TheBanyanTree: None of yer foreign muck

[auntiesash]

We have that in the US.  It's called a hazelnut latte, drink it daily, & no
longer consider it a dessert.

No alcohol though.  That wouldn't be healthy...

*So much universe, so little time.*
- Terry Pratchett


On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 1:05 PM peter macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au>
wrote:

> 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!!
> >
>
>
>
>
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