A side of lies: streetfood serves up a swindle

 

Along with woke, work/life balance and self-care, streetfood is one word (or is it two) that I never want to hear again. Streetfood conjures up a myriad of overused travel article clichés: vibrant market, nose-to-tail, warm and friendly locals (preferably poor), authentic recipes handed down from Papaw and the backstory of hard-working immigrants having a go and bringing their invariably fabulous, but undiscovered, cuisine to the masses.

Trouble is it’s none of that. Not any more anyway. It’s Instagrammable food from a re-modelled vintage van run by some privileged hipsters who wouldn’t know a good hamburger if it smacked them in the face and are handily bankrolled by mum and dad. It’s designed to be eaten cold with pseudo-eco cutlery after it’s been insta-imaged to death. It doesn’t matter what it tastes like, as long as it “pops” on Instragram (pops is another word I never want to hear again).

But even if you just actually eat the streetfood and don’t even Instagram it, streetfood is not good. It’s not restorative to queue then stand up in a carpark trying to eat Gumbo with a fork or wrench open the packaging on your gluten-free panko-breaded oxtail taco and then chunder it down in a carpark with grease and dressing running down your arm and a brand new stain on your shirt.

Call me old-fashioned, but take me to a restaurant any day with table service, a plate, serviette and a knife and fork. I’d much rather make a reservation than stand in line under the sun, wind or any other weather event we are likely to get these days.

But even in restaurants, there is no escaping streetfood. Show me an eatery that doesn’t have the word streetfood lurking somewhere there on the menu. It’s like the restauranteur thinks this menu needs sexing up so what to do? Add the word streetfood to our spicy poke bowl number or New Orleons style kale po’-boys, jack up the price and start counting the moolah.

Of course real streetfood does exist. Sadly usually in poverty-stricken countries or the Royal Easter Show. It hits the spot and serves a purpose, it is quick, economical, tasty and hopefully doesn’t need too many rounds of Immodium afterwards. But if you’re not either drunk at 2am or at a sporting event, this hipsterised overly packaged, fake-authentic streetfood slopfest is just un-woke. You don’t need a cutesy truck run by smug millennials to eat good food.

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I’ve had an earful of restaurant noise

Bare floorboards, exposed beams, hard concrete floors and stark industrial lights. This is the look that every eatery worth its Pepe Saya butter follows. Forget carpets, table cloths, curtains and light fittings. So vintage. Quaint even! No, a bare concrete shell and reverberating ceiling is part of the modern dining experience. It’s also the place of nightmares – the one where you keep yelling and no-one can hear above the ear-popping cacophony. That nightmare (and pretty much an average night out in Sydney).

Restauranteurs will shrug their shoulders and talk up their reverberating industrial chic refurb. They might even call it atmosphere. But I reckon it is an elaborate plot, worthy of a SMH investigative journalist sting. Think about it: bare bones spaces require less cleaning – no curtains, carpets, table cloths. Also because of the small problem of not actually hearing a bloody thing your dining companions are saying and ditto them you, means you buy more drinks. May as well get a little buzzed as there’s certainly no conversation going down.

This is especially the case in bars as it keeps the clientele turnover high. Even millennials don’t stay that long in a deafening bar; they just move on to the next deafening bar and catch up for a chat on the way. It’s the perfect plot, keep the slam-bam volume up and maybe even pump out loud music as well and you’ll have a steady stream of people coming in and out all night for a $30 cocktail.

This “atmosphere” is a slow-motion screamfest waiting to happen. An ageing deaf millennial of the future will not be a pretty sight. I’m waiting for the first lawsuit filed by waitstaff because of industrial deafness. I’m waiting for the payouts and contrite restauranteurs doing a mea culpa, promising to do better. I’m waiting for the war on restaurant noise. I’m waiting for the sound level entry in restaurant reviews.

After all, it’s worth remembering the word restaurant comes from restore – and there’s nothing restorative about yelling at the top of your lungs at friends and not hearing them reply.

Living like a local is a load of blither

Photo: Unsplash

Living like a local, much like #vanlife and #livinglovinglife and #cleaneating is a load of self-serving claptrap. Here’s why.

Locals don’t go out to bars and restaurants every night. Unless they are food reviewers or have a trust fund, no-one can afford the time, money (and quite frankly calories) to do those things. As a tourist, when you’re at that cool bar you won’t be mingling with locals – you’ll be rubbing shoulders with other tourists. In other words, people like us (just the people you wanted to avoid).

Where are these prized locals? They’ll be at their fave bar in an ordinary suburb where they meet other locals and talk about their upcoming trip – the trip where they will be living like locals in another city.

Locals don’t sightsee in their own city. It’s true. They don’t. Sure, 20 years ago or when they first moved to the city they might have hit the highlights. In the case of Sydney, it’s Bridge Climb, Opera House concert and ferry ride to Taronga Zoo. But tell me honestly Sydneysiders, how many times did you catch the ferry this year? When did you last even walk across the Harbour Bridge?

I didn’t start catching ferries, doing harbour walks, going to shows until I left Sydney. And now I’ve seen so much more of what I still consider my own city, even though I no longer live there. Why? Time crunch has an amazing ability to fire you up. Also when I stay in Sydney now I stay in the centre (yes, with all the other tourists) which is close to the attractions (unlike in the outer suburbs) and has excellent public transport – specially put on for all the tourists.

So, living like a local is a load of soft centred hokum peddled by Airbnb and Instagram. Living like a local really means living like a tourist. Think aperitivo hour followed by dinner out every night, concerts and just lolling about going to art galleries and snapping monuments. That’s a vacation!

Truly living like a local means paying tax, working, commuting on bad public transport, shopping for a meal you have to cook yourself (no bar hopping tonight) and collapsing in front of Netflix. That is, if you’re not huddled in front of the computer booking Airbnb to go live like a local somewhere else.

 

The ninja neat warrior who sparks crazy

(Image: Decider)

Marie Kondo is having a moment. The diminutive beaming Japanese ninja neat warrior has tapped into the zeitgeist in a big way and is attempting to bring happiness and peace to the planet one neatly folded t-shirt at a time. Thanks to her recent Netflix series, she has become a global phenomenon. Who knew that tidying up was so Instagrammable? Who knew that sorting out stuff would lead to personal empowerment and who knew that a good old-fashioned cleaning session would spark joy. Certainly not me.

For anyone who has somehow missed her Netflix special, her books or massive media coverage, she is a Japanese de-clutterer expert who has devised a system, called KonMari to tackle tidying up. From what I can gather this really just means throwing things out and keeping the house clean. There are, however, a few signature moves. For instance, her approach to throwing out is that you should only keep things that spark joy. If they don’t spark joy, then you must hold the item (be it clothing, ornaments, books, whatever), thank it for its service and then toss it. She also has a special t-shirt folding and storage technique. T-shirts should be stacked upright in the drawer by colour. But first folded with love. (Why you can’t hang up t-shirts I’m not sure).

There is an argument that Marie, despite having released her first book in 2014, is having quite a moment now because of the global political situation. Because people feel adrift and have lost faith in governments and institutions to keep order, they are trying to create order in their own homes. That’s an argument I can get on board with and it’s the only way I can see tidying up being desirable.

It’s not that Marie isn’t likeable. She is. She’s positive with a beaming smile and neat, pressed pastel-coloured clothes and, refreshingly, she’s not an air-brushed Instagram model. She’s polite, she’s her own person and she doesn’t speak fluent English so she comes armed with an interpreter, which adds a different element to the program.

But from what I can glean on this program, there’s not a lot of focus on the root problem, which looks a lot like rampant consumerism. People have masses of stuff, be it fitness equipment, clothes, toys, kitchen appliances, because of the consumer model we live in. Western society peeps need big houses to store all this stuff they don’t really use. My problem with the KonMari method is that it doesn’t talk about what happens to all this discarded stuff. We never know if it goes to landfill or charity or is repurposed.

Also, another problem with the KonMari method is that it is a fact that some people are naturally tidy and others are naturally messy. But if you have never bought that much stuff to begin with then having a tendency to untidy is not a problem. For a start, you don’t need to spend forty minutes folding t-shirts. If I don’t have much stuff I don’t need to be neat! Also a subject Marie fails to mention, is that a little cluttery stuff makes a house a home, makes it personal, makes it real, gives it character. I’m not talking about a giant mess, just a little jumble here and there. If it sparks bemusement, keep it, I say!

I think all this tidying up is likely to spark anxiety, unless the root causes of clutter are tackled. Loneliness, too much stuff, spending addiction, fear of missing out on the latest gadget. And focus on the real things in life that spark joy. For me, what sparks joy is not having to do much housework. It’s life that should spark joy, not folding t-shirts.

Beware buzzwords bearing resilient, strong women

 

These days we are supposed to be agile, resilient, respectful, innovative, flexible, and if you are female, add a strong woman to the mix. I’ve heard the buzzword strong woman in recent years more often than I’ve had hairstyles and I’m still none the wiser. Of course, it’s never said, but implied that if you’re not resilient, strong and agile then somehow it’s your fault and you are a loser.

Of course, marketeers are very happy to have new buzzwords to play around with. The need for resilience can launch a thousand products. Anything really from deodorant to kale and linen to lipstick. Who doesn’t want resilient lipstick? It’s the lipstick of choice for strong women. Governments also love it. More mayhem, chaos, inconvenience plus a longer commute will just be absorbed by the population’s increased resilience. Hooray, win win. Governments can get away with cutting services, grinding down public transport, eroding parks and community facilities because the citizens are more resilient, agile and innovative. Never mind the extra 45 minutes standing up on the bus because the trains are out for ten months. Resilience people! Strong Women!

I wonder whether these words have crept into the zeitgeist because it’s the only way to get through the day let alone the year. Bombarded as we are with so much bad news, roadworks, austerity cuts during 27 years of economic growth that we are permanently just one stop away from a meltdown on a delayed train after a too-long day. Of course, these characteristics are useful personal qualities to have, but part of me thinks they sure as hell benefit the government as well. I wonder if public transport was upgraded, working hours reduced, community services restored and green spaces increased, if we would have a need for resilience and agility and empowerment. Something for a strong woman to ponder.

Don’t saddle up for this fashion trend

Bike shorts are the new fashionista must-have item. Yes, bike shorts, you read that right. According to the fashionistas you can team them with a dress jacket, ballet flats, heels, a statement knit or jewellery. Do make sure you team them with great legs, preferably great tanned legs. Also the correct thigh/calf ratio. Hair must look adorable. At least helmet hair won’t be a problem because you won’t be wearing a helmet with your bike pants. It’s really just for Instagram purposes only. Speaking of which, make sure you post pictures of you and your bike shorts out for the night partying, going high-end shopping, coffee, drinks, dinner. Anywhere but on your bike really.

This highly sought-after fashion item is the dreaded bike shorts from gym classes of old. Yes, really. The boring, black, stretchy short pants that stayed permanently in the gym bag for a reason. Bland, unflattering and for activewear only. Even for activewear they look bad.

However Vogue Australia knows better. Cool girl staple, they say. Add a statement knit and heels for evening wear.

It’s a swipeable fashion, dreamed up by a PR outfit, here today and swiped off the feed tomorrow. It makes all the other bad fashions not seem so bad after all – fluoro, flares (at least flares can be flattering), skinny jeans, skinny ties and anything orange.

I’d like to think that surely, a species as creative as humans can invent a better fashion than bike pants. It’s only a look only a PR or a celebrity could love, but for the rest of us, bike shorts should take a hike.

Can I have a rescue kitten with my beetroot latte?

Rescue animals are the latest must have accessory. As heard on James Valentine’s Afternoons show recently, he joked about ordering a turmeric latte and a rescue greyhound. The strange thing is that it isn’t so long ago that special breed dogs were de rigueur. Every man and his dog had an Alaskan Malamute crossed with a Portuguese Water Dog mixed with Bernedoodle or a Neapolitan Mastiff mixed with Whoodle. It was the epitome of everything to have a Scottish Fold Cat mixed with Sphinx. It signified individuality and care, as though you’d matched your lifestyle with a particular breed. In a way it was brandbuilding under the guise of thoughtfulness.

How things change. Now to hear someone say that they have got a breed dog would be the equivalent of saying you support child labour. To rescue a poor distressed poverty-stricken animal with no family, breeding or connections from a third-world suburb and offer them a “forever home” denotes depth and authenticity. The more tragic the tale – rescued from a flood, senior dog with broken leg, cat blinded in hit and run car accident even better. You are hot smoking woke.   

Once rescued, these animals have a pampered life. If you live In Melbourne you can even order a beer for your dog. Beerdog Bitter is a beef flavoured lightly carbonated drink that is on tap in a number of Melbourne ale houses. You can now take your dog out to lunch and a drink. How nice. Still in Melbourne, why not visit the café for dogs – dogachinos, pupcorn and grass-fed beef dog loaves. On the other hand, cats drink wine. You can order online a MosCATo or Pinot Meow, which substitutes alcohol for catnip. There are dog laughter workshops, pet reiki, behaviour therapy because – you know – rescue animals have … issues. And if your rescue pet is cute or quirky enough they can become Instagram stars and launch their own brand of merch. Life was never this good for designer pets of old.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course, I think it is much better to rescue an animal rather than pay an exorbitant fee on a specially bred family pet. If a nice middle-class couple doesn’t rescue these animals more than likely they will not have a happy life, or any life at all. I’m just wondering why having a rescue pet has suddenly got so popular. Are people hoping for extra love and loyalty from their new pet given they saved its life? (If you’re looking for love from a cat, good luck). Is it that they feel powerless about world events so are putting their energy into a rescue kitten? Instead of solving the entire refugee crisis are they just going to try to help one abandoned pug? Is it instead of volunteering because, you know, who wants to spend all day in a soup kitchen when you can play with your new rescue puppy! Or is a rescue pet a little something to casually brag about on Instagram? Maybe it is because relationships with actual humans are just too complex now and better to get a new family member that can’t speak English.

Whatever the reason, I just worry these rescue animals will be dropped at the next fad. When the pet rock makes a comeback.

Keel over Kale, Cauliflower is in town

Take a bow and move aside please, Kale. Cauliflower is the new Must-have vegetable accessory. There’s nothing you can’t do with cauliflower – make it into rice or pizza or chug it down raw. You can smash it, mash it, pulverise it, roast it. You can spiral it, grind it, bind it and blowtorch it. Take that kale! You could do some of those things but you could never pull off rice or pizza.

It’s strange to think that the humble cauli, the veg that used to be like an embarrassing cousin at the wedding, is this year’s new It food.

But why? And how? Who decided you could rub it with spices and roast whole in the oven and call it Cauliflower Roast? Who exactly is the cauliflower Insta-influencer who told us cauliflower’s time has come. Who is the marketing genius who pared it first with pomegranate? And most importantly, with demand skyrocketing, where are the cauliflowers grown? Did farmers have to rip out kale plants to put in cauliflower? The logistics are fascinating.

Now that cauliflower has been elevated to the big league, I want to know how did we ever survive without having cauli in every meal? That was madness.

I’m not anti-cauliflower (although those those teensy tiny florets sure are mess mavens). If you smother it in salt and oil it tastes pretty good (which is the only way we got through the kale years). As far as fake rice goes it tastes pretty good and is nearly as cheap. It’s good to see it is finally getting the recognition it deserves but I’m worried for it. Kale lasted about 3 – 5 years and cauliflower is destined to do the same. Once you’ve had it as rice pizza, mac and cheese, whole roasted or raw with a vegan dip where can you go? And what will be next?

Zucchini has some form thanks to zucchini noodles, it probably has a little too much Latin flair. I’m thinking celeriac, which has a face like a dropped pie, or else turnip. They both have the advantage of looking and sounding bad, a prerequisite for the next hit vegetable. Until we can 3D print the next new veg, Kalieflower, perhaps?

Fancy a Tonka Bean Fizz?

So who decided that drinking gin and whiskey is now a thing. In the last few years there’s been an explosion of gin bars, speakeasys and whiskey rooms popping up faster than a Donald Trump tweet. These bespoke bars are a study in comfy clubby leather furniture, old-school framed pictures and hipster pot plants. Many of them invoke the 20’s and 30’s – an era that millennials are obsessed with and think they invented. It goes with the fixed gear bikes, upturned milkcrates and jam jars in an ex butcher’s shop. Throw in a bearded bartender, artsy menu and ridiculous prices and you are all set to order your gin fling (craft beer and organic wine is so last century).

So what to choose? Why not start with a staple. For instance a freshly foraged Lemon Aspen Gimlet with locally foraged berries which are pureed into a sorbet using liquid nitrogen.

Or how about a Pressed Kale Fizz or Green Ant Gin Julep with dill infused green Chartreuse and orange marmalade syrup. Want something more nuanced? Try a Norwegian foraged Cornish Cumbrian or a charcoal filtered sling with a shot of green pea tonic. To mix things up a bit add a single origin shot of peanut butter bitters mist, a cold drip coffee sphere, wood smoke popcorn or an infusion of whey vapour.

If this seems more confusing than ordering a glass of house red, then it’s important to know who is to blame. HIPSTERS! Not content with beer, wine or a gin and tonic, hipsters have to overdramatize the gin and whiskey scene. Make it something it is not, make it expensive and impenetrable. Make it an expensive conglomeration, not just a drink you have in summer on the balcony before you get stuck into the vino. And now, not only does it cost the earth but you have to wait a long time before that first sip. By the time the bartender (sorry, mixologist) has added small batch cardamom mist and hand-massaged pomegranate seed to your drink, it is a good six minutes, which is five and a bit minutes longer than I ever want to wait for a beverage. Anyway who wants salad in their drink. The more greenery you put in it, generally the less gin there is and the more it costs. Clearly hipsters are not very bright.

Not content with gin, hipsters have also moved into whiskey and spinning it like a vinyl record. I can see why whiskey is hipster heaven or on point as an actual hipster would say. Whiskey bars are intimate and clubby and the names of whiskies usually sound bespoke and hand-crafted. Besides who doesn’t want to imbibe a wee dram in a place called Irish Snug, Swine Moonshine, Whiskey Ginger.

Luckily for hipsters, no-one really knows how to drink whiskey. It is a drink that was last around in the 1950’s and 60’s, which means millennials have been able to pretend they invented it. Anyone who was thoroughly refreshed by a whiskey bar in the 50’s isn’t going out to bars any more.

Even though I’m not that ancient, I yearn for that time a few short years back when I could order a glass of $8 wine in a bar with only a short queue. Of course, this gin fling and whiskey fetish is nothing new. It’s the new smashed avo only in liquid form. Like edible flowers it won’t last. And like millennials it will fade and get old then wither. Just not soon enough.

Government? Who needs it?

So, Australia hasn’t had a proper government for around three years. The Abbott experiment was a mad scrum of throwback ideas, awkward doorstops and daily outrage followed by months of inaction.

The start of the Turnbull experiment was a melee of ideas, broad smiles and a collective sigh of relief that we finally had a prime minister who spoke in complete sentences and didn’t walk like Donald Duck.

But as it turned out, a prime minister who spoke in complete sentences was too much to hope for too. Fasttrack to a year later and we still have a prime minister who speaks in three word slogans and looks like a ghost of his former self but with a manic grin on his face. Meanwhile Prime Minister meekly submits to the schoolyard bullies and nothing gets done; nobody is obviously in charge and the government limps on. At least I think it does – no-one is paying attention.

But it’s got me thinking. Do we need government at all? Maybe we are a self-governing society. People are still going to cafes, going to the beach, going to work and getting paid. They are still getting married, going to the doctor, going to school and catching up with friends. They are going on diets, they are exercising, they are planning holidays and continuing to ignore politics. Life is going on as normal.

In Belgium a few years ago a hung parliament meant that a caretaker government with very limited powers was put in charge for nearly 18 months. And exactly the same thing happened. Life went on! Who knows, maybe it was better with fewer politicians. I do realise Australia has a majority government, but in a way it is similar to a hung parliament – we have a gridlocked agenda and a parliament not able to make decisions.

So, here’s my solution – a plebiscite question as follows: Does Australia need a government? Yes/No.

And … make the result binding, please.