The day I met Les Tanner

I have some very old fashioned ideas about running a restaurant. I like going shopping . I enjoy the random chaos that markets and provedores provide. I enjoy talking to shopkeepers, stall holders, growers and all people at the coalface of this diverse industry. I am also slightly dyslexic and only ingredients that I can see and touch can trigger ideas. That’s really the only way I can write a menu. Yesterday afternoon as I popped in to one of our suppliers to pick up some basic staples the young lady in the office asked me what was probably a very innocent icebreaker of a question that triggered a memory from a time when I had just embarked upon this rollercoaster of a life in food.
“And what kind of cooking do you do?” She asked.
This immediately took me back thirty years. We were young and not yet experienced enough to know what the media was and how public exposure can influence people’s interpretations of something simple- like a meal in a restaurant. We were new to the game, questioning everything determined to simplify and yet continue deep traditions that at the time we were just beginning to study. A friend had telephoned and said she was bringing a very highly respected journalist and cartoonist for dinner whose work I really admired. His name was Les Tanner.
At the beginning of the meal Les asked “and what type of cooking do you do? “
I struggled to find the words to explain what we were doing and blurted out that we were practicing Gestalt Cuisine. Les laughed and with an impish smile said that he did not really like German food but that the Japanese have a way that combines metaphysics with the rituals of the table that perhaps I may enjoy investigating.
Its a hard ask. We just cook? Still, I’m proud to say in a Gestalt kind of way.

Get off the beach! You're Obscene 

By Les Tanner from the Bulletin October 1961

Espresso Extra Espresso

Just a quick note to alert you to a very special new book called

Journeys of Melbourne’s COFFEE PIONEERS

.The book launch is accompanied by a spectacular exhibition of vintage coffee machines [not for sale] at Leonard Joel’s Auction Rooms in Malvern Road Prahran Its on I believe till Sunday this week. I would have not have found this [was it publicised anywhere?] except for that I have to confess to a bit of an addiction to Joels and usually cruise the general sales every Wednesday. I’m very glad I did this week as many of you will know from this post that vintage coffee machines are also a bit of an obsession. Generally I look for quirky bits of silly ephemera and the odd bit of Faberge but this week it was the book and big boy toys that took my attention. Luckily they are not for sale as I might have been tempted again.

The real star of the show is the book that adds another layer to some already fine social histories that have been written about Melbourne and its deep food and wine traditions.

Sandra Makris has managed to capture the stories behind many of the pioneers of cafe culture in Melbourne with a warm well researched volume that is a joy to read.

I am sure it will be available in the bookshops soon but if you can get down to see the machines [especially the new wave young guns amongst you ] I believe they [some of the legends] will be pulling shots on Sunday. Sir James Gobbo opened the exhibition and if you read the book you can read how the Gobbo family has solid claims to bringing the first espresso machine to Melbourne in 1938 an early steam driven La Cimbala for the St.Kilda Grill Rooms that were in Victoria St near the market.  Stories of The Legend Cafe with its Leonard French murals, the Sputnic style model designed for Golden Fleece service stations, the Lollobrigida model speciale, the fleet of Combi coffee carts. Its a blast.