Food for thought

Some reminiscing on a misspent youth

By Michael Clancy

One of the great delights about living in Australia is the choice we have when it comes to what to eat and where to eat it. From five-star degustation to beach barbie we have it all on tap. The country abounds in fresh produce from tropical and sub-tropical fruit such as the mango, pineapple and banana to foods produced in more temperate climates such as European root vegetables. Thanks to our multicultural heritage, we are now able to access an equally large variety of non-traditional foods either at home or by eating out thanks to immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia who have introduced new customs and new foods into a once stodgidly British Australia. When it comes to food, we have never had it so good and the signs suggest we might never have it as good again.

I grew up in the nineteen fifties and sixties and at that time, Australia was a very different place. Those were the days of Bob Menzies and the "White Australia" policy. Most migrants to Australia during that period – my own family included – came from Britain or another European country. The Australian diet was pretty much identical to that of England at that time and it was plain food – but of course still of exceptional quality and heavily oriented towards red meat which was plentiful. We used to go to a wholesale butcher known as the Lazy Lamb on Adelaide's Main South Road up on Flagstaff Hill where a full half carcass of lamb, cut to however you wanted it, would cost us $2. Eggs and lamb chops for breakfast was the order of the day. Chicken was something you ate at Christmas.

There were of course some uniquely Australian dishes in those days that are still with us, the ubiquitous pie and pastie – not entirely Australian of course but only Australia elevated these items into national icons. And of course there was the Chiko roll. The Chiko roll was something else again. Inspired by the Chinese spring roll, it was similar to a pastie in terms of ingredients but deep fried in a thick pastry wrap rather than baked. Because of this, it was mostly sold in fish-and-chip shops. With a thick pastry coating it had little of the delicacy of a Chinese or Vietnamese spring roll and would have been a real challenge to eat with chopsticks and a dipping sauce. No, Like the pie and the pasty, the hardy Chiko roll was "fast food" designed to be eaten on the go.

Actually, the origin of the Chiko roll is of some interest. Many believe it to be a Chinese dish gone wrong or one that was adapted to suit hearty Australian tastes. Actually, it was the invention of a Bendigo boilermaker back in 1951 who wanted a snack he could eat with one hand at football matches while swilling a beer in his other hand. I see it is still available but I have not yet plucked up the courage to have one.

These were the days before we had the likes of McDonalds, KFC or Hungry Jacks (Burger King to non-Australians). In those innocent times, fast food was obtained from the milk bar, corner store or local burger joint where hamburgers were made before your eyes and topped with bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and the owner's very own sauce. My favourite burger was made by a Greek grocer on O'Connell Street in North Adelaide who ran his burger counter as a sideline but who, probably – judging by its popularity – was the mainstay of his business since it attracted all-comers at any hour of the day or night.

And if we wanted a sweet treat we ordered a Vanilla Slice or a Chester Square, the latter being, I believe, uniquely South Australian as I have never seen it anywhere else. Vanilla Slices consist of a thick vanilla custard sandwiched between two layers of puff pastry and topped with white icing. A Chester Square is similar but different with the custard replaced by what always looked like a floury bread pudding and topped with pink icing. Both of them were calorific hell but we did not care. They were just the thing we needed after an afternoon on the footie field.

And for a chocolate fix we had the choice of a Polly waffle or a Violet Crumble bar – both then made by a Mr. Hoadley. Sadly, while I was sleeping, Hoadleys sold out to Rowntree and Rowntree sold out to Nestlé. The Polly waffle went the way of the dinosaur – or as Nestlé say on their website, consumers preferred the Kit-Kat bar over the Australian icon. Personally, I feel this is like saying that consumers prefer avocados to Packham pears. To my mind, a bit of clever marketing would have introduced the delight of the Pollywaffle to a new generation of Aussies and beyond. Sadly, my grandson will never have the delight of biting through that crunchy chocolate coating to find the marshmallow that lay below. More to the point – nor will I!

Perhaps its demise has something to do with the notoriety the Pollywaffle gained during an Australian tour of the Rolling Stones back in the sixties when British singer Marian Faithfull, touring with the group, found an entirely new use for it – or so went the urban legend at the time. Sales skyrocketed after that story went around.

Perhaps the survival of the Violet Crumble bar is because it has a more honoured place in history. To preserve the freshness of the honeycomb filling, Hoadleys needed a new kind of airtight wrapper. A French company, La Cellophane, invented the metallic cellophane wrapper specifically for the Violet Crumble bar. With such a pedigree, how could it be allowed to disappear?

We did not eat out much in those days and when we did it was usually in the dining room of the Glenelg Hotel. It was there one New Years Eve that I was introduced to my first glass of wine. This was at a time before the wine industry had taken off and if offered a glass of wine, the usual choice would be between a sweet and a dry sherry. To my recollection, there was only one wine on the menu that night (but as I seem to recall from my murky past) around five different beers); it went by the name of "Barossa Pearl". That too has now disappeared and with the enormous variety we have today, it is no great loss. Wine drinking did not really take off until the middle of the nineteen-sixties. At that time I was living in one of the university colleges and enjoying the student life. We quickly discovered that drinking beer was too expensive and that it was much cheaper to drink sherry and port which we could buy by the flagon. So began my profligate downfall and lifetime affection for the grape that my initial encounter at the Glenelg Hotel had sought to destroy.

When we wanted to be really daring we had a choice of three restaurants in Adelaide (there were probably more, but we only knew of three). There was Mario's Pizza Bar in Hindley Street, the Balkan Grill just across the road or another, also on Hindley Street, the name of which is long forgotten but which served the most sumptuous smorgasbord (the term "buffet" only became popular later – probably because it has 40% less letters in the word).

Mario's Pizza Bar was open 24 hours a day. It was really no more than a small corner shop with a central bar area surrounded by stools and a dumb waiter which was used to send the orders down to the kitchen below; moments later the dumb waiter would return with one of Mario's pizzas. They were all the same price – 30 cents – and resembled the pan pizza popular today but usually topped with Mario's special Russian Salad. That particular style of pizza I have never found anywhere else thankfully. It was only in 1969 that a second pizza house opened in Rundle Street – now Rundle Mall – and which served thin crust pizzas with all the toppings we have today but which when we first tried one we were all convinced was "not a real pizza." How times have changed.

To head off to Mario's pizza bar, especially at night, was considered a daring and dangerous thing. "Who knows?" we thought. "Mario might be a mafia leader and down below was not just a kitchen but a whole den of iniquity." We never did get "down below" nor indeed discover how, aside from the dumb waiter, how it might be accessed. That only fuelled our imagination. Poor Mario. I sometimes wonder what happened to him after Australia discovered the thin and crispy?

And I almost forgot, the fourth eating establishment: the pie cart on King William Street which served the famous South Australian floater: a meat pie in a dish covered in a mushy pea soup. Thanks Sam for reminding me of that. After a hard night drinking with my college batch mates, the pie cart was the alternative to one of Mario's pizzas. Thank goodness that in those days there was no breathalyser. We lived dangerously – or thought we did.

Then there were the Chinese restaurants that were ubiquitous even at that time. The Chinese were among the early settlers of Australia, many coming to work the goldfields in the nineteenth century before federation. Mostly Cantonese speakers, many of them stayed and became integrated into Australian society and at least allowed Australians of that era a glimpse of a cuisine different from the one they were used to having.

Of course by today's standards, the menu was rather limited. Spring rolls, chicken with cashew nuts, sweet and sour pork and fried rice. Those dishes figured on most menus and were always considered a "safe" choice. During my postgraduate years at Adelaide University I spent three months a year at Mildura sending high altitude balloons aloft with our scientific apparatus designed to detect inter-stellar X-rays. We lived at the Mildura Grand Hotel and ate in the dining room. The menu never changed. When we could take it no longer we decided one evening to strike out and try Chinese food.

There was one such restaurant in Mildura and none of us had eaten Chinese before. So we walked up the road, found the place and ordered our spring rolls, chicken with cashew nuts, sweet and sour pork and fried rice. The order was taken by a lanky Melbournian lady of middling years who, from memory, had a cigarette to one side of her mouth. If my memory is failing and she was not smoking, then she certainly looked as though she should have been. Behind the counter at the cash register was a striking young lady of obvious oriental ancestry. Slim, a pretty round face with piercing eyes and long flowing black hair that was tied in a pony tail; she was the stuff of dreams. "Why oh why could we not be served by her" we all silently asked each other, only our glances to one another and to the till betraying our thoughts. Only later did I come to realise that in Chinese restaurants it was always a member of the family that guarded the cash register.

Our beers came and we waited for our meal. There was a shout from the kitchen and for a moment our Chinese lass disappeared from view. She returned and began walking to our table. Our faces lit up noticeably. Would we be invited into the back to a game of mah-jong we thought or maybe to try the opium pipe? "Honourable western gentlemen, please be so kind as to accompany me for an evening of pleasure" we thought. No it was not to be. She reached our table, began to speak and in the broadest strine accent asked us "Will youze lot be awantin' chips with your dinner?"

Our illusions were shattered. The orient was no longer inscrutable.