I love Masterchef. In fact I love any cooking show on TV because they usually combine so well all the things I love – cooking, eating and er cooking and eating. So you can imagine my delight the other night when I switched on the TV and 50 of Australia’s top aspiring chefs were peeling and chopping potatoes.
Finally! Something that I could do without a recipe and something that I could do as well as the rest of them. Or so I thought.
I can peel a potato really well but it’s not listed on my list of “Things That I Do Really Well” because frankly I didn’t think it was a actually a skill. Nor did I think taking the knife to the potato and creating rectangular shaped pieces of potatoes was something that took much precision or expertise. But on Masterchef they had to cut their potatoes so that each chip was the exact same height and width. Like soldiers. Except that soldiers don’t really have to be the same height and width as each other.
I just don’t get it. If we went out to dinner and my husband got all the big fat chips and I got the straggly thin ones I would be a bit put out because I really like chips. But then I’d take some of his fat chips and carry on eating my dinner.
But that’s not how fine dining works.
I have been fortunate enough to eat at some “fine dining institutions” and I am not sure I get them at all. Soldier chips or not. I understand the subtleties of palate and the balance of flavours, I appreciate the nuance of flavours as much as the next diner but more importantly than that I just like to eat because I like to eat, I like food, it’s as simple as that. I don’t get the foams and the truffle marshmallows, the twice baked soufflés and sorbets of pione grapes and maybe that’s because I am not a foodie.
Jessica Seinfeld, author of two cookbooks and wife of Jerry Seinfeld, summed it up perfectly on her blog Do it delicious. She talks about her experience at an”it” restaurant, the very average avant garde food and the receiving of the bill. She writes:
Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld
“Yes, we fully understand and respect how labor intensive it is to prepare dishes so delicately and how much training it requires to be capable of doing so. But, when we compared the cost to our level of enjoyment, the numbers just didn’t make sense to us. And it was then that we came to a revelatory conclusion: WE ARE NOT FOODIES.
This was a major admission on our part. We love food, and we like to think of ourselves as open-minded and adventurous eaters. But the cult and fetishization of fancy food is simply not us, and we are comfortable with that. As my husband—who has coined a phrase once or twice in his life—eloquently said, “We are not foodies, we’re EATIES!”
YES! We are EATIES!!! Simply put, we just love to eat good food that is not complicated, overwrought, and over thought.”
Do you love to eat out? Are you happy at the corner fish and chip shop or do you yearn for the fine dining experience? Are you a foodie or an eatie and what do you love to eat?
Comments
95 Comments so far
Ha! I love food and I think it should be enjoyed, not dissected. God save anyone who wants to have a dinner party in this day and age when everyone is a food critic. I love watching “The Best in Australia” on Fox, but find its such a crackup to watch the “judges” talking about every “earthy” and “clean” flavour on their palates… haha. Why is “delicious” no longer enough??
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I should be a foodie, but I’m a secret Eatie. My son and DIL are very much involved with food, it’s their life and their livelihood, and almost their sole topic of conversation. I’d much rather just eat the stuff, especially theirs which is wonderful.
However watching shows like Masterchef, which I love, you see just how much each morsel of food is handled. Fingers everywhere, it looks good but so artificial. And it must be stone cold by the time the judges get to wrap their chops around it. Presumably it all sits under unseen warmers while the kitchen is cleaned up, as it’s always spotless by judging time.
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I love food and cooking. When I go out, I like to buy things that I find difficult or fiddly to make at home.
I don’t like the trend of chemical cooking where you puree something to look like something else. I love watching Heston, but I don’t know if I’d enjoy all of his meals.
There are some prices that you just cannot justify, like paying over $40 for a small steak – I mean, there are just so many things you can do to steak to justify the price.
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I am an eatie. I love food, but I hate listening to people wank on about it, especially while we’re eating it. I’m going to Noma, which was recently named the best restaurant in the world, and I’m *almost* dreading it, which is ridiculous. Not because of the food (or the price!), but because of the possibility of endless foodie analysis while I’m trying to just enjoy my meal. Please god, I hope no one takes photos of their plates…
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I’m an eatie. The size of my bum tells me so.
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You intuitively KNOW when a restaurant truly loves good food or just loves fancy prices:). There’s nothng like a meal with good ingredients and cooked with LOVE. That’s the key ingredient
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I’m definitely both and I’m not sure that you can be one without the other! To be a foodie, you have to to love to eat and to be an eatie, you have to love food. In fact, I am so much of both that I’m starting my own recipe site called The Moodie Foodie (look out for it in a couple of months – gorgeous food for every mood you are bound to have and most recipes under 10gms of fat). Aaannyway, back to Lana’s topic: I think that to be a foodie is to love food – all food, including fish & chips and Jacques Raymond’s latest degustation menu… Speaking of which, I celebrated last year’s Bastille Day at Jacques Raymond with my husband – something we have always wanted to do. Like Jessica Seinfeld the food was fine but when we compared our enjoyment factor to the gynormous bill, well I’ll leave it to your imaginations as to what we said……. I’m not sure I have recovered and it will be gorgeous boeuff bourguinon a la Moodie Foodie this year on 14 July!
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while everyone’s talking about food, does anyone want to offer a suggestion for a resaurant in Sydney? I have a friend coming up from Melbourne & he’s having dinner at Tetsuya’s while he’s here, but as i’m not a city dweller, I don’t know where we can go… Maybe along the lines of Wagamama or Sky Phoenix? Thanks!
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Hey Fee283
A girl called Amy from South Aust. asked the same thing a few weeks back on Mamamia and I wrote her a big long reply! She ended up going to some of the places and loved them!
I have just had a quick look to find my comment that I wrote to her so I could cut and paste for you but can’t find it
In summary, here’s what I reccomment:
Catalina – Rose Bay (kinda fancy but AMAZING)
Fratelli Paradiso – Potts Point (lunch or dinner, trendy but casual Italian)
Nostimo – Woollahra (cafe, amazing Greek food, lunch or breakie)
The Centennial – Woollahra (great ‘pub’ food, actually a restaurant but attached to a pub, never lets me down, amazing lamb pizza and waffles)
Christo’s pizza – 5ways Paddington (an institution!)
Buon Riccordo – Ruschutters Bay / Paddo (best BEST egg truffle pasta and 1000 layer apple cake)
Ninos -Woollahra (always consistently good italian)
Bistro Moncur – Woollahra (best caramel apple tart and french onion soup souffle EVER)
Spice Market Thai – Double Bay – can eat in but good for takeaway too – Banana flower salad is ridiculously good
I have written in some detail about a few of these places on my blog too – http://www.phoodie.wordpress.com
Hope that helps!
Enjoy!
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A Tavola in Darlinghurst then over to their sister store of Gelato Messima for desert – A Tavola is AMAZING italian food, Messima is the most amazing creative gelato ever – the Pavlova gelato is to die for!!!!
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Oh yes, Lana, I hear ya. We recently dined at Rockpool in Melbourne (voucher) and I really didn’t appreciate the prices ($500 including wine for three of us) would have preferred a nice pub myself. My foodie friend tried to explain that it’s not the meal we’re paying for – its the way they buy, store and care for the meat thats the issue and it’s the cheese they put in the mac and cheese side dish – ‘you couldn’t buy that cheese at Safeway!’ For $10 for a small bowl – apparently not. I’ll stick to my $9 Vietnamese seafood soup.
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I can so totally relate to this. About 2 weeks ago my husband and I dined at Tetsuya’s in Sydney. We were lucky enough to receive a gift voucher to go there from a friend.
Whilst I can appreciate the work that goes into a degustation 10 course meal, we said the exact same thing as Jessica Seinfeld at the end of the meal. The cost of the meal just didn’t add up to our enjoyment. It cost over $500 and we weren’t even drinking!
We have accepted that we aren’t foodies either and are happy to go elsewhere where the food is a little more simple and the cost is more affordable.
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S-I-M are you really Stuck in Miami!?!
I ADORE Miami and seeings as this is a food post I thought I must ask, have you eaten at Joe’s Stone Crab???? In my opinion one of THE BEST RESTAURANTS In the world!!!!!!!!
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I think I’m a bit of both. But definately leading more toward the foodie side. I have posted a few pictures of my birthday party master pieces (cup, cakes, designer cookies etc) and definately have a standard when it comes to presenting food. But when i look at what some people can attain presentation wise in shows such as masterchef I know that I don’t have that level of skill or imagination.
My husband (thankfully) is very happy with my cooking and presentation skills and often comments that he would “pay to eat this in a restaurant” so if he’s happy I’m happy. But i certainly don’t go to too much trouble every night. Some times we just have tomato and avocado on toast so it all evens out.
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I think it’s possible to appreciate both camps.
It’s like going to an art gallery, knowing what your own tastes in art run to, and being confounded by a modernist twisted up blob of paint on canvas and saying to yourself, “that’s not art”, let alone appreciating what effort actually went into creating the blob on the canvas in the first place. But truthfully, that’s what drives much of what you will eat over the coming years. Without chefs doing crazy things, you wouldn’t now be using microwave ovens, or making risotto every week without thinking twice or eating pork dumplings as readily as you eat chips and gravy. You’d all be stuck on meat and three veg. Bland, poorly cooked food.
Much as I love to cook and to eat, what I really, really love is going to a restaurant and being presented with something so wicked, so clever, so stylish that it confounds me. When I can’t figure out how they did it, what the ingredients are, when I can’t decontruct it right there and work out the recipe – THAT’S why I love to go to a great restaurant.
It’s high art. It’s not for everyone, and there’s nothing wrong with cereal for breakfast or a freezer meal, or cheese on toast, God knows we’ve all been there. I don’t go to a restaurant as much as I would like to, so if I make the choice to pay for high end dining, damn straight I’ll be expecting a show. And I’ll love every minute of it.
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“Without chefs doing crazy things, you wouldn’t now be using microwave ovens, or making risotto every week without thinking twice or eating pork dumplings as readily as you eat chips and gravy. You’d all be stuck on meat and three veg”
I’m not so sure about the risotto & pork dumplings. To me, that kind of thing is a ‘non-Anglo’ version of meat & 3 veg: everyday food in another language. The ‘high art’ as you call it, is something different.
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I’ll add my name to the list of eaties!
As far as being a foodie goes, usually I just lump some food onto a plate and hope for the best.
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Oh Lana yes! I am definitely an “eatie”!!! I admire goodies, admire chefs but really, when it becomes more an art form rather than something just plain flat out yummy you lose my attention lol. I own a bookshop worth of cookbooks, buy all the recipe magazines but really……..I wish I could peel and chop potatoes with the precision of a Masterchef contestant lol!
Eaties Unite!!!!!!!!!
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People, it’s all poo in the toilet the next day. Some poos are more expensive than others. That’s always been what I’ve told my apprentices. Have spent nearly half my life creating poo…… don’t know why I worry about the garnishes so much.
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Given that a baked bean & cheese jaffle can almost reduce me to tears of joy – especially after a hard day – I think I qualify as an eatie
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I’m definitely an Eatie!
I love good quality food made from fresh ingredients and cooked to perfection, but I don’t like some of the poncy stuff that the celebrity chefs have been doing lately.
Heston Blumenthal is a prime example – taking perfectly good ingredients then destroying them and disguising them to look like something else – or the past Masterchef contestant who cooked and pureed peas then made the puree into spheres to look like peas. WTF? What’s the point??
Some of my favourite food memories are the first time I ate a gluten-free pizza (I’d been off gluten for a couple of years) and the first time I tasted my boyfriend’s signature blue cheese and tomato pasta sauce.
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An eatie for sure!
I tried my time as a foodie, and although I had some amazing dining experiences, are those the memories I retreat to when I fancy some food porn? Never! It’s the simple, uncomplicated food that hits the spot and melts the heart.
I will say that I believe you can find this style of cuisine within a ‘fine dining’ institute. Maybe not a three-hatted restaurant, but favourites in Sydney that speak my language include Il Periguino, Buon Ricardo, Fish Face, Bistrode, Bistro Moncur, Tabou, Four and Hand and Lucio’s
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I’m an eatie. I had an experience today: divine $4 pork rolls at Kings Bakery in Hurstville. Consistently fresh & zingy. Best chicken laksa and har mee (tried plenty trust me): Toh’s Malaysian Miller st Nth Syd. Superb suburban pizza: Burratini’s in Panania. Great pies: Oatley pies. Malaysian fried chicken: Ayam Goreng 99 in Kingsford Anzac Pde…..enjoy!!!!
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I am an eatie- I love a nice meal, and I am not fussy at home but I am when I part with cash.
What I hate is the poncy names. Why not call a spade a spade? I have to translate for my husband so he know that the gibberish on the menu is really steak and veggies.
Love a good meal. Love it.
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I am an eatie! I haven’t been to too many fancy restaurants mainly because I feel uncomfortable with all that fancy stuff – from what to wear to how much do I tip and all inbetween…
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Great post Lana!
Although I AM Phoodie, I am definitely a foodie AND an eatie.
I own 36,000,000 cookbooks and of those, half of them contain recipes that are so difficult they would send Heston running for cover. Why own them you ask?! Because I love READING them and LOOKING at the pictures in them!
Same goes with ‘fine dining’ – I don’t go to Quay for dinner because I am hungry. I go so that I can enjoy the EXPERIENCE that is hatted and Michelin restaurants. it is theatre. Entertainment. Art.
Like many commenters below, I also have a deep appreciation for Big Macs and Harry’s pies, but it’s on a different level.
Fashion is quite similar for me. Once, a few years back, I was lucky enough to attend a Paris fashion week show for Chanel. And whilst I wept at the beauty and hold the memories from that day deep within my heart, my wardrobe consists of 1 Chanel item only (my grandmother left it to me.) The rest of my clothes come from Cotton On, Witchery, Country Road and Target.
You get the picture!
So whilst I turn my head to the left to spew with excitement at next week’s booking for dinner at Catalina (schmancy) I ask that you excuse me so that I can run off to eat tonight’s home made chips – potato, oil, salt and pepper!
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You are basically me. You said exactly what I would’ve – minus the Paris catwalk experience! Go foodies & eaties!
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Yes! Yay for the F AND E’s!!
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I’m an eatie for sure! I can think of nothing worse (in terms of dining) than going to a restaurant where I feel poor and uncomfortable, and leave hungry after several $40 plates with about 50g of food on them!! Give me a good burger and a beer any day of the week over that! As long as it’s yummy, filling and makes me feel good, I’ll have it
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I cannot stand the term foodie. I’m an eatie:)
I do like to eat out of the ordinary food, and ordinary food. But I don’t like when you get a steak served to you as a tiny cube in the middle of a gigantic plate. I want to actually feel as though, no matter how common or unusual a food is, that I’ve actually eaten.
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I think I sit somewhere in the middle. I don’t need fuss and bother, I get awkward when someone offers to lead me to the bathroom and flaps about with too many choices of water. My husband loves it. A few years ago when some stuff hit the fan we decided we’d try and make it to as many of the great restaurants in the world as we could before we had kids- a ‘life’s short, eat dessert first’ kind of approach. We just had a long awaited lunch at Noma- and it was absolutely amazing. But then so was the hot dog we had on the street the next day for lunch (the Nordic combination of both raw onion and fried on hot dogs is cracking). The places that manage to turn food into art are just awe inspiring to me. But most nights if you fed me a great toasted ham and cheese sandwich and gave me a glass of wine, I’d be the happiest of campers.
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i miss copenhagen <3
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I suspect many self-proclaimed foodies can’t even claim eaties status. Through watching the experts dish out the lines & techniques on TV, they too have the vocab and know the places to go but in all truth, dining out/buying out is their living fantasy – no cooking, no kitchen clean, no shopping. Just pure pleasure with food being secondary.
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I’m an eatie. Give me a plate of Nacho’s from the local pub over the degustation menu at Tetsuya’s any day.
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My favourite meal in the world is a cheeseburger and chips. With ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert. And not a ‘deconstructed’ burger, or brocolli ice cream with chocolate chicken sauce.
And Vegemite toast…. I like Vegemite toast, too…..
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Vegemite toast with a massive mug of tea is the only way to start the day.
(And occassionally end it as well!)
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Masterchef sucks.
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I could not agree more. The crying, the drama, the over the top emotion of it all.. Helloooo people you are cooking ‘fancy’ food while people elsewhere in the world starve.. what you are doing is not important so stop effing crying!
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What about the dish that changed your life??? I’ve had way too many meals and made too many to think of one. Sometimes I feel like shouting, “just go to your local tafe and learn cooking there first”
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This article has made me hungry
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I am definatelty an Eatie. I am always on the lookout for easy dishes and don’t really care for over-the-top food. I look at the snazzdooley plates of food on Masterchef with hardly anything on the plate, and think “Where is the food? That isn’t going to fill me up!”
They have foam, bits of basil, flowers, a piece of meat the size of my pinkie and a bit of sauce spread on the plate!
I currently buy the Masterchef magazine, as that show is my drug.
I love chocolate, lots of it. I love creamy, saucy meals like soups, spaghetti bologaise, curries etc. Hearty homemade meals. I adore making desserts but made a cream of pumpkin soup last night and plan on making a pumpkin risotto tonight! (FYI: My parents bought a huge pumpkin from a grocer so we need to use it, haha)
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Definitely an Eatie!
The other night I was eating my dinner, which consisted of left over chinese broccoli and rice, from the local Thai place.
My boyfriend wasn’t hungry yet so hadn’t heated up his left overs (we don’t share because I’m vego and he gets meat dishes). He asked for a bite of mine, I told him he could only eat the stems (I hate the stems, so chewy and tasteless), and not to touch the leaves, they’re mine!
His response “Geez. Seriously, what’s with you and your food?”
It true though, I’m so protective of my food (ESPECIALLY WHEN I’M HUNGRY), it’s like I was raised in some sort of institutional facility where we had to fight for bowls of gruel.
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Definitely an eatie! I try to appreciate food and savour it but I’ll never be a person who tries lots of exotic food and enjoys eating weird things like scallop mousse which I recently had at a Japanese restaurant! Yuck
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Lana! I love Jessica Seinfeld’s website. Thank you for sharing it. I love how she gives step-by-step photos of her easy dishes.
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I’m a bit of both. I really admire the creativity that goes into producing a fabulous dish. By fabulous, I don’t mean ‘fancy’ though.
An example of being a foodie – I don’t have a sweet tooth, hate cream and custard etc but love love to look at the gorgeous creations that talented pastry chefs create. The windows of the cakes shops on Acland Street – divine! But, I wouldnt’ really eat any of it
An example of being an eatie – I just love tasty, delicious food. I’m not that into fine dining restaurants… I prefer the hustle and bustle of other places (as long as I can hear my dinner companions speaking!
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I’m an eatie. Can’t cook, do particularly like to when I have to, but eating…oh man, do I love eating.
I have been to quite a few really nice restaurants (Aria, the Euro, Siggys back when it wasn’t whatever steakhouse it there now) and as much as they were lovely, I find fine dining rather pretentious and nowhere near as nice as you’d expect for the price on the menu.
But I think that’s because I like simple things. I would pick a good chicken kiev parmigiana (yes, we combine the two!) with sautéed baby vegetables over a lot of the entrée-sized mains at some of your nicer restaurants.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re often really nice (like the ones I mentioned) but I also love a good serve of KFC. More than I should love it, actually!
So yes. Love eating, hate cooking. Makes it very hard when I have to cook for myself because it’s always so disappointing!
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Whoops comment editor not working. I very certainly meant that I DON’T particularly like to when I have to.
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I’m a foodie and an eatie and a hope I don’t get plumpy from the too much foodie
I appreciate all good food, the only issue I have with really fine eateries is that for some of them it means cruel food like forced fed animals such as foi gras or baby animals such as veal. I wish that fine dining didn’t equate to cruel practices but it often does.
My favourite chef is Jamie Oliver. He’s fun, fresh, talented, cooks gorgeous and relatively easy food in an easy to understand and replicate manner.
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I 100% agree Claudia!
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I’ve been enjoying Jessica Seinfeld’s blog!
We are eaties. I have lots of cookbooks and I takes things from all of them – I love to cook, however my forte is homey, family style cooking. Cakes and crumbles, biscuits and hot dinners… I have a friend who says I’m wasted in the city, that I would have made a good farmer’s wife and rocked the CWA!!
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It was reading about me Clare, that’s exactly how I am!
I love to bake and I also love to cook yummy comfort home-style food. Food that tastes as good as it looks and leaves you full. Donna Hay is one of my faves as I find her recipes easy and “normal” without all the weird ingredients like pomegranite and different vinegars that take years to track down! I will leave that to the professionals thanks…
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I washed dishes and prepped for a few years at award winning restaurants and even brokered a meeting between two of Australia’s top chefs. I’ve never bought into the wanky end of town (foams and such).
I think of myself as a foodie but I am in love with the idea of value adding. Being a foodie isn’t just about fine dining! It’s about sharing the love of good food! My current food hero is Annia Ciezadlo author of Day of Honey.
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mmm I love food! I don’t really consider myself a foodie cause I’m not snobby about my food and I don’t think I spend enough on food to qualify as a foodie, but I do love to get fancy with my cooking. and I LOVE eating out, anywhere! apart from fast food chains. I’ll go for a quarterpounder or some KFC occaisionally, and domino’s pizza has gotten really good lately, but that’s about it. I don’t eat it very often – Life’s too short to eat crap food!
I look forward to making dinner every night and I’m probably the only girl in the world who gets a tiny bit disappointed when my boyfriend offers to cook (I get over that pretty quickly though!). I love thinking about what I’m going to make, whether it’s an old family recipe that I could do with my eyes closed (but won’t, because while I have a good memory I’m also incredibly clumsy), something from a recipe book or something I invented to use up whatever is in the kitchen. I was given some new recipe books on the weekend so today I had a delicious apple and blue cheese salad for lunch! tonight I’m making pasta with pumpkin, mushrooms and bacon.
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forgot to mention that one of the fanciest meals I’ve had ended with me throwing up my $60 steak at around 3am – and no, I hadn’t had anything to drink. the women who had suggested the restaurant (I was staying with her at the time) said it might have been because my stomach wasn’t used to such sophisticated tastes. wanted to throw up in her face!
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No, your not the only one. I used to rush home from work and hope that my husband had not started cooking. On those rare nights when he did my heart would sink. Cooking is like meditation to me – at the end of a hard day there is nothing that relaxes me more than preparing a meal.
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yay! that’s exactly why I love it! it’s time out for me. when we were at uni I would do homework before dinner and count down the minutes until I could take a break and cook tea! I’d always spend an unnecessary amount of time on dinner because I didn’t want to go back to doing work and I always used the excuse ‘hey, we have to eat something!’
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Love Jamie Oliver’s recipes because they are for ‘eaties’. Nothing pretentious, just fresh food simply prepared.
I enjoy Masterchef (or rather, enjoyed the first one but am a bit over it now). I don’t know how on earth the contestants do it, or why they want to turn a sensuous, relaxing, bonding experience into a competitive adrenalin rush. Its kind of funny when you think about it, like competing on TV with your skills as a lover or an artist. Although no doubt that would be entertaining too!
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I’m def an eatie! love that word. Japanese and Mexican would have to be by fave cuisines (that just sounded really foodie) When I say Japanese, I don’t just mean sushi or the delicate stuff, I like the homestyle food – simple rice dishes such as katsudon, bento etc etc.
Love pizza, fish and chips, good pasta, thai.. just yummy hearty meals that are simple and taste good! mmm now I’m hungry!
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An eatie with a side order of foodie i think!
I am fascinated by all the inventive foods fine dining has to offer, but find my palate is not refined enough to truly enjoy it as these cooking shows indicate i should.
I do love masterchef though and Heston Blumenthals shows are fantastic. There is such a science to it all that i think is brilliant!
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I’m a bit of a foodie, a bit of an eatie.
I love eating out – sometimes at fancy places, sometimes at the local Chinese or Italian place, or the fish & chip shop. Occassionally I really enjoy Red Rooster too (oh, the horror!)
But when it comes to cooking, I love cooking simple uncomplicated things – where ingredients can be bought from a supermarket, not from 12 different specialty stores (where the ingredients can sometimes add up to over $100!) I’ve copped a bit of criticism on my blog because I don’t use a million techniques to create a work of art. But when it comes to feeding myself and my husband, we don’t want to eat a work of art every night! Sure, every now and then we create a really special complicated fancy meal together and then congratulate ourselves on producing something worthy ofr MasterChef. But day in day out, I’m all about cooking something that tastes good, is economical, and isn’t going to take 4 hours in order to achieve perfection.
There’s no shame in chucking everything on a plate, tucking into a piping hot meal and really enjoying it for what it is – good food.
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There’s no shame in red rooster; KFC chips are the best around!
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And sometimes the only thing that hits the spot is a quarter-pounder with that fluro yellowy/orange melty plastic cheese.
I know it disqualifies me as a “real foodie”, but god it’s good when I’m all hormonal!
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I thought it was just me with a hormonal need for fat and salt. KFC does it for me but thankfully none in my area so don’t indulge every month.
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Nah, red rooster, rooster rolls & chips are great when you’re feeling seedy. My daughter used to work there and she said that a lot of pensioners eat their roast meals. At least you can eat relatively healthy takeaway there.
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I can be both, depending on the circumstances. If the opportunity presents itself I do enjoy a “fine dining” experience simply because it’s different and it takes me out of my comfort zone, often allowing me to try foods or combinations of ingredients I wouldn’t otherwise try.
I have been lucky enough to eat at both Tetsuya’s and Quay and found both very interesting and enjoyable. But it’s not the way I could eat every night (assuming, of course, I could afford it!) and I think much of my enjoyment is viewing these dining experiences as ‘treats’, knowing the opportunities won’t be there every day.
But, I adore and can appreciate a home-cooked meal (particularly one that I haven’t had to make) whether it’s at my house, the local pub or a friend’s house.
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I disagree.
Jamie oliver is undoubtedly a foody but he is all about no fuss ‘real’ cooking.
Which is how I like my food as well. Fresh, tasty and wonky.
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I admire Jamie Oliver’s approach to food very much – he hits all the right notes for me.
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I’m an eatie. If I found myself in a ‘fine dining’ place, I’d probably need help with knowing which implements to use.
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Eatie all the way!!
That’s not to say I am not a fine diner….
you go to different places for different experiences.
there are days, when you feel like you need to dress up, go out, and have a proper service coupled with finely presented exotic food.
but majority of the time, a restaurant that serves rustic decent nicely cooked meals can do just as well without the need for proper etiquettes.(eg. eating with fingers)
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I hate Australian Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules. The “tests” that the contestants are put through are unrealistic. Never would any chef be in a professional situation where they are thrown into a kitchen, unseen and without knowledge of ingredients available” and be expected to feed 300 vegetarian firefighters in a one hour time frame.
However, I love eating and watching many cooking programs. I buy cookbook after cookbook, breathing in the stylised photographs. A cookbook is my pornography.
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Love it! My house is filled with cookbook porn as well!
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Mine too. And I’m always trying to find really unusual and authentic cookbooks – I still desperate to find cookbooks on authentic Eastern European food.
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Bradley, those tests *are* unrealistic, but that’s quite in keeping with the ‘gladiatoral combat kitchen’ genre.
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I honestly get very disillusioned when the masterchef wannabies use fancy ingredients to mask a simple lack of good, honest, basic cooking skills a’la our grandmothers.
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My husband is a chef so yes we are foodies I guess. We love going to fine dining restaurants – the best meal we have ever had was at Quay. Amazing! But then again we also love to go to the local pub for a schnitzel, it all depends on the situation. Oh and sushi. Love sushi!
I’m hoping our daughter grows up to be a bit of a foodie. She has never eaten baby purees – we started her on something called Baby Led Weaning. Which is basically starting with finger foods that they can gum and chew so that they get to learn the textures of food. Food starts off as something fun and then they learn that it can satisfy them as well. Because of this she will eat anything we give her. Yes she has preferences but she has eaten seafood, chili, sushi, curries and other “crazy” stuff. The other night she polished off all of my squid ink risotto before I even had a chance. We don’t have to take food with us as she just eats whatever we eat. Best thing we ever did.
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Oh, yes we have done this with our 3 kids. No baby foods, they got what we had on our plates. When people were worrying about whether their kids were old enough to have egg, I worried whether they are old enough for blue vein cheese they were so desperately wanted to grab off my plate, LOL!
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Lol yes! My daughter’s favourite meal at about 7 or 8 months was a seafood pasta at our local pub which had a chili tomato sauce. She’d just suck the sauce off the pasta!
It was always interesting going to mums group and hearing about their struggles with food & when to introduce what. We just had to deal with the mess!!
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Wow, that is so interesting!! I am going through a struggle with my 1 year old who only wants veggie mash and nothing else….I would love to try this , I wonder if one is too late to start though?
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Never too late to start. Check out the website for more info – http://www.babyledweaning.com/ The book is great too.
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I have heard quite a bit about baby led weaning and believe that as far as solid food for babies goes, it’s different strokes for different folks. If babies don’t like mush we encourage finger food. My only precaution would be if there’s a history of allergies (in particular, food allergies) in the family. There’s often a familial tendency and food allergies can be serious, as we all know.
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Thanks heaps for the link, drunken monkey. Very interesting. Our nine month old has always been highly suspicious of the spoon unless she’s holding it. And you’d understand the mess that makes, may as well go the full hog!
Thanks again.
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Our son was very much into fried rice as a 2 year old, and fell in love with liverwurst and hot English mustard at 4. He now runs a very successful cooking school!
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