Cross-Cultural Conversations

Observations by a Malaysian studying in Australia

Restaurant Rule #1: Appetizers Come Before The Main Course

I don't understand why, in Malaysian restaurants, the garlic bread we order as appetizers almost always comes after the main course, or in the case of one Italian restaurant in One Utama, it simply didn't come at all.

That was a whinge I posted here last December during my holiday in Malaysia. I love food with passion, and that means late appetizers are just totally unforgivable. How difficult is it anyway to slap a bit of butter on a few pieces of bread, sprinkle a bit of garlic and shove them into the oven?

Living in a boarding house, I inevitably miss out on good food from time to time. Actually I miss out on good food all the time. What I never miss though, are the restaurant reviews in the newspaper. This time around, the spotlight's on The Garden Restaurant in Melbourne (Courtesy of The Age's Agenda magazine)

Nowadays reviews are no longer strictly confined to food reporting per se. Like all great and memorable pieces of literature, they start off with an unassuming introduction, a clever diversion which has nothing whatsoever to do with the food but nonetheless sets the tone of the review - whether it will be a song of epicurean praises or leave a bad (and imaginary) aftertaste in the mouth of us readers. It might be a detailed account of the reviewer's journey to the restaurant, a childhood memory of mum's cooking, or as in the case of this one, a stinging commentary on the culinary implements.

"When you get to the bottom of a pleasantly gloopy pile of mushroom risotto, you don't expect to see anything but slightly soiled white china. But here, in the NGV's (National Gallery Victoria) flagship restaurant, you get a faceful of the Peter Rowland Catering company's logo, emblazoned on the plate like a name tag. It emerges again on the dessert plate when the stodgy vanilla panna cotta is overturned. Either there's too much branding going on, or Peter Rowland, which runs the restaurant, is trying to stop us from stealing the crockery."

Not a very good start, but at least the mushroom risotto was "pleasantly gloopy". At the end of the day, a food review is exactly that -  a review of the food. And it is the quality of the food that really counts. The biggest challenge for every reviewer, in my opinion, is to try their very best to have us 'taste' the food solely by reading the (unfortunately) inedible text. This they achieve by employing the most unusual and quirky adjectives you can never imagine.

"Moist, not-too-muddy barramundi is pan-fried then roasted to crisp the skin and served with a zesty prawn wonton."

"But tomato, basil and bocconcini salad is marred by awful tomatoes - ping pong balls would be juicier." Coming from the sports-loving Aussies, I'll have to take their word for it.

But what attracted me most was the last sentence. "Service could be better : bread arrives after the meals, water glasses succumb to the drought, our waiter wasn't quite sure how the fish was prepared and didn't seem inclined to ask the chef."

It seems the bread-after-main-course ordeal is a global phenomenon after all.

 

posted by: Tembaga2 at 00:12 | link | comments (2) |