Road test 'Sauce'

the wonderful world of food-with Barry St. Hubbins

Coming back from my travels, a head full of food exotica and my mind spinning with ideas I am very excited about my latest culinary discovery and I’m very happy to share it with the reader.

It’s called ‘Sauce’ or more precisely, ‘Tomato sauce’. Now don’t let its rather prosaic name fool you as I was initially because this condiment is bound for the big time.

It went like this: We were sitting around a friends house and a tray of lovely sausage rolls, fresh from the packet, were heating in the oven and the smells were driving us all mad with anticipation.

The tray was finally offered around after what seemed and age and we hoed into them with gusto. Then our host retrieved from her pantry a small plastic bottle of the aforementioned ‘sauce’.

Well can I tell you to a person we were unanimous in our affirmation that partnering it with the sausage rolls was pure genius! Our host excitedly told us she found this product in her local supermarket but apparently its available almost everywhere!

She went on to say that it can be enjoyed with almost any foods that you care, from pies to pasties and Devon and fish fingers, the possibilities it seems are literally endless!

Well, from that point forward, I’m a convert!

Cheers, Barry x

Don't be put off by its unusual nature

What-Sauce

Where-Almost any food shop, supermarket or service station

How much- $3.50 for 750mls

What with-Everything

For-Goes with anything

Against-Largest bottle is only 12Lt

Who-Foodies

Score-9.75/10

next week we road test Kraft Cheddar 

A most excellent pumpkin and wild green luncheon

The scholarship of twenty-three elder gardening enthusiasts from the South Channel Gardeners  Group combined with their collective expectations of what I would cojour up for their annual luncheon was, I’ll admit, a bit daunting.

Adding to my percolating unease was the rapturous response which they had heaped, justifiably so I might add, on edible-greens-wunderkind Paulette Whitney from Provenance Growers with her absorbing oration on her subject of botanic comestibles.

It was to a seasoned crowd that I was pitching to and one that had been suitably warmed-up by a virtuoso whom didn’t need to share a stage or play understudy to anyone, so as you can appreciate, the pressure was, well and truly on.

After last years inaugural luncheon in which the ‘Potato’ was fêted with several courses, each a different interpretation of seven different varieties and what I thought was the best for the task but unlike Ricky Gervais, James Franco or Seth McFarlane, I was asked back by the committee for another gig and this time the spotlight would be turned onto the humble Pumpkin. This was a relief at first because the previous lunch with all its carb-laden glory presented a girdle-hurdle for all present and one which I’m surprised that didn’t send the attendees into a Paleo-Shock and with it, the possibility of resultant litigation from Slater and Gordon.

But once that initial wave of amnesty broke and receded, I was left contemplating the poor old pumpkin with that same feeling of being dudded when faced with the remaining partner left at the school dance when all the good ones had already been whisked onto the floor.

Out of all in the vegetable kingdom, the pumpkin or squash at it is sometimes referred, is the village-idiot or jester to the courts King, the potato. Often deemed ‘only fit for swine’ by some cultures, carved into menacing faces for all Hallow’s Eve(In which turnips or beets were the first choice) or ridiculed in verse depicting a pumpkin-eating cuckolded husband that is forced to hold his wife captive for her sins.

Of course it has redeeming qualities. For me, spying of chunks of roasted Queensland Blue amongst the vegetables with a joint of meat is heartening as is its workman-like ability to play the straight-man to a stable of stand-up cheeses, from the most piquant blue to the mildest of semi-hards.

There is no doubt in my mind that a good pumpkin-pie, though rarely spotted emerging from the kitchens of this country, can hold its head high amongst some of the more venerable of worlds desserts.

It was through this jumble of information, my own experiences and conventionally held, prejudiced or not wisdom that I began to hammer away at the forge of my brain until the molten mass of inspiration revealed itself like the polished layers of Damascus steel.

It was a challenge not to resort to the path well trod and it was not until I received word that the Gardeners Group had invited Paulette to contribute some of her wares after the aforementioned seminar, that the concept was finally galvanised into menu.

I am in my thirty-first year of cooking professionally and have practised my craft which has included having the most luxe of ingredients to the most prosaic at my disposal. I had never though, in all these years crossed the path of the wonderments that Paulette and Matt propagate and glean from their property and surrounds with the exceptions of samphire, which I can attribute my three years cooking in English kitchens and the Stinging Nettles, a large bush of which I fell into after a long tipsy walk from the Swan Inn, Stratford St Mary, 1988, for exposing me to them.

It was my task to try and match some of the exotica to a few different types of pumpkin and let each component be free to be heard about a chorus of flavours. No easy feat when one’s single, freshly-bound Wizard spell-book is bereft of the elements that would be cascading from the pages of Dumbledore’s voluminous library on the subject. Anyway it went like this:

pumpkin scones and whipped blue cheese

slow-roasted pumpkin, miso & sesame

horta-pie & spiced pumpkin

pumpkin tortellini, chickweed & sea celery

beef cheeks, vegemite, baby cimi di rapa & pumpkin skins

vanilla baba, pumpkin & alpine baeckea

dunkin pumpkin donuts & coffee

plates are SO yesterday

In a homage of sorts to Flo Bjelke-Petersen (One shouldn’t visit the sins of the husband onto the wife, unless that wife is Rosemary West) I’m not an admirer of her political view if indeed she was aloud to snatch the microphone occasionally from her hubby Joh but she was Dinky-Di and her pumpkin scones were legend.

I paired the scones with some whipped blue cheese, a smear of plain old Queensland Blue puree and these were a nibble to start proceedings.

Even the dishes were fashioned from pumpkin

I tried to evoke my inner-Shinto with arcs of very slow-cooked Kabocha, lacquered with sweetened, ginger infused red miso paste and liberally peppered with toasted sesame seeds. It was served in a small pool of spicy hot-vinegar and some Land cress for garnish

You show me a Claret bottle and I'll show you something you can serve stuff on

From Japan we go to Greece via the Horta-Pie. ‘Horta’ roughly translates as ‘wild greens’ in the Hellenic language and in the past I have incorrectly used this term to describe a dish that was made from cultivated crops. Technically the greens from Provenance Growers were ‘grown’ as their moniker suggests but their uniqueness I believe, gives them and me, some artistic licence. There were far too many for me to mention in the list of ingredients, except for the Stinging Nettles. Mixed with Ashgrove fetta, lemon, egg, fresh black pepper, some dried ‘Rigani’(Greek Organo), dried dill, Elmside olive oil and of course some lovely crushed Tassie purple garlic encased in layers of buttery filo pastry.

Served with a smear (I hear that therm has been officially outlawed by the Master-chef Franchise?) of spiced Butternut, think cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and cayenne and a bit of Bling in the form of a daintily halved, pickled and garishly pink-hued radish, which had the entire table agreeing that it resembled the hood ornament on a Morris Super Seven.

At last! A soup bowl

Having been sufficiently Greeked, we fly over its influence in Sicily and its Neapolitan cousin for what is widely considered to be Italy’s gastronomic heart, Bologna, the home of tortellini amongst other pastas and foodstuffs and of course the Ducati factory. I made a very strongly reduced chicken brodo which incidentally Maggie Beer used to call, Golden Stock, which was used as the basis for many of the Pheasant Farm’s splendidly crafted sauces. Two little Jarrahdale stuffed tortellini, some chickweed and sea celery constituted a flotilla of aroma and textural interest whilst a crown of crisped, compressed and salted chicken skin adorned the bowl.

That's more like it, finally some decent crockery

For the record I don’t really like menus in restaurants that span the globe with their representations however for a meal such as this, it would be parsimonious of me not to invite the colour and movement available from other vibrant nations to help embroider curiosity for my guests into our patchwork quilt of gluttonous stimuli.

And so, the new country welcomes us after a long haul.

‘A Rose in every cheek’ once chirpily sung by children enrolled by advertising agency, a jingle that some could be excused for mistaking for the national anthem, it’s chorus familiar to nearly all Australians of the virtues of  yeast extract. Sadly for some this national icon was sold to a multinational which bought about much debate and angst. The oft overlooked fact that it was invented by an American chemist was lost on the most furious of flag waver but the irony that it had actually returned to its spiritual home, not unlike the poor old Ford motorcar of today, was not lost on some.

So the cheek in which we were to put this rose in, belonged not to a child, please stop calling 000, but to some local beef cattle.

In an age where the name, hobbies and sexual preferences of the flesh animals we farm to consume have taken precedent over questions of their flavour or suitability for a dish, I am happy to have handy a working abattoir whose captain at its tiller assures me that: ‘all of the beef cheeks I get are local.’ Knowing as many local farmers as I do, I’m satisfied with this answer and all of there number, to a person, could not be more focused on top-shelf animal welfare and husbandry. In fact, I think it’s a conveniently ignored truth that many ill-informed and emotive people engage, in their quest to apportion blame for the offences bought about by the industrialization of farms and the of big agri-businesses that call the shots, buts that’s just my opinion.

These cheeks were cooked for twenty-four hours with the vegemite, some beef stock and a few other seasonings. Once cooked they were chilled and left to settle, their proteins grouped to the texture of what the French call ‘Melt in ze mouth’.

Thin slices of the Anna Swartz-Hubbard Squash were fried to crisp, some baby cimi di rapa dressed in vinaigrette adorned the plate with a ‘snowstorm’ of micro-planed horseradish finishing the dish.

You had to go back to these didn't you?

I always associated the old fashioned Rum Baba with evocative images of the Arabian Nights, of deserts, camels and scimitars. Much like I imagine the long dead and Cadbury absorbed confectionary company Fry’s’ would have done with their ersatz interpretation of their Turkish delight choccy bars, through ignorance and cliché.

I know Rum would have been a banned beverage and probably wasn’t heard of anyway in that part of the world so maybe it’s just the word ‘Baba’ itself that is alluring to me?

For the un-initiated, a Rum Baba is a syrup and or alcohol (Rum) soaked, yeast leavened, butter and egg enriched pastry not unlike a brioche or even a croissant dough. Aha! Now there might be a connection after all? According to myth, the Croissant was invented by Byzantine bakers whom had the honour of being immortalized in pastry for alerting their sleeping garrisons of soldiers to an imminent attack in which the enemy was soundly defeated, but I’m just guessing.

Mine were stuffed with; you guessed it, Sweet-Grey, then soaked in saffron syrup and served atop a Nike Swoosh TM of Alpine Baeckea-flecked custard.

We ended our Pumpkin-Trotting lunch with organic, fair trade, single-origin, East-Timorese Maubisse from those fine purveyors of Coffee and National Golden Bean Award winners, Mahalia Coffee-Oh and did I mention that the Mahalia in ‘Mahalia Coffee’ is my sister? We have proudly served this coffee at the cafe for the last three years in that good Tasmanian tradition of nepotism.A petite donut filled with pumpkin jam was served alongside.

At lunch end I swanned around the table, cadging compliments and managing to just remain humble until my conscience got the better of me, as it inevitably does. So I called on the real heroine of the event, my colleague Jenna, whom in my absence of the last few days leading up to the day, ordered, prepped, orchestrated and delivered the goods as she always does. It was her turn to take the credit for all the Beta work whilst I tend toward the Meta.

Cooking for large groups-the magic number

People often say it must be challenging cooking for large groups.

This is true but without sounding smug, once you start doing several dishes for a small group of people, the work involved might as well be for a hundred if it’s for ten, if you catch my drift.

However at which point does the critical mass of covers begin to influence the time and effort by making it more arduous a task? I will put this query out there into cyberspace hoping that someone else comes up with an answer different to that of Douglas Adams, whose 42, seems to fit everywhere.

farmers have lost the (sim)Plot

an idea for change

Everyone complains about the situation of our Australian food businesses closing due to lack of ‘being competitive’ in the global marketplace and the subsequent loss of jobs that inevitably follow. The ramifications of these closures on rural communities which are already under considerable strain to retain human capital are manifold.

However it seems to me that very few people are able to make the connection between making a seemingly innocuous choice to purchase a cheaper and usually foreign product in the shopping aisle and the consequences this has on our industries.

It’s a difficult situation to describe without painting oneself into the xenophobic corner or as an advocate to protectionism. Complicating the issue is that at the heart of this so called ‘free-market economy’, the notion of limiting the consumers choice is an anathema to the fundamentals of business.

If you are a rusted on cynic like myself, you’ll already appreciate that we have only a ‘perception’ of choice, indeed I’d go further and state even this perception is being eroded before our eyes but we seem incapable or at the very least unwilling of accepting its truth.

Modern agribusiness has evolved to the point where the chains of supply are so finely tuned, systematically denuded of any possible superfluous element that if one part of the system hits a speed bump the effect can be devastating. One need only look at the continuing horror story unfolding in the US where tainted meat is regularly being served only days after it has been processed in one side of the country and transported to outlets across the land. In Europe, the Horse meat scandal might just be the tip of the iceberg that conceals more unpalatable incidents of deceit.

My point is, perhaps we are looking at farming the wrong way. Instead of acres and acres of mono crops, intensively farmed cattle or being beholden to a large multi-national food company to buy all of your produce, maybe we should go back to spreading the output of farms to include numerous avenues of production?

Here’s an idea

Instead of forcing farmers to be competitive perhaps we could view them as an essential service, like teachers, police and the fire-brigade? Farmers could be ‘employed’ by the state to ensure our food security is never threatened. Of course we would have to agree on accepted methods or practices in which the farms should operate taking into account productivity, ethical and environmental issues.

Taking the pressure off farms to be ‘profitable’ and concentrate on ‘providing’ us with sustenance might be a better long term solution. Perhaps the age of making money from food is only leading us to all sharpen our pencils at the cost of quality and quantity?

If I use a school canteen as an example, many of them are funded to provide a service and are not expected to turn a profit to justify their existence. Perhaps this should be applied to farms?

I’m not suggesting this is an easy fix nor do I say that this idea is not without its problems however something must be done to slow down our slide into a future of importing all our foods.

Is it time for some more radical ideas?

Answering your critics-one mans tale

Yeah well Screw you Tripadvisor, no-one else complains about ciggy ash!

So you finally get put yourself out there, demonstrating the courage of your convictions and your self-belief, you’ve bought your best game and given it 100% and then one fateful day, a letter or email slides in, you open it and it detonates with stinging criticism.

How do you react?

The conventional wisdom out there helpfully suggests that you suck it up, take it on the chin and above all ‘don’t take it personally’.

This last hint always gets me. It’s as if it has been penned by the chilled detachment of an automaton. I can confirm that I do not know of a single chef or cook who takes pride in what they do not to ‘take it personally’. Any person who puts the amount of self into their food required to do it convincingly is simply unable to detach their wagon of emotion from criticism. The job and the emotional investment involved, in my opinion, are inextricably entwined.

This is not to say that a well meaning cook or chef does not get it right all of the time.

In fact we and I don’t.

As I started down this path professionally I was extremely ill-equipped to cope with criticism. Call it pride, bravado, insecurity, obstinacy or what you will getting in my way but it has taken me literally years to reach the point where I am able to process criticism without having a melt-down about it. Don’t get me wrong, I have better days than others where I can be more impartial but I’ve come to understand that this is a path that doesn’t signpost ones arrival of discernment but it enables one to try and be reasonable by separating ones feelings from the feedback.

This leads me to Tripadvisor and that old idiom, ‘Everyone loves a good review’.

If you are like me, you’ll forensically study the reviews of your establishment.

Oh and here’s another truth, ‘All restaurateurs/café owners/chefs do the same’. It’s a bit like masturbating, everyone does it but very few admit to it. Ditto for scouring the blogs-they all do it.

So I’ve established that we all consume reviews of some sort but what to do when you get a bad one?

Well I’m no expert(I’ve just realised how conceited this might sound, don’t worry I’ve had my share and will probably continue to do so until I stop running a café!)

But I have come to appreciate that most people who make the effort to complain, either directly or indirectly through a secondary medium like a blog or Tripadvisor etc, are simply looking to be heard.

Now I like to be heard. You probably like to be heard as well so its not unreasonable to expect ones customers like to be heard also is it? No.

What I won’t tolerate or should be expected to suffer is: abusive language, threats or intimidation, nor should anybody else so feedback of this nature so I  simply ignore it.

If someone has commenced a dialogue with you in this manner you need not dignify it with a response.

This year I’ve taken to responding to my critics in a methodical way across all mediums. Firstly I always thank them for taking the time to contact me or post their thoughts even if I might not agree with the content. To make an effort like this indicates that someone is motivated and this should be acknowledged. Secondly, I always apologise even if I may not agree with their sentiment, because no matter what I can say after the fact won’t change the truth that they are unhappy.

I usually try to explain the course of events that led to the situation and how I can remedy them for the future if I feel that they are also seeking reassurances as well as relaying their negative experience.

Sometimes I also offer complimentary meals by way of re-imbursement or to give us a chance to redeem ourselves.

The point is, I take these issues very seriously and I suspect that one ignores them at their peril. Of course everyone will from time to time get the inevitable nut-jobs, grudge-holders and bone-pickers tapping away in a vain attempt to white-ant you but you’ll begin to recognize their manner soon enough to discount them.

I just try to remember that people just want to be heard and this doesn’t always mean that I’m being personally attacked and even if I did make a mistake or two, well that’s OK isn’t it? I mean we’re all human.

An introduction to a meeting of two culinary minds

Luke, Kobe, Rose and the Garagistes crew behind them

Thrilled to be asked again by Savour Tasmania to be involved in their exciting initiative I was invited to MC for the 'Meeting of young culinary minds' dinner at Garagistes last night featuring Kobe Desramaults of 'In de Wolf' restaurant in Flanders and Luke Burgess from the above mentioned Garagistes here in Hobart.

To be honest I was more nervous than I let on and managed to stutter, lapse and sweat my way through the evening. As to be expected the event was a triumph of food and beverage delivery and execution. I'll leave it to @Lemonpi to document the nights dishes and grog (Hello Sue?!) 

Below is the introduction I wrote to commence proceedings.

The same tribe

The language of food is the lingua franca of the globe, uniting all of us in our basic need for sustenance to survive. Throughout the world different peoples have expressed their culture through their approach to cooking shaped by geography, tradition and climate.

Over the centuries these cooking differences had become so pronounced that it is possible to determine a person’s origin by the food that they prepare. Dishes representative of nationwide idiosyncrasies become elevated over time to represent a ‘sovereign-identity’ of sorts through food.

In many countries, the craft of cooking is the domain of the woman of the house, where family meals provide nourishment and sustenance. These home-cooked meals become the back bone of many a national identity and for a great swathe of people, they provide tasty fuel to satiate one’s hunger and keep one going. Cooking and eating are simple pre-requisites that are taken for granted and some people would argue all the better for it too, as we are at risk of being swamped by a rising tide of food related tv shows, cookbooks and other related media.

However, this backbone or understanding of the basics of cookery, provide a scaffold for those who view cooking as an abstract expression, to climb and explore. This is where this branch of cooking and its appreciative consumers share similar high-minded ideals that other expressive craftspeople aspire.

It’s no secret that chefs are generally regarded as a creative lot and for the last few decades some seismic changes have occurred in the way we view food in the everyday because of the boundaries that had been pushed in some kitchens at the vanguard of change. Now more than ever in our history, food and cookery have been elevated to occupy a place in our shared experience traditionally reserved for the high arts and other feats of extraordinary human endeavour. The harbingers of this advancement are an emerging tribe of mostly younger people whose numbers span the globe. Often described by the media, who grapple to understand this new way of cooking as ‘heralding from the New-Nordic school’, the moniker leaving many of these exponents cringing uncomfortably. They are not united by any kind of easily definable doctrine and the suggestion that they are yet another product or style emerging from the established lineages of the world’s kitchens is as insulting to them as it is lazy reportage.

I would suggest that our two chefs tonight would very much see themselves as individuals, influenced of course by their mentors, experiences and colleagues but equally so by reading, an enquiring and thoughtful mind and of course through the context of time and place.

As Luke said to me, ‘It’s less about recipes and more about ingredients’. This is interesting to me because it assumes now that technique is a given, an already attained discipline and all that is left to do is apply these skills and interpret the ingredients by holding up a mirror to ones surroundings.

This sounds deceptively simple but like a mature writer who can convey what they mean with economy, not an economy in a cost cutting sense, but one of studied restraint and so it is with food.

Tonight we’ll be treated to a dinner and matched wines that will express food through the eyes, minds, hands and tastebuds of two talented people from the same tribe. A tribe separated by thousands of kilometres of land and sea but linked by a related dialect of the language of food. 

New restaurant mission statement

"All our food is sourced with the most possible fossil fuel used in its production, transport and execution. All of our fruit and vegetables have been sprayed with insecticides, herbicides and are picked by underpaid workers. All of our meat has been force-fed with growth hormones, is maltreated and irradiated. Our eggs and hens are battery. Our Pigs are intensely farmed and our beef is from feed lots, provenance unknown.


Our dishes are scientifically designed to contain large amounts of fat, sugar and salt and we tweak them as to enhance their addictive properties. We regularly market our food to the financially vulnerable, the young and impressionable and the obese.

Our restaurant staff are overworked, underpaid and we ensure they have little job security.

But above all, we employ all these strategies to bring you, our loyal customers, the cheapest food possible, wherever in the world this may come from"

Why are there so few tubby Italians?

With a few exceptions, Italians seem to be a race of thin people which is completely surprising considering whats on offer to eat.

Do the Italians get bored eating the same thing?

Luigi contemplated yet another Pizza Napoli

Do the French, the Spanish, the Greeks or the Bulgarians tire of the food that their seasons, culture and geography dictate?


This was a question I pondered whilst perusing a menu in Milan after recognising what appeared to me, as the usual suspects I had become accustomed to seeing after my brief sojourn in that country. Now I realise that I might be a particularly fidgety and restless consumer of hot dinners and other people might be more at ease with meal repetition but if I was getting fatigued after just two weeks, how must the Italian feel?

Well, it appears just fine, grazie. All of the natives I spoke to were very happy with the food they ate even though they could understand how I thought it repetitive.

Perhaps we in Australia are so promiscuous with our food choices, cherry-picking the choice bits from everyone else’s culture that we feel trapped by the limitations that a specific cuisine would present.

Conversely, maybe the reason why so many other cuisines are so visible throughout the world is that their cultural borders are guarded as fiercely as one would defend their national identity and sovereignty? Australia on the other hand, has no tangible national cuisine to speak of but we do get to ‘mop up the gravy’ from everybody else’s plate.

A friend of mine returned from living in rural France and was relieved to be able to purchase some spices that she was unable to do over there. ‘Not even some garam masala’ she quipped. Now taken out of context, this might seem like a middle-class affectation of the first world order and it’s also reasonable to think, ‘When in Rome or in this case Auvergne’ you’re over there why not just eat as they do? Fair enough too, I mean the other end of the spectrum is doing a Warney (remember Shane Warne shipping cans of baked beans to India coz he didn’t like the grub?! Classy)

Personally, I’d enjoy immersing myself in the foodie culture of a particular region within a country however I’d still get pangs to enjoy some noodles, a Thai salad, a fragrant curry, a pie or anything that would break up the eventual monotony of only one diet.

Go Behind the RVL Scenery

Check out our ad that Tourism Tas pinched off us!

No fat chefs on the tellie!

me before my weight gain

Working in the kitchen it’s quite uncommon in my experience to ever sit down and eat your lunch or dinner or any kind of snack. In fact it rarely happens. Food tends to be eaten on the run, standing up, between tasks or whilst doing them. After years of eating on the job I have acquired a habit of gulping my food which I know I share with many other kitchen professionals.

What doesn’t help is that staffs aren’t able to make the connection when my mouth appears to be chewing food, is probably not the most appropriate time to ask me a question. This usually causes me to swallow hurriedly, not giving me the chance to gain any pleasure from the morsel momentarily in my mouth and eventually cause a painful reflux. This reality is diametrically opposite to the reaction I hope the food I am serving is having on the customer. So, as well as missing out on a social life by being a chef, I can’t even enjoy the food I’m around all day! So I tend to guts it down before I get interrupted.

I can usually tell the people who are chefs, cooks or waiters at barbeques, functions or dinner parties before I am introduced by the way I observe them scoffing their food down.

Not all chefs are overweight, in fact I’m surprised that there are so many skinny-chefs-pants wearing cooks around? Actually they don’t wear chefs’ pants these days, more like black trousers, either way they appear to be on the svelte side.

Maybe it’s an age thing? There are plenty of older chefs who look like they’ve been in a ‘good-paddock’ me included. It’s a challenge not to put on weight when you’re usually so pre-occupied with the planning, choosing and cooking of food all day as the temptation to not just check the taste of things but to consume them is great. I know Michelle Bridges might roll her eyes skyward at my ‘excuse’ but it is a professional trap that I personally fall victim to with alarming regularity.

Over the years I have tried to commit to eating only in the traditional meal times and this lasts for a while but then I hit the slippery slope.

For instance my morning and lunch intake might read like this:

• a toasted sandwich.
• a hunk of bread and butter.
• a handful of chips.
• some salad, mooshed around the mixing bowl to soak up the remnants of dressing.
• some crispy end bits of caramelized meat left in the roasting tray.
• a few of olives.
• some roasted nuts cooling on a tray.
• the extra sausage from a mistaken breakfast order
• a finger of  cream on the Banoffee or jam from the doughnuts
• at least 6 to 8 lattes

This is after breakfast at home. I also have lunch at work. On the plus side I drink heaps of water, though it’s usually carbonated, my bad.

Can you see the problem here? I love eating and it shows. 

In the media these days you'd be hard pressed to find a chef or cooking person on the plus side of the ledger. This is curious. It's as if the fat chef has been made invisible. Do the powers that be on TV want to send the message that its not OK to be a fat chef? You can cook the stuff as long as you don't eat it?

In my opinion this adds yet another layer to our disconnection to food. Its as if food had become a medium in which to express ones creativity and individuality without gathering any calories along the way.

Even the voluptuous Nigella felt the pressure to 'slim-down'. Surely this is at odds which the kind of food she seems to enjoy? Again, cook the sticky date pudd but don't eat it fatty!

Conversely the amount of people who write about food professionally including many bloggers, are on the weighty side. All this whilst our chefs and cooks shrink right before our eyes.

Lo-Fi, a new dawn

Why we’re going Lo-Fi,

When you’ve been cooking food professionally as long as I have you get to see a lot of trends come and go. What never changes though is the currency of value and taste. Sounds simple enough I suppose but its quite an elusive thread and when you apply it to the offerings of the plethora of eateries around, its surprising how little it occurs.

Sure many places are pushing the envelope, competing with the discretionary dollar reserved for the theatre, the arts or a concert. However most places are just trying to channel what they perceive to be, what the public wants.

In Australia we have incrementally built up our reserves of a sophisticated appreciation of food through the decades, primarily from the influence of migrants and our insatiable appetite for travel for which we are known globally.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed a swell of food information steadily rise with the aspirations of an upwardly mobile and cuisine savvy public. I say upwardly mobile not in the sense of being a ‘yuppie’, but in the way that there has been an incredibly steep rise in food knowledge generally through TV shows, the rise of the minor celebrity chef, mag articles and the pontificating of the high priests and priestesses of food. In fact I think this ‘alertness’ has ‘sped up’ dramatically in recent times.

Like many things in a 24/7 world of instant gratification, the nuances of idiosyncratic food culture are gradually being squeezed out the world over and stifled in the corporate led march, toward convenience and ultimately, system-over-product. If they’re not, then they’re being acquisitioned and re-branded for the same purpose. Either way the hip choices we think we’re making are simply the remains of what happens to be the ‘pink-slime’ of homogeny.

Like all oppressive regimes, they inevitably spawn recalcitrant movements that wont ‘go quietly into the night’. Whilst not all of these factions are united by doctrine they all share a language of a disassociation with the status quo and amongst their number I count myself.

For some time I’ve grappled with trying to construct a singular voice within the white-noise of professional competition and moving to Tassie was part of this process. Having observed the light and shade of making ones living in the town that one also lives, the fact that we are in a fiscally depressed state and that Tasmania demands a unique way of approaching life I have now decided that its time to shift into a new gear.

I’ve always liked the idea of putting out simply roasted meats, gilded by flame and embossed by a stretch in the wood oven. It’s taken me several years to get to this juncture, one in which I once spied on the horizon of my ambition but was quick to dismiss it as too prosaic but after years of observing maps, reading the runes and toiling with sextants, a true path has made itself clear.

So we’re going Lo-Fi.

What does this mean exactly? Is this yet another affectation employed by a business owner hoping to cash-in on the zeitgeist for authentication and provenance? Although I have tendency toward the cynical, no, I don’t see it as such.

In fact, it’s about paring it back to as fundamental as we can with the food and don’t think this irony or word is lost on me!

I’m in the ‘eating’ camp not the ‘dining’ camp and so,

rawfood + fire = yum

Taste of the Huon 2013 + Red Velvet Lounges winning food stall!

the stall, seeking to replicate the bonhomie of the cafe on a ah..er.. football ground?!

photograph Luke Bowden

the ever photogenic Jenna + some fat git

what we served:

little jars of chicken liver pate, mulled wine jelly, cornichons + fresh bread roll $8

free-range pork san choi bau on wasabi leaves $5

slightly bigger jars of vanilla yoghurt, raspberry + blackberry jelly trifle $7

we're stoked as its our first time with our own stall and last year we were runners-up on a shared stall.

Thoughts on a menu

Restaurants are funny things. When menus are written there’s a dynamic tension between the restaurant and the customer. People patronize establishments for a variety of reasons, which I wont go into too much detail here but I will say the language of the menu is a sure fire way to determine what kind of customer businesses hope to attract. An important distinction to make is the choice between ‘eating out’ and  ‘dining out’.

Surely it takes some insider knowledge to understand the complexities of a dish that reads: Butter, dandelion, fish crumb, grape. How can the average person really hope to grapple with a menu description like this? The question volleyed back to me might sound like this: ‘why must the dish be understandable to everyone else? Fair enough, it doesn’t but it just seems like a method to exclude people who aren’t in the know.

Some time ago in Australia we thankfully moved away from using French as the language of menus. Whilst elements of this language made sense, much of it was French food, it really became to represent a kind of class difference. For some time after that we sailed along with a exuberant egalitarian approach to menu writing but now a new ‘clubbiness’ has evolved that forsakes the usual weapon of choice in the armory of elitists, Jargon and replaces it with a dictatorial list of ingredients without any reference to how it is prepared.

A similar thing is happening in wine.

Just when I thought the Berlin Wall of wine snobbery came crumbling down it has now being re-built brick by brick by wine zealots of the natural kind.

A while ago I came to the conclusion that the more people know about food, the less they want it mucked around with. Conversely for those who don’t, there are a variety of eateries that cater specifically for them and I’ll go further and suggest that the numerous cooking reality TV shows are targeted at this demographic. Sure, plenty of people watch these shows, including myself at times and I like to think I know a bit about cooking but this is more about car-crash tellie than being informed. Don’t get me wrong I’m not being snobbish here, there are some great businesses that do very well thank you very much but its unlikely that you’ll see them accepting awards for excellence as deemed by the foodie arbiters in the high office of taste. This has always perplexed me.

Firstly, isn’t the sign of a reputable establishment the fact that it is well patronized? If I had a dollar for every lauded place that sits idle whilst the populist joint is heaving next door, I’d be a rich fat bloke.

Secondly, there is an assumption from the food judiciaries that populism sits at odds with the high-art of the kitchen. So by this measure a busy place cannot be serving ‘important food’.

This brings me to the anticipation of the diner.

How many times have you heard ‘I could’ve cooked this at home’ or ‘I want something that I couldn’t cook at home’?

What a conundrum.

How does one negotiate such a spectrum of expectation? Think of it this way. On a table of two you could have someone who wants comfort food and the other who wants theatre on a plate? One of them will leave disappointed.

Complicating this is the notion of irony. Lets say a particular place delves into the retro cookbooks and serves Thermidor, Dianne and Rockefeller. Throw into the mix that the team behind said venture have some form in high-end establishments with media exposure and hey presto, the diners who ‘get-it’ can marvel at how ironic they are being by re-interpreting cheesy dishes of yesteryear. Problems arise though when less ‘sophisticated’ folks arrive and marvel at the prices for a jam rolly poly, which ‘they could have cooked at home mind you!’

Equally if a no-name operator plied their trade for years doing exactly the same food I would suggest they’d go largely ignored by the Fooderati despite a legion of supportive and regular custom.

Just a few things to ponder over your, eggs, bacon, toast, sauce.

Oh well, back to menu writing.

Primary (Producer) nursery rhyme

Our fruit rots on the ground,

and imported cans lie on the shelf,

Because it’s cheaper to get it from abroad

than to harvest it ourself.

What I don’t get is our pollies

whom hark back to yesteryear,

When our standard of living was the cornerstone,

of everything we hold so dear.

But in their quest to save a dollar

And make the playing field even,

Have they squeezed our stoic producers,

into a final season?

Opening a restaurant will cost you Zillions!

How much money should a restaurateur spend on a new project?

I’m gonna make a big call here but the huge cash splash outlay that many operators fork out when setting up a new restaurant or café is akin to what the Hollywood blockbuster is to high art. It’s a tactic designed to your loosen your stubborn money with the lubricants of shock and awe. It detonates the notion of neophillia that may lie inert within us and then condenses it into a compulsive urge to visit. But like chewing gum, it loses it flavor pretty quickly and then all you’re left with is some window putty in your gob. Once the hubris has died down, the rent-a-crowd moved on and the reviewers fluttered in to anoint or dismiss its up to the product and service to do the rest of the act. Sadly for many blockbusters, this isn’t enough.

Of course there are exceptions.

When high talent and high art come together the results set the benchmark but in my opinion, this is a pretty rare occurrence.

If spending so much moolah is a pre-requisite for a successful restaurant or café business, how does one explain the queues snaking from the, op-shop-chic, Formica-tabled and cobbled together fit outs?

I don’t think one has to spend a shedload. In fact I think the places that attract my custom are the ones where the operators personality is out and proud and on display for all to see. They might be quirky. They might be sophisticated and they may even be sexy. They all share a common denominator though: They are not your ‘Off the rack’ designs churned out by Interior Decorating Central.

People often comment on the blandness of Hotel lobbies and their restaurants. Commonly, a pervading undercurrent of corporate-ness denudes any hint of that elusive element we call charm. They’re often staffed by well meaning and courteous panto-players for whom devotion to the role only goes as far as the end of the shift is in start contrast to the owner-operator whom toils daily with ‘the method’ and hopefully never sees the final curtain fall.

I’m coming to the belief that many operators are relying on the big fit-out because there’s only so far you can go with the food and bev. There are operators that ‘gather’ talent, place them on a big stage, sit back and wait for the hordes to arrive but are routinely disappointed that this is not enough to attract custom. Regularly we read about ‘hospitality-supergroups’ that merge only to divide like cells a short time later. I believe that this is because the venture may, on paper, stack up however many are blind to the emerging methods in which younger eaters and drinkers are using venues.

Meanwhile, a generation of nuovo operatore are finding spaces in the cracks left by the Boomer and X operators, in which to trade, often on a shoestring budget with only self belief and enthusiasm behind them. For every big-ticket opening there are several smaller places emerging not just in the cities but also even in rural areas.

The big restaurant groups I have been involved with never said this out loud but we all knew we were targeting the baby Boomers. The shop fit-outs were appealing to them, so were the menus, the style of service and the ambience.

Makes sense really, they have most of the money.

However, we might be just on the cusp of a shift in for whom, the legion of eateries are targeting?