A lamington by any other name.

The humble lamington. Photo by John Woudstra, The Age, 29 October 2011.

A recent article in the weekend paper ('Time to advance, Australian fare' by Sue Bennett here) raised that perennial recurring theme in Australian food writing – the lack of/need for an Australian culinary identity. The article opened with the question

'If we defined Australia by its food, what would it be?'

What is meant here? – Defining Australia by the food which is eaten here is not the same as trying to come up with some sort of national dish. And the issue of an Australian national dish always seems to involve the use of indigenous ingredients despite the fact that the examples of other nations (in this instance Italy characterised by tomatoes, basil and olive oil; Japan characterised by soy sauce, seaweed and fish and Thailand by coconut milk, curry and kaffir limes) makes it clear that it is neither indigenous nor unique ingredients or flavours which become associated with particular cuisines. It is what cooks do with those ingredients which lead to something special and different.
Its all very well for chefs to play around with lilly-pilly ice-cream and finger lime mousse, and these may very well be the flavours that the world may come to associate with Australia, but, for the moment, this is no more what Australians eat in their own homes than Rene Redzepi's food is what the Danish sit down to for dinner every night of the week. Few if any of us use these ingredients or would recognise them if we tasted them.

Looking to more exotic indigenous ingredients to provide unique flavours suggests that we might have given up the idea of promoting the kangaroo as the meat Australians love to eat. The kangaroo issue is just too fraught. There is the debate about eating wild animals to say nothing of the practicalities of trying to farm kangaroos and the emotional arguments surrounding consuming the national emblem. It seems we can't promote Skippy as a unique symbol of Australia in the flesh and serve him up stewed as well. On the other hand kangaroo meat is at least available in the supermarket which is more than can be said for finger limes

Why try to define a culture by just one national dish? What we should be concerned about is the breadth of our shared culinary culture in a large country with a broad range of climatic and geographical areas , with a population made up of people from such a wide range of backgrounds and with so much choice available to us. We should be celebrating what we have and interpreting our cuisine as it is not trying to develop a cuisine which says what we think we want to say about ourselves.

Whilst the barbecue may not be an entirely original idea there is an argument for a peculiarly Australian approach to the barbecue. What we cook, how we cook it and the social rituals which surround our style of barbecue certainly distinguish a barbie here from what one might encounter in say North Carolina. And as I have argued here before the barbecue also serves as a unifying theme in the diversity of food cultures imported into Australia.

But the problem with the barbecue is perhaps that it is not glamorous enough, it isn't haute cuisine, it wouldn't put Australia up there with the great cuisines. It is so much easier to add a new flavour to something from the French canon, a mousse for example, than really develop something new or wait around a hundred years or so for traditions to develop and mature.

The meat pie is a great Australian tradition which could answer both questions. What does our food say about Australia? Just like a Massaman curry pie or a tandoori chicken pie or a Moroccan lamb pie, exotic flavours encased in a traditional English pastry, Australia is a mixture of a variety of other cultures wrapped around with an Anglo-centric veneer. And if we want a food that represents Australia why not a pie with a filling of kangaroo in red wine. But even with sophisticated flavours the poor old pie isn't sophisticated enough to rate as 'cuisine'.

Other than indigenous ingredients with unique flavours which still have a long way to go before they are part of our day to day food culture and kangaroo meat which is never likely to be more than a novelty, is there anything which Australia can claim to have invented?

As Ms Bennett notes in her article, aside from the pavlova, which the New Zealanders claim as their own, Australia has always had the lamington. The accepted wisdom is that this sponge cake dipped in chocolate and coated with coconut was first created by a French chef, Armand Galland some time around 1900.* At that time Galland was working for Lord and Lady Lamington at Government House in Brisbane and his creation was a happy accident, something he put together quickly as a matter of necessity, and named after his employers The lamington has gone from strength to strength, although perhaps no longer a tea time staple, it is a school lunch box regular, a feature of the cake stall at the local fete and a sure fire fund raiser. Many Australians think that the lamington is a unique part of their food culture. But is it?

Before I went on holidays recently I was part of a discussion at Syrup andTang on the history and origins of the vanilla slice. It seems that Australians have their own definition of a vanilla slice although its origins are doubtful. My money is still on the galaktobureko as a precursor rather than anything French, but it was intriguing to discover that there was something very similar from Croatia. The krempita (pita pastry, krem cream/custard) is made in the same way as the vanilla slice – puff pastry and custard thickened with cornflour, each prepared separately and then assembled. So which came first or do both the vanilla slice and the krempita owe their origins to the galaktobureko? Or is the similarity mere co-incidence? After all there are only so many ways you can put custard filling and pastry together.

An investigation of Croatian cake shops proved that the krempita is popular there and tastes just like our vanilla slice although with a slightly citrus-y note. There is also a version which includes a layer of cream as well as custard, and Gina, who contributed to the Syrup and Tang discussion and grew up in Croatia, suggested there were slight variations which characterised the krempita from Bosnia and Serbia.

Whilst I was tracking down the vanilla slice in Croatia I was totally unprepared for the discovery of the čupavac. Čupavaci are none other than lamingtons by another name! So was chef Galland's bright idea so original after all? Have the Croatians been eating lamingtons for centuries? Who knows? I certainly haven't been able to dig up much information on the origins of the čupavac. It is suggested that dipping cake in chocolate is a French technique and that Galland may have been influenced by his French Tahitian wife to use coconut, so were French chefs with Tahitian wives also busy whipping up afternoon tea in Zagreb and Split?

Čupavaci not withstanding there is no reason why we should not claim the lamington as an important part of our culinary culture. Despite the fact that it was introduced by a Frenchman, contains no indigenous ingredients and is neither original or unique it is part of our food history and our collective food memories. For those of us who have ever eaten a lamington they are, like it or not, part of how we define ourselves, even if they are a 'none-too flash bit of sponge cake'.

*All information about the history of the lamington came from an article ('Let them eat cake: French take a bite of our lamingtons') by Cosima Marriner, The Age, 6 June 2009.

Ban the Banquette

Yesterday I had lunch with two friends at a plush restaurant in the city (which rates one star in the current local restaurant guide, although we shouldn't hold that against it). The meal was pleasant enough but overall it wasn't a pleasurable experience.


This morning I read this article by David Rockwell, CEO of a New York architecture and design practise who knows a bit about designing restaurant spaces, extolling the virtues of banquette seating. Well I'm sorry Mr. Rockwell but I beg to differ.

I don't think you need to be an architect to understand that the seating plays a huge role in the atmosphere of any restaurant. The positioning of the tables and the seating at those tables influence how diners behave towards the members of their own group, seated at the same table, and towards the other diners in the room. Maintaining privacy and some sense of personal space in the public space; being able to make eye contact with the people you are dining with and being able to attract the attention of the waiter without having to stare at the people at the table next to you and simply sitting in a chair which is comfortable rather than merely stylish all impact on the dining experience. And that means on the enjoyment of the food – it doesn't matter how clever the food is if you don't feel comfortable.

So why my dissatisfaction with yesterday's lunch? Because the three of us were sitting at a horseshoe shaped banquette. My heart sank the moment the waiter pulled the table forward . We dutifully took our seats and then he pushed the table back and trapped us in place.



David Rockwell, 'Creating Public Intimacy: Designing Restaurant Booths and Banquettes', The Atlantic, 8 November 2011.

 You don't need a degree in physics (or architecture for that matter) to recognise that the person or persons in the middle of the U are entirely hemmed in. It is difficult enough to discreetly leave the dining table but in the horseshoe scenario not only does the entire table have to be moved but half the people seated at it have to get up to make way for the poor embarrassed soul who needs to go to the loo before dessert. Slithering out of your seat and crawling under the table is not an option but it would cause less commotion.

Another consequence of the fixed seating is that individual diners have no control over how close they sit to the table. Unless the table is exactly centred some people have to sit on the edge of the seat while others are hard up against the edge of the table. Of course there's no discreetly moving your chair back so that you can rummage on the floor for the lost napkin or to allow for the crossing of legs or just a bit of expansion room between courses.

And in my experience there seems to be a general problem with the depth of the banquette. There is always too much space between your back and the seat back. You have to sit right on the edge of the seat to get to the food and then wriggle back to lean up against the back rest or else collapse backwards into the void and eventually connect with the back rest at a rakish angle. There's also something I don't like about being marooned on a seat which is too big for me. On the one hand I want my own chair not my share of a communal space but there's also a strange feeling of isolation when you can see the expanse of unoccupied leather between you and your nearest neighbour. Your own chair gives you a bit of definition, a sense of security and place.

Yesterday the sense of alienation was increased because the three of us sat at a table big enough to accommodate four on the banquette which meant that the person opposite me was just that bit too far away for quiet conversation. Surely the staff in a restaurant worthy of one star should be able to work out that three people are only one more than two people not one less than four, that is they can squish up a bit into a smaller space rather than be left to wallow in too much.

Mr Rockwell argues that the horseshoe banquette 'creates an intimate, inward facing world, but also looks out onto the theatre of the dining room' which is all very well in theory but the theory also needs to address how people get into and out of that world and whether or not its a world they feel they want to be in. It seems to me that there isn't anything intrinsically intimate about the banquette. I would suggest that any well placed table and chairs can become its own little world within the greater whole provided those seated at it feel relaxed and comfortable.