Australia Days

Greatest hits

Rob and I are taking advantage of our final weeks here to sneak out for lunch at the restaurants recommended to us. Apparently Melbourne has evolved relatively swiftly from overcooked meet and veg in the 1960s to become the café city of Australia.

This week's pick was Vue de Monde: terrific menu and superb service. The maitre d' even scurried over when I was gesticulating just to make sure I wasn't summoning him. "This seems like a woman who shouldn't be kept waiting," he told Rob. Wise man.

Failure to communicate

"May I have an iced coffee? I'd like just these ingredients: skim milk, ice, coffee."

"Skim milk? Not cream?"

"Just skim milk, ice, and coffee."

"Not regular milk?"

"No, just skim milk, please."

I sample the results, and immediately order a black coffee.

"What's the matter? Don't you like our maple syrup?"

Skiving off

Rob and I interrupted our hectic schedules to have lunch at Livebait, overlooking the water at Melbourne's Docklands. As Frommer's said, "your hardest decision will be whether to choose from the freshest fish or indulge in the restaurant's signature paella". And, thankfully, not a mango or dog roll in sight.

Grocery adventures

So, the food shopping has been fairly easy to figure out. Thanks to globalization, there's a Big Mac on every corner and almost all familiar brands are present and accounted for. Every so often there's a nomenclature issue that poses a challenge (Rob pondered the sultanas  vs. raisins issue for a while yesterday), or something random that makes you wonder.

For example, why do so many women buy an entire box of mangoes at the market? I mean, they'll have two tomatoes, a head of lettuce, three cucumbers, five peaches and boom -- an entire box of mangoes resting on top. Are they making untold amounts of smoothies? Mango chutney? Does anyone know?

The other visual that makes me pause every time we go to our dull, urban supermarket is this:

I assume that no one is eating Irish setter packaged like liverwurst, despite the eerie juxtaposition with the hot dogs. But still, I pause each time I see it.

Caffeine quest

Who does a girl have to bribe around here to get some decent iced coffee?

My first attempt, from an organic coffee stall in South Melbourne market, yielded a coffee with ice cream concoction, more like a milkshake. The woman advised me that next time I should ask for a frappé.

The second attempt (at a fancy Greek coffee shop called Agora), I explained exactly what I wanted: cold black coffee, ice, skim milk. I knew things were going horribly wrong when I saw the man spoon Nescafé into the cup. When I tried to protest, he assured me that this would be frothy and delicious. He added two ice cubes, and a pint of full cream, and served it up proudly. What gives? Do the cafés here also serve General Foods International Coffees to celebrate the moments of your life?

I refuse to bow to the Starbucks overlord here, but I've got to figure out how to order an iced coffee.

Cookie delight

Sure, Tim complains that the cocoa is not up to snuff and Rob swears the Jim Beam tastes different, but essentially we have all the same food brands. The fast food chains are the same; maybe there are a few more Noodle Boxes, but the choice and pricing is similar to what you'd get in San Francisco, if not quite Boston. That said, Tim has made one life-changing discovery: the TimTam.