“He was the perfect Melbourne waiter, reading his customers and matching any hint of enthusiasm with flirty temptation. Also known as sexy up-selling”
The wait staff in Melbourne restaurants are renowned for their intimacy. When you’re fresh from another country their warmth can feel suspicious. Exciting even. It always takes me a few days to climatise to the keen service. Lingering eye contact and a hand on a shoulder usually means imminent death or intercourse everywhere else in the world but not in Melbourne. I feel like the waiter and I should swap numbers but then he slams the bill down in front of me and shatters my illusion. I tip heavily of course. On departure I feel like I’ve invested a level of emotion equal to whirlwind romance. Now I live in London and visit Melbourne the warmth of service still confuses me but I welcome the unguarded moments and the universal truth that everything is better in Australia, as most Australians will tell you.
When I left Australia in 2006 I left my most precious friend and dining companion Kim. I’ve been unable to enjoy a dining experience to its full extent without Kim across from me, smoking and swishing cheap wine about usually down her chin. She’s the wasabi to my sushi. I know my first evening meal should be with her. I swing by in a cab and scoop her up from her duplex in the outer precincts of Melbourne. In the back of the cab we swig something strong from a siler flask she produces from her handbag and I direct the driver to the hotly recommended Newmarket in St Kilda.
St Kilda is Kim’s old stomping ground back when she could dine on the kindest of strangers just by letting her blonde hair catch the dewy seaside light.
Kim and I discuss the curse of overfamiliar waiters over a bottle of wine. Her phone number has found its way into many a waiter’s apron only to find out he was simply doing his job, very well indeed. It seems even the locals find the attentive service confusing.
Soft taco with soft shell crab in fennel and guacamole followed by kingfish in a spicy salsa was hot to trot and a cleansing Sauvignon Blanc from the Pyrenees to knock it off.
The waiter join us at the table to talk us through the dessert menu. He sat down and took it in turns to look deeply into our eyes. I knew this now to be just a Melbourne thing, so I directed my hand away from his knee.
Piqued but not satisfied with the conditioned-based intimacy of the night before I met my friends Dean, Andrew and Bruno for lunch at the Stokehouse the next day, hoping for another loose but this time homosexual Melbourne waiter. The Stokehouse on St Kilda Beach is well loved by Melbournites’. The building burnt almost to rubble in 2014 and was redesigned into the current Stokehouse. Its all about the raw beautiful morsels and fat buttery whites.
Dean (the-boyfriend-that-got-away-in-the-early-90s) flags down the waiter for the saltwater ceviche with fermented chilli and desert lime. I flag down the oysters with finger lime and yuzu. Dean uses a knife to divide the ceviche among 4 in perfect potions. I immediately resent the fact we are 4 and I fantasise about the other’s having violent skin eruptions to the oysters. I wonder if I could order more and I share this thought with the waiter. He says he once had 7 of the ceviche, I laugh and he clarifies he wishes he had 7. I wonder why he came up with 7, after all he did recite the specials board with whet insight and he looked the type to eat 7. Or I looked the type. He was the perfect Melbourne waiter, reading his customers and matching any hint of enthusiasm with flirty temptation. Also known as sexy up-selling. Oh the dance! I think about beautiful morsels and wonder if it’s the morsel that drives the appreciation. I once peeled hundreds of salted pistachios and put them all in my mouth. I hoped this would cure the moreish pull of pistachios. I figured it’s the constant not getting enough pistachio that drives the need for more. It worked for a night. The iceberg lettuce with sheep’s yogurt dressing, river mint and tarragon is a simple pleasure. Made me appreciate the iceberg as the jewel of lettuce rather than the mother of dregs at the bottom of a lunchbox.
Dean is 48 today and he wonders what’s next for him as he hurtles toward 50 faster than you can say ‘fetch mummy her fags’. He slices his iceberg lettuce wedge with a savage joy and I wish I could be delighted by lettuce. He is happy, at least for the moment, with a plate of lettuce. And it’s Melbourne where a wedge of lettuce with a splash of balsamic is a no nonsense tasty entree. Because our produce is SIMPLY DAVOINE, any Aussie will tell you (over and over again) Another Melbourne thing like the flirty waiters. I miss it when I skid back into Heathrow and sink my teeth into a cold steak bake at Greggs. I look at Dean (the-boyfriend-that-got-away-in-the-early-90s) and I want to tell him this is as good as it gets but I refrain just in case we get a bucket of fried chicken on our way home, like the old days. Or bump into the drug dealer, like the old days. Happiness is watching an old friend smile over a glass of wine.