Food History

My mind is still dwelling on the perfect foodie Monday.

From the suburbs of Melbourne, my family and I headed for the country. We went through Lilydale to the Yarra Valley.

When I was a child, Lilydale was rural. Now it’s almost a suburb of Melbourne. We stopped there for morning tea, just for old time’s sake.

If we were in the US, the cafe we were at would probably be called a diner. It was very unpretentious. We bought coffee and shared a giant chocolate fudge biscuit. While we did that, we gazed at the menu. This menu was the perfect example of what has happened to small Aussie cafes/takeaway shops. For breakfast the menu included things like bacon and eggs, toast, eggs benedict, croissants and omelettes.

For lunch you could buy a range of sandwiches (announced as “foccacia, Turkish style”) that included everything from grilled vegetables to chicken schnitzel.

For the very hungry, there was a selection of proper meals. There were too many for me to scribble down, but they included ginger poached chicken, Mongolian beef, Thai beef salad, stuffed Cajun chicken, Dijon Parmagiana chicken, tofu stir-fry. Fusion takeaway.

It smelled good, even if my mind can’t encompass some of the countries that were stirred into a dish. Actually, given we were there late morning, what we were smelling was mostly pad thai and hot chips, but it was still good. I kept looking round and thinking it was fifty years of Australian cuisine in one small, laid-back cafe.

We drove past Nellie Melba’s family farm on the way out past Lilydale. One day I might have to give you a Peach Melba recipe in honour of the Yarra Valley and the Mitchell family.

After this, we went to de Bortoli’s winery. That will be my next post, and my last for this trip about the Yarra Valley. I know there’s a lot more food to talk about, but I’m all out of time and I’ll be back in Canberra before you know it.

On a happier note, I will be offering my food history course again first half of next year (hot off the press - or rather, hasn’t even hit the press yet) so more explorations of regional food might be in order.