Best Food Writing 2017 by Holly Hughes

Author:Holly Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

The City That Knows How to Eat

BY BESHA RODELL

From Eater.com

For LA Weekly restaurant critic Besha Rodell, revisiting the zesty, multiethnic dining scene of Melbourne, Australia—her childhood home—more than lived up to her memories. Which inevitably led her to wonder: Why can’t Americans eat like this?

In 1976, Australia birthed three things: The AC/DC album High Voltage, the bratwurst stand at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market, and me. When I was a kid, my AC/DC-loving stepfather and I would brave the throngs in front of the bratwurst stand to claim our breakfast: Two regular brats, please, with mild mustard on half white rolls, along with a flat white for my stepfather made on the old espresso machine that grunted and whirred a few feet from the smoking grill.

After breakfast, we would embark upon our Saturday food-shopping ritual, a serious undertaking that circled outward through the Vic Market’s 17 sprawling acres of indoor and outdoor stalls. In the fruit sheds I could smell the edge of rot; in the chilly meat building whole carcasses hung, dead eyes staring. In the deli section, a vintage paradise of chrome and marble booths built in 1929, gold-painted lettering spelled out the businesses’ names and specialties: French pastries, tea, confections, cheese, olives, butter, bratwurst. I marveled at stalls festooned with hanging kielbasa, and stalls where they scooped thick Greek yogurt from tubs, and stalls with delicate European chocolates displayed like jewels. Shopping was a skill and a joy and a competitive sport. My stepfather haggled with the meat guy and selected the best vegetables hawked by old Greek men who shouted: “Bananabananabanana!!! Onedollaronedollarondollar!!!”

At the time, if you had asked me what I might miss most about my Melbourne life, the Markets wouldn’t have even crossed my mind. Boys, friends, record stores—these were the things I considered most meaningful.

In 1990, my American mother decided it was time for her to return home, and for the rest of us—four kids, one husband—to go with her. I arrived in Denver, Colorado, as a pissed-off 14-year-old with purple hair and a funny accent, separated from my father and my friends. My new home seemed to lack any discernible street life, only cars and tidy neighborhoods and malls. The most visceral culture shock came in the aisles of American supermarkets, which were sterile and bright and exciting in a morally ambiguous kind of way. The yogurt was different (sweeter), the candy was different (better), the cookies were called cookies, not biscuits. Rather than the vibrant, stinky thrill of Vic Market’s maze of stalls, in Denver, shopping for food was an act of sanitary consumerism. For my stepfather especially, the pleasure of shopping, and therefore of cooking and eating, was blunted. What had been a raucous joy became a cold chore.

My first true American friendship came once we left Denver and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Toby was a crazy goth gay kid who wore black-and-white-striped tights with jean shorts and Doc Martens and only ate fluffernutter sandwiches. Like the rest of my new peers, he seemed to revel in his general dislike of food.

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