TheBanyanTree: None of yer foreign muck

[peter macinnis]

We were discussing that Australian delicacy, Affogato, and I provided a 
recipe: Usually, vanilla ice cream in a glass bowl, pour the espresso 
over it and then Frangelico. Eat it with a spoon, then drink the juice. 
Repeat.

Then I wondered that Americans didn't know this joy, recalled a piece I 
had penned about Nick the Greek's, and dragged this out of the files.

* * * * * * * *

Australia is remarkably accepting of foreign foods.  I just burrowed in 
my files and found this unused account of "Nick the Greek's". The next 
few lines reveal how old this is.

It began with a contact on the Internet.  Somebody we will call YB had a 
friend we will call Holly who had a friend we will call Mike (all names 
have been preserved to minimise protection to the parties involved). 
Mike sought advice on Kangaroo Island, and to cut a long story short, we 
advised him to try it, and then decided to add that destination onto a 
planned shorter trip of our own, more or less in the same area.

I did this once before, when I tacked a vasectomy onto a hernia 
operation — the surgeon was rather unamused when I said "while you're in 
the vicinity, would you like to take a short cut?", but there were no 
surgeons on this trip, and we made our own decisions.  That was how a 
mid-January morning saw us up before the sparrow had broken wind, on a 
pre-breakfast drive, through and out of, Sydney.

Getting out of Sydney to the southwest from our northern beaches home 
means a load of travelling on suburban roads, so you either leave before 
the peak hour starts, or you wait until it is over, but by then, 
ordinary daytime traffic has built up, so I always leave early.  This is 
a three bridges trip, as we say, with several smaller bridges later, but 
within the hour, we were past the city streets and out into rural scenery.

Once the view opens up, the road is free of intersections and traffic 
lights, though still crowded with people commuting to outer Sydney 
clinging to the fast lane in arrogant style, suggesting to us that these 
are the assistant deputy trainee managers of businesses in the outer 
west who feel too grand to live where they work.  There is nothing 
worse, we agree, recalling a lecturing gig I did for the YPOs a few 
years ago, than a grocer on the make.  Still, that piece of work got me 
into some interesting volcanic scenery, and Chris and Duncan had a free 
holiday for a week while I worked . . .

Now we had left without breakfast, and there is a limit to how long you 
can go without food, so we started planning ahead.  Some years ago, we 
would have stopped in a small and dusty country town, pulling over 
somewhere where the highway narrowed and wound through the town, eating 
at a traditional Australian Greek cafe — which either traded as "Nick 
the Greek's", or maybe as the Acropolis or the Parthenon, but it was 
still called Nick's in any case.

At Nick the Greek's, most Australian would eat a mixed grill, and only 
the cunning citified types, habitues of "Diethnes" and such-like would 
ask for dolmades, or meals with olives in them, or suspicious dishes 
laid on a bed of rice, with names that sounded like a cow withdrawing a 
hoof from a bog.  Now the highway roars by at a distance, bypassing the 
towns, and you need to turn off, so just about every Nick the Greek has 
moved to the city, taking his family with him.  The gap has been filled 
by the fast food multinationals.

Food is obtained at strategically placed all-purpose empty and fill 
points — you use the toilets, put your rubbish in the bin, and fill  the 
tank with petrol, and yourself with food and drink before pushing on. No 
more do we have Australian institutions like Nick the Greek.  Now we 
have the Kentucky Colonel, Burger King (usually disguised as "Hungry 
Jack's") and the ubiquitous McDonald's.

In some ways, my life is defined by important McDonald's moments.  I 
have, over the years, had more political run-ins with McDonalds than 
with all the other Scots clans put together, and I have generally come 
out ahead, though only just.  In culinary terms, McDonalds have done me 
no great harm, but if they did, it was always predictable harm.

For example, my 42nd birthday was in Paris — we ate McDonald's, as we 
have done in Italy, Britain, and far too many parts of Australia, simply 
because they are all the same, and the toilets are clean.  Nick the 
Greek's was always the same, wherever you went, but each Nick the Greek 
had personal touches which are now a thing of the past, overtaken by 
manufactured food, blasted off the conveyor belt and the assembly line. 
Now Melbourne is the world's second biggest Greek city, second only to 
Athens, because all the nation's Nicks have moved there.

Nonetheless, we broke our fast at McDonalds, simply because the first 
Hungry Jack's was closed until 8 am, while we arrived at 7.30, so we 
pushed on down the road, where the next empty-and-fill station was in 
the grasp of the dreaded clan Donald.  Then it was on to Gundagai.

But first, a word about racism and food.  We are very racist in 
Australia — about Americans and the English.  We pick on the Yanks 
because it is traditional, and on the English for — well, much the same 
reason.  I imagine that it is because they speak English like us, so we 
assume we can treat them in a more brotherly way.  Or maybe it is the 
way they seem to dominate our economy.  The English, after all, own the 
banks, and the American multinationals seem to own most of the rest.

Of course, given the closely similar racial mixes, it can hardly be 
called racism - rather more, it is aggressive nationalism, applied to a 
nation but only rarely to individuals.  All the same, the bias is there, 
and if we can pay out generically on Poms or Seppos, we do, and Heaven 
help the poor devil who fails to realise there is nothing personal in 
it.  My son firmly believes that God created English cricketers out of 
sympathy for all the poor Australians, who could not afford a doormat, 
and so it goes...

We are also a multicultural nation.  Multiculturalism seems to mean you 
recognise somebody else's right to wear funny clothes (like the kilt), 
listen to funny music and dance to it (e.g., bagpipes) and to eat spicy 
tucker, or food (the haggis will do as an example here).  In other 
words, token multiculturalism, but with a cast of literally hundreds of 
ethnic groups in our melting pot.

That aside, we stereotype furiously, we Australians, and so everybody 
"knows" that all the best Australian hamburgers are made by Greeks and 
Italians, and that country Australia's only chance at exotic cooking is 
the Chinese take-away, also an Australian institution.  As we drive down 
the road, I annoubnce that, one of these days, I am going to start a new 
chain of eateries called "None of Yer Foreign Muck Traditional 
Australian Italo-Hellenic Hamburgers and Dim Sims".  I'll make a mint...

p1

On 2/01/2020 10:58, Laura Hicks via UpperBranches wrote:
> I Wikipedia-d it. Gelato “drowned” with a shot of hot espresso. Also can 
> have liqueur added.
> 
> Yes, please!!
>