In The Mood For Food Interlude!

First published in The Skinny, July 1, 2009

Motoring is an exhausting exercise. Whizzing past all those cows may well set off a longing for lunch, but you might worry about the fact that rural and regional Australia appears to have fewer Cordon Blue chefs per square metre than more urban environs, on account of the fields and all, but fine food is actually available everywhere.

Unfortunately, so is not-so-fair and downright foul, but here’s the thing – there is no way of knowing who is serving what. In what constitutes random chaos dining theory, there is no rule of thumb to judging the quality of the food by the size of plate, no guide to eating by the standard of exterior décor, as nothing is what it seems unless it is. Culinary delights can emanate from the grandest recycled Italianate mansion, or the most forlorn, age-weary weatherboard shack teetering on the roadside of the sleepiest Ranges hamlet.

For instance, that severely starched bright young thing manning the ivory tablecloths and fresh flowers of ‘Un Bistrot’, the little place next door to Krystal’s World Of Wind Chimes, may well set before you a blob of pasta e funghi nestled upon a white plate with the diameter of a bike wheel and costing the GDP of Poland, but was it lovingly constructed from fresh Alba truffles unearthed before dawn by hand-reared pigs? Or liberated from the back of the freezer section at Safeway? Whatever it is, there’s every chance that the pub over the road will serve the exact same thing.

Likewise, either establishment would be equally happy to purvey the finest sautéed beefsteak steeped in a reduction of roux, pan juices and stock, gently wrapped in a light filo pastry and snuggled in a ripe tomato jus, but so would the bakery next to the post office because everyone loves a good meat pie and sauce.