted in Footscray

12 Comments

Irony: They’re unhappy about me taking photos but are only too happy to take mine.

****

Following an interesting discussion at the Ausjazz Blog of my good buddy Roger about the ethics and protocols of taking photographs in performance-type situations – including eateries – it seemed only fitting that I would find myself confronting the practicalities firsthand.

Having sauntered into Footscray Market, I snapped off a few pics in the market’s food hall.

At which point I was accosted by a somewhat officious security guard who informed me that not only was I not allowed to take photos but also I would be required to “destroy” those already taken.

When I pointed out to him that my intentions were honourable and that the entrance I had used boasted no signage saying the taking of photos was a no-no, he called his supervisor.

That gentleman informed me that if I wished to take photos I should seek approval of the manager.

When I trekked up two floors to the manager’s office, the two gents there curtly made it clear that the taking of photos was indeed forbidden.

And that was that.

Little Saigon Market, anyone?

Kenny’s new rule: Always ask.