Among the most frequent questions you will be asked while travelling through Australia there are “which is your favourite restaurant”; or “where do you go for shopping”, implying food shopping; or “which is your favourite thing to cook at home”. It is easy to guess, than, that Australians love food. And indeed they live in a country in which there are more restaurants, cafés, bar, grill and takeaway spots than any other kind of shop.
VEGETABLES AND BARBECUES – In Australia, people love to eat outside: they can have a takeaway coffee while go to work, have an egg plus bacon & avocado brunch on a sandwich a couple of hours later, a slice of cake in the early afternoon in order to be ready for an early dinner at around 6 or 7, either in a restaurant or outside. Actually, whenever the weather is good the best options of Australians is to enjoy a relaxing dinner outdoor with both family and friends. Barbecues are common all over Australia, from Melbourne to Darwin, as public (and very well maintained) barbecues are a must for any public area, and nearly all Australians (and more and more often foreigners that have been living in this wonderful country for more than a couple of months) have one at home as well. “Barbecues are easy, you go to the market, you buy some meat and some fish, you slice some vegetables, and there you are: healthy dinners can be ready in fifteen minutes”, explains John Hargraves, a public officer in Melbourne.
AUSTRALIANS AND ITALIANS AT THE MARKET – So what kind of vegetables do Australians buy at the market? “They usually want something that is easy to prepare, so eggplants, zucchini, pumpkin, Portobello mushrooms and onions if they need to grill, lettuce, baby spinach and tomatoes if they want to make a salad, and potatoes if they want to have a side dish ready”, tells Maria, who has been working at the Prahran Market in Melbourne for years. Italians, she adds, are trickier “they want a little bit of everything, and they love herbs”.
A FUSION CUISINE IS EMERGING – Another recurrent story in Australia is that Italian taught local people how to prepare a proper meal. “My mum used to cook the same thing every day. We called it the tree veggies: peas, carrots and potatoes, boiled and served in our plates. Can you imagine how boring and tasteless our meals used to be?” told me once one lady in her ’80s during a reception at the Government House in Melbourne. “Then came the Italians”, she added with a sigh of pleasure. “Thanks to them, we learnt how to make simple meals mixing pasta and vegetables, and they were all so tastier!”. However, according to Maria, Australian habits at the market are changing as well. “Since I also have Italian origins, more and more people come to me telling that they learn hot to prepare a vegetable lasagne at a friend’s place or a vegetable pie through Master Chef and they want to try to do it themselves, so we go through the recipe together to see what they need”. It seems that thanks to their international exposure Australians are becoming more sophisticated shoppers. So there is a chance that in a couple of years it will be much harder to spot the differences among Italians and Australians at the market.
