Forkful Issue 3
For a budding gastronomy enthusiast, growing up in Melbourne was a veritable cornucopia of delights. Every Saturday morning my grandfather would take my brothers and I out to St Kilda’s Acland Street, where we’d feast on Chocolate Kooglhoupf from Monarch Cakes — a centuries-old recipe brought over from Europe. On special occasions we’d catch the tram up Bourke Street where we sat in the back room of Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar eating homemade gnocchi and drinking tart fruit punch. On busy weeknights we’d walk around the corner to our local Chinese restaurant for rice and dim sum and, if we were lucky, bowls of fried ice-cream.
Being able to indulge in and learn about such a vast array of ingredients and flavours, techniques and spices, traditional cuisine and contemporary fusions, is one of the things I love most about living in Melbourne.
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These days, food is at the heart of Melbourne’s culture. Stroll through any bustling city street and you’re spoiled for choice. Hole-in-the-wall bento box bars, rickety wooden stairwells leading up to buffet-style Indian food served by Hare Krishna, cosy low-lit Japanese saké bars, late night souvlaki restaurants with music and laughter spilling out onto the footpath. The fabric of Melbourne’s cuisine is one of evolution, its vibrancy indebted to the peoples and cultures and communities from all across the world who have made this city their home.
For this third issue of Forkful, we’ve peered into the array of influences that have informed — and continue to influence — the palates and plates of our beautiful city. We’ve travelled back in time to the roots of modern-day food fusion, explored the world via the culinary diversity of Melbourne’s suburbs, gone back to our heritage via traditional cuisine with Scottish haggis and Chinese hotpot, hopped aboard the sushi train trend, chatted with chocolatiers and café owners, and peered between the pages of some exciting new local cookbooks.
What we’ve learned is that food is never merely food. It is history and stories and sharing and laughter and culture and all of it is worth every bite.
CONTRIBUTORS
Kat Betts is an artist, author and poet. She recently self-published her own illustrated chapbook, Hungry, and is working on her first novel, Crimson or the sylvia plath effect.
Sofia Connelly is a barista, writer and editor originally from Byron Bay and now living in Melbourne where she studies and makes (and drinks) coffee.
Sarah Gory is a Melbourne writer and editor. She drinks her coffee black, her whisky neat and will try almost anything at least once. Sarah writes about art and food.
Alice King grew up in Ballarat and is currently studying creative writing at RMIT. She enjoys writing in a wide range of forms and spends her spare time eating sushi.
Emma Taylor is a Ballarat-based writer and editor currently studying a Master of Writing and Publishing at RMIT.
Panda Wong is a poet/adult baby most likely to be found eating a wheel of cheese on her couch, scrolling Reddit.
