The waitress keeps a pen in her cleavage, nib side up. I suppose that stops her from getting ink on her boobs.
Ale comes delivered in one-litre glasses that could double as a goldfish bowl. A two-person platter of food arrives heaped with medieval-sized cuts of meat, and a sausage that should be named John Holmes. Schnitzel servings are equally intimidating in girth, covered in breadcrumbs culled from approximately four million Hansel & Gretel trips through the Bavarian forest.
Then there’s the band. If James Last reduced himself to a two-piece, he’d be these guys. A singing drummer and an accordion player romp through some German folk songs before a bizarre segue into country hits like Ring Of Fire and Take Me Home, Country Roads.
They climax with the much-reviled Bird Dance, which even the buxom waitresses join energetically in on. Somehow, they don’t lose their pens. I think that’s what you call confidence.
The restaurant is hidden up a lane in the middle of Melbourne’s Chinatown. The juxataposition of the Asian enclave hiding a traditional German restaurant is surreal.
I hit my first snag with the menu, which triggers off my anxiety. I don’t do food very well. I’ve always been surrounded by people who either love food, or whose lives revolve around it.
I deem food necessary at best, and have always been a fussy eater. The character I identified most with in Star Trek: The Next Generation was Data, the android, who didn’t have to eat. If he wanted to, he could ingest a drink that contained the precise amount of nutrients required for him to function. I like that idea. Whenever I tell people that, they think I’m weird.
I sympathise greatly with those who have eating disorders. While I’ve never experienced anything that comes close to that, there are times when I wish food would just go away. It’s irritating and time-consuming, and there are so many more important things to do.
This is the type of after-work function that I normally avoid. I’m not a fan of enforced joviality, but everyone here is really enjoying themselves, and it’s not enforced. They’re actually genuinely concerned that you’re having a good time, not trying to conduct a hollow team-building exercise. How do they manage to do that so effortlessly, I wonder, looking at all their faces. Staying in the moment is hard, and I try to take my cue from others.
Job horror stories start popping up. I hear a story via a friend of a friend about a woman who turned up for her first day of work at some unnamed place and left after four hours. After being shown part of what she had to do, she calmly said she was going outside to move her car and never returned.
It’s a bit like those stories you hear, usually in tragic country songs, about lovers who leave in the night because they can’t bear to say goodbye. Nothing is left behind but a note that explains everything, by which time they’re far away and don’t have to deal with the aftermath.
A few hours before, I’d sat in a taxi with two of my work colleagues, stuck in rush-hour traffic, looking at an ominous black cloud looming over the city. We all observed how nasty it looked, and speculated about the inevitable downpour.
It hasn’t rained yet.
As a ‘true’ Scot, I’m not a fan of [expensive] restaurants. As a person with life threatening and chronic medical conditions, food is very important. Over time, that has evolved into spending hours at a time preparing food at home and wanting to grow as much of it as I can. (Necessity and health conditions can bring out the hippy in people.) However, this winter, I’ve been ill with concurrent problems topped up with flu after flu. The girls at the Subway checkout and the Italian restaurant waitress were coughing their ‘soldier on’ viruses each time I dine out with my companion who likes to spend on eating out. He has opposite ideas to me about food and for 23 years it has been a battle of minds and bulges. So far I’ve persuaded him that ‘all-you-can-eat’ Chinese is a no-no, as is Wendy’s donuts and thick shakes, but I’m not with him all the time we go out, so he’ll get ‘cheese burgers’ and so on before we go to the restaurant. He no longer puts jars of chocolate bars next to my bed, but has introduced ‘snakes’ and other jars of sugar-packed lollies instead. He has a phobia about raw fruit and vegetables or anything not in a can or frozen and packaged and has his own kitchen and fridges full of cakes and pies. Even though I don’t allow him in my kitchen to see me use raw ingredients, he rarely eats what I cook these days, unless he adds a pie to it and then I end up having a pie too. He gets angry when I bulk buy fruit, vegies and meat when I see it on special, and threatens to buy a fifth fridge, because it won’t ‘fit in’ all the fridges. Trying to keep a tight control over the household environment, spatial perception problems and restricted eating patterns are some of the typical behaviours of many folk on the Autistic Spectrum. Taking on the exaggerated persona of Miss Havisham from ‘Great Expectations’ and leaving years of dust accumulate in some rooms while being obsessively clean and taking hours doing the dishes and sterilising things are other extremes in his behaviour… (Star Trek’s Data is a much more endearing character than Miss Havisham is. The reason behind taking on a fictional persona is an attempt at being human, just like an alien from outer space trying to learn about being human from afar, hence the website for people with Asperger’s being called ‘Wrong Planet’. I have an obsession with ‘data’ too- I mentally tally up the numbers of people in different countries on the TV who pronounce the word ‘data’ in each of the 3 main ways the first vowel is pronounced. I prefer the Latin ‘long ah’, but poor Data gets called ‘Dater’.)
Well anyway, back to Winter and being stuck indoors, I thought of things to do like writing this, getting back into sewing and cooking and eating and have put about 10 kilos of weight on. Yes, my cooking is obsessive. I’ve got dozens of curry ingredients, herbs, about 8 different oils and the heat off the gas stove and oven just heats up a cold winter very nicely and I’m just about to do another chicken and vegetable soup with home-grown chillies. There’s a problem I find, when I get better at combing the ingredients in my cooking; I just want to eat more of it!
However restaurants for me have been as comfortable sometimes as sitting on a seat-of-nails. It’s like being a masochist paying to be in a severely restricted environment, where you can’t wear your dressing gown or play the music you want to hear. It’s about as natural as being told you have to laugh at an ex-friends childish joke, in front of large gathering when your feeling pretty sad. My father’s laugh was so false; I find it hard to be false to please others or ‘fit in’, but I could go into hysterics over some obscure connection, like when someone asked me if I was a ‘local’ and all I could think of was The League of Gentlemen’s ‘Tubbs’ saying ‘We run a local shop for local people’, or when the waitress comes out with a huge pepper grinder when I’ve had a little drink and all I can think of is the CNNN sketch of waiters going round asking people in the street “Would you like pepper with that?” and they don’t know the show and just see a rude crazy person in hysterics. We like Monty Python. Maybe I’d enjoy the German restaurant if it included a ‘fish-slapping’ dance!
Tonight, I turned down the chicken pie offered to me to go with my masterpiece I cooked at 5 o’clock this morning when I got home. I better go and make that soup.
I find your writing so clean and raw it sinks in deep. Lovely.
A fussy eater is a well welcomed challenge. =] Maybe next time I’m down your way I’ll make you a nice home cooked meal. =] Great article bud.
I hear you loud and clear, Chris! The world has been gripped by a Deep Obsession with food, which I can neither explain nor understand (I feel like I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, too – into a world of foodies!) It’s not just Melbourne (which I would choose to forgive) it’s the whole world!
But what’s impressive is that you did manage to stay connected with these people in this setting that you seem not to normally feel very comfortable in (in spite of the presence of so much gustatory stimulation!) Sounds like you were (sort of?) having a good time!
Yes, I did have a good time. I’m thinking that didn’t come across too well in the writing of this. Perhaps I relied too heavily on the pen cleavage anecdote to communicate how entertained I was lol.
Oh Chris, you are not alone, here I was thinking I was the only one with those thoughts about food. I relate to so many of your comments. It’s been decades since I visited a similar venue, nothing against them, to each his own as they say.
I agree whole heartedly about eating, what a waste of time, money and effort. I used look across a meal table at a previous partner and we would both say say in unison “what was that all about” and we would have a bit of a laugh, I haven’t changed, it’s a real chore every day and causes me many an anxious moment.
I do acknowlege however comments made by Paddy M. I understand food is about sharing and bringing family and friends together, I regret not being able to enjoy that, I should add I have no immediate family now to share that with. It has isolated me and cost me dearly in friendships.
To this day I will not go to an after work get-together, especially a work Xmas party, spare me please, I flately refuse, perhaps it’s to do with my depression I don’t know but I ask myself why I would want to work, then socialise with collegues who get drunk and make a spectacle of themselves.
Lots more for you to explore and enjoy around the beautiful city of Melbourne, early days.
Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy myself. In fact, I’d gladly recommend the restaurant to friends. The outing was an exercise in me overcoming some of my past barriers, and I think I made some big strides toward doing that. I enjoy the social aspect of meals very much. I guess the point of this post was not to bitch, but to recount an experience and show that you can still find ways to stay in the moment and take in what’s around you.
Try not being able to not eat for 4 months. When I was at my worse being sick just the site of food made me throw up and I had noting to throw up. After the doc saw me I still was not able to eat for 2 months after. The sight of my partner not being able to help me eat after he tried so many times was terrible. Enjoy the meal in front of you and not bitch about it.
Hi Jeoffrey, I’m sorry you went through that, and that my neuroses don’t compare to that horrible experience. My aunt, like a second mum to me, has a rapidly-expanding stomach cancer and is nauseous most of the time right now and can’t keep meals down. I’m aware things could be much worse. I’m glad you were able to recover. We all have our hills to climb.
I am now suffering due to love of food with the dreaded Big ‘D’ (diagnosed in 2010-I spent Christmas recovering in hospital) and now have to lose weight and watch what I eat. If only I could live without food for a while, I’d do it.
I’ve got friends in the same situation. My advice would be to make incremental changes to your eating and exercise, rather than trying the ‘boot camp’ approach. It’s too much of a shock, and if you bring changes in gradually they’re more likely to stick as you get used to alternatives and realise that you can live without certain things.
I went through the same thing. No reason to attack Chris about it.
Food is joy & love & sharing, you have to find pleasure in it because otherwise a big part of life is merely grim routine & you are cut off from so much wonder. Also you remember th boy who lost everyone & remade himself as Data to deal with the grief. Don’t grieve, taste!