CAFES: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GRILLED HAM, CHEESE AND TOMATO ON TOAST?

Credit: Andrewgen, iStock

 

Here I go again.  Yes, I've waffled on about restaurants before but there is no limit to my disappointment and the amount of complaining I can manage.  I don't think it's because I'm old(ish), I think it's because cafes, especially after surviving during Covid, don't want to take chances and they all offer the same menu choices in order to compete with other surviving cafes.

Smashed Avocado on Sourdough Toast topped with Feta and, sometimes, a poached egg, is a delicious breakfast or lunch.  It has, however, become 'de rigeur' in almost every cafe.  That's fine if you can handle sawing apart toasted sourdough.  I've given up and just pick it up in my hands.  If you've read some of my other posts, you'll know I have Essential Tremor in my hands, making eating in a restaurant akin to frisbee throwing, that is, for my nearby neighbours.  It is best if I eat with my hands.  That, however, is not why I complain about the sameness of cafe menus.

Although cafes offer a plethora of breakfast and lunch menu options, there is a noticeable absence of some good old staples.  I suspect that if a cafe offered these, they would be considered below standard, a laughingstock or drummed out of the corps.  I refer to the simple dish of open faced, grilled cheese and tomato on toast, perhaps with ham, or even a toasted croissant with the same ingredients.  By toast, I mean the stuff that comes out of supermarket packet.  I don't buy such for home use, but it is much easier to cut with a knife than toasted sourdough.  You can also make two vertical cuts and have three nice strips to eat by hand for those of us with questionable hand movements.

So many things have improved in what is available in supermarkets, but other, simple things have faded into obsolescence.  Previously I have bemoaned the disappearance of Chicken Maryland and Steak Diane in restaurants, although some steak restaurants will offer steaks with your choice of sauces.  A couple of years ago I went with a friend to a steak restaurant at the Gold Coast.  You almost needed to take your bank manager with you to afford a steak.  I ordered prawns, not to be cheap, but because I love them.  They came cooked in their shells.  I have never experienced such a messy meal with so little to show for it.  If the place was that expensive, they may at least have peeled them, plus add a dozen more so I didn't leave needing a Macdonald's hamburger.

I honestly feel that I haven't had a decent meal since I lived in Hong Kong forty years ago.  I recently had a Chinese meal that my friend and I picked up for dinner.  We've used the restaurant many times and it is adequate.  This time it sadly disappointed.  Maybe the usual chef was away or had simply given up all hope.  Chinese is expensive these days and, recently, I have learned to cook a really good Chinese chicken stir fry.  It is so good, the takeaway meal paled by comparison.  What's wrong with that, you ask?  It's because I'm tired of cooking and, it seems, I cannot go out and find a meal equal to anything I cook at home.

There is only so much pizza, cooked chicken or hamburgers I can stomach for takeout.  I need someone who can cook like me, but instead of me.  I'm so tired of trying to figure out what to do with the corpses of cows, chicken, pigs or poor lambs.  I feel guilty enough eating them without having to ponder over what to do with their dead flesh.

I have wandered off the theme of this post, but it sent me down a perilous road of disappointing eating out and takeout experiences.  The man in my life actually gets cross if I ask him what he'd like for dinner.  After all, it's such hard work to decide.  I remind him that he doesn't actually have to go out, find an animal, kill it and bring it home.  All he has to do is eat it.  If you haven't cooked nearly every darned day of your life, I guess having to make a decision about food must be extremely tedious.

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DIGESTING PRETENTIOUS RESTAURANT MENUS.

 

I have a beef and I don't mean Wagyu, Angus or corn fed.  I really don't care what kind of poor cow I'm eating as long as it is tender.  I also don't want to know if caramel is salted, I just want caramel.  I don't want rice that is koshihikari, I just want rice.  I don't know what Ponzu is so I don't want it on something.  I don't want Hiramasha Kingfish, I just want fish nor do I want charred Burrata, which is apparently a cheese similar to Mozzarella, with my roti.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't want to have to take a culinary dictionary to a restaurant in order to decipher what I'm eating.  I go out to eat so that I don't have to slave away in the kitchen but now I work up a sweat trying to understand a menu.  What is going on?  If chefs want to try out exotic dishes on diners, or to ramp up the names of non-exotic dishes with befuddling descriptions to make them seem tastier, why can't they put simple explanations alongside them?  Does it have to do with the price they charge for the dish or is it a competitive thing among chefs?

Last year before Covid hit, my friend and I went to a new restaurant precinct in Brisbane.  It was situated right on Brisbane River, a real plus, and there were about ten restaurants to choose from, all owned by the one seafood group.  Now, I have a yen for Garlic Prawns and we walked past every restaurant perusing the menus looking for some but there were none to be found.  There were plenty of cold, cooked prawns at one venue but that is all.  There was a ton of swordfish on offer done many ways, but no Garlic Prawns.  There were restaurants that were of the pub variety, Greek, Italian and even burger variety but, if I'd fired a gun, I had no hope of hitting one that served what I desired.  I also don't remember when Swordfish became a thing.  Snapper, Barramundi and Trout were once 'the thing', so when did Swordfish rear it's curiously adorned head?

There was a time when practically every restaurant offered Garlic Prawns on the menu and perhaps this is what has happened.  Perhaps it just became too de rigeur.  I now long for 'de rigeur'.  This morning I decided to search restaurant menus online in the hope of finding a decipherable one without success.  Following my search I'm giving two examples of menu items that are indicative of the type of dishes I ran across.

The first item: Hervey Bay scallop, burnt peanut cream, nam jim, crystallised peanut.  The second item: Grilled ox tongue, sticky date hoisin glaze, furikake.  Well I know what a scallop is and where Hervey Bay is although I don't care much what part of Australia the scallop comes from.  As for burnt peanut cream, I presume that it is burnt peanut butter or possibly sate.  Nam Jim I've had to look up and it's a dressing made of chillies, cloves, lime juice and such  while crystallised peanut is self explanatory.  Basically I'd guess that what would be served up to me would be a spicy scallop sate with crushed peanuts on top.

As for the grilled ox tongue, I know what hoisin sauce is, but made from sticky dates?  Furikake I had to look up and it is a Japanese seasoning based on sesame seeds and nori, or seaweed.  The dish might be delicious but as I've never tried furikake, am I willing to spend good money to find out?  Also the idea of ox tongue in Hoisin sauce, sorry, glaze, may be a bit experimental for my tastes.

I appreciate experimentation and Australia's cuisine has benefited enormously from it as we have absorbed immigrants from different cultures from around the world for over five decades now.  Chinese and Indian cuisine terms have become as familiar to us as English language ones as have the seasonings and condiments.  Japanese terms are catching up but have a way to go.  It is, however, a certain pretentiousness that is causing some terminology to muddle up menus.  I'm sure many of the seasonings and dishes that the chefs use are real but new to Australia and still obscure.  If there are too many of them on one menu, it does not make for a relaxing or enjoyable way to have to choose your meal.

Another two items that also appeared on the earlier menu, although separately as ingredients in different dishes, were Boquerones and Yuzu kosho.  If I'd had to decipher the menu of this very well reviewed restaurant, I would have kept the waitperson a very long time requesting descriptions.  It is so much nicer to peruse the menu at leisure and with comprehension without requiring your waiter to translate it.  By the way, in case you didn't know, Boquerones are white anchovies and Yuzu kosho is a Japanese condiment based on chilies.

When I was young, from the age of about seven, my parents would take me to restaurants with them as we were reasonably well off.  I don't imagine that in the 1950's and '60's there were many children who had this privilege.  In those days, in cosmopolitan Sydney, restaurants had good quality western style meals along with some French and Italian influenced dishes.   Some entrees I remember were prawns in a seafood cocktail sauce and also French Onion soup.  For some reason I can't remember other entrees.  For mains there was always a roast meat meal on offer of either beef, pork, lamb or chicken, a fish dish either battered or meuniere, Chicken Maryland, which was crumbed, fried and served with a crumbed, fried banana and pineapple ring on the side.  That was a favourite of mine.  There was also Steak Diane in its rich dark garlic sauce.  If we went to a seafood restaurant, there was often Lobster, which was also a favourite of mine.  What a lucky child I was.

There weren't Chinese dishes on the menus then and only the occasional Australian version of an Indian curry.  Good Chinese restaurants started to appear when I was in my early teens but it wasn't until some decades later that supermarkets began to stock the ingredients and condiments that would allow us to attempt to cook Chinese food at home.

I'm telling you about my early restaurant experiences to let you know that I'm no stranger to eating out and so the present problem I have with menu descriptions is not because of my lack of restaurant savoir faire but because menus have changed.  The principle of simpler is better has been forgotten.  I would happily try any of these new dishes if I didn't feel I was hacking my way through thick jungle with a scythe when I was trying to decipher the menu.  I go out to relax not to work.

Some of my favourite Brisbane restaurants either closed, were upgraded with new menus I don't care for and, in one case took off down the river in the 2011 flood.  That really was a tragic loss.  With Covid ruining so many restaurants' business, I am grateful any survive at all and perhaps that's where this competitive obfuscation comes in.  Perhaps they are trying to impress, however, I now don't venture to eat out without perusing menus online to make sure that there is a place to eat that will serve something I like and, more importantly, so I don't have to take over half an hour to understand the menu.  If it took that long I would have drunk my way through a whole glass of wine and be tiddly before the food arrived.

Maybe restaurants should bring back a few of the old staples and, as we sit and eat them, we can spy on surrounding tables to see what the more adventurous diners are eating so we can try it the next time we visit.  Of course my friend thinks it's rude when I slyly look around to view other diner's meals but then lately he has taken to only ordering garlic bread for his meal and nothing else.  And he thinks I'm embarrassing.

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