Sir Les Patterson

A sample of the wit and wisdom of this loveable character

The majority of restaurants Down Under are run by ethnic minorities. The Tennant Creeks and to some extent the Spags cornered the market years ago. Every country town had a Spot Cafe where they really knew how to shred lettuce and stain it with beetroot, and you never had to look far to see where the curly black hairs in your bacon and eggs came from. Of course, the Chows have been a fact of life since the gold rush days, and now it's no secret they own half of Sydney.

I guess you still can't beat a good Chow feed if you've had a skinful, but at the top of the market we've got plenty of arty crafty frog-style restaurants who charge like a wounded bull for a plate of empty pea pods - the kind of thing your mum used to throw away.

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The beauty of Australian tucker is that it's clean. I generally pick a restaurant that's just been raided by the Health Authorities. That way you'll be pretty sure a meal there won't give you a dose of the threepenny bits. The roaches are that big in some parts of Australia they help with the washing up. One place we went to in tropical Brisbane was a dimly-lit joint and when I put my drink down on a black lacquer coffee table, it fuckin' walked away!

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About the best thing you can eat in Australia is the Sydney Rock Oyster, plump and creamy with a grey frill - if you didn't know what they were you could think someone with a lousy cold had used an oyster shell for a spittoon. Compared with the Pom oyster or the Yank variety grown in colder waters which taste as though you're sucking someone else's bathing suit, the Sydney Rock tastes a little bit fishy and a little bit soapy. It's not surprising most blokes eat them with their eyes shut and a faraway look on their eyelids. How you eat a Sydney Rock is optional. As I always tell my young research assistants, you can either chew it or swallow it. But there's one golden rule: sniff the bastard first. Swallow a crook one and you'll spend the next few days on your knees putting in a long distance call on the big white telephone. I've seen a bloke in a fish and chip joint (seafood brasserie) park three tigers on adjacent tables before he made it to the shithouse.

Watchpoint: Oysters Kilpatrick can be a trap because the bacon and Worcestershire sauce masks the tell-tale pong and you'd never know you'd put one down until you felt it coming back up - with reinforcements.

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I guess one of Australia's specialities is the prawn, best eaten on the beach out of a bucket. All you do is pinch off their heads and rip off the crap-vein down their backs and you're in business. Takes a while to get out of your fingernails and for a few days you could kid yourself you'd had an air hostess sitting on your hand. Talking of which, one of my favourite occupations in a restaurant is to idly scratch my nose with a cigarette-free fore-finger and at the same time inhale deeply. With any luck I can sometimes even remember her name.

This extract and photograph for purpose of review only, copyright acknowledged.
The Traveller's Tool, author Sir Les Patterson, first published 1985 by Macmillan Australia.