Dining Alone
Wakefield Press
Barbara Santich has been teaching food writing at the University of Adelaide since 2007. An internationally respected culinary historian, she also teaches food history and culture. Her lastest book, Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, was shortlisted in the Non-fiction category of the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
The first six stories in this collection won prizes, as follows:
Vikki Moore—Penny’s Hill/Adelaide Review Prize, 2007
Marianne Robins—Penny’s Hill/Adelaide Review Prize, 2008
Cassie Harrex—Penny’s Hill/Adelaide Review Prize, 2009
Marianne Duluk—Penny’s Hill/Adelaide Review Prize, 2011
Julia Jenkins—Penny’s Hill/Adelaide Review Prize, 2012
Alyssa Fletcher—Penny’s Hill/Adelaide Review Prize, 2013
Wakefield Press
16 Rose Street
Mile End
South Australia 5031
www.wakefieldpress.com.au
First published 2013
Reprinted 2014
This edition published 2015
Copyright © this collection Barbara Santich 2013,
copyright in individual stories remains with the authors
All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
Cover designed by Liz Nicholson, designBITE
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Title: Dining alone / edited by Barbara Santich.
ISBN: 978 1 74305 270 9 (ebook: epub).
Subjects:
Dinners and dining—Fiction.
Food—Fiction.
Other Authors/Contributors: Santich, Barbara, editor.
Dewey Number: A823.01
Contents
Preface Barbara Santich
Allard, alone Vikki Moore
Alone Marianne Robins
A table alone Cassie Harrex
A recipe for nourishment Marianne Duluk
Table for one Julia Jenkins
Alone, together Alyssa Fletcher
Greg Camellia Aebischer
The lights in Paris Jennifer Baily
An attentive waiter Danya Bilinsky
Under the sea Elizabeth Black
Minestra Rita Cattoni
A date with destiny Tibbie Chiu
Cutting ties Nathalie Craig
From Mykonos to Meteora Lisa Dempster
The second last supper Wendy Downes
A comfortable place Kay Gibbons
A late lunch David Gilligan
Sydney 1993: Getting over dining alone Ross Karavis
Don’t dine alone—take an iPad to dinner Suzanne Le Page Langlois
The Japanese, the chef, the old lady and the fish Lisa Le Faucheur
I just can’t dine alone anymore La Vergne Lehmann
Table for six Lucinda Moody
A waiter’s intrigue Kate Napper
One is a lonely number Josie Palombo
Grandmother Chen Diana Parkyn
Taking flight Caroline Pearce
The unmarried chapter Glennise Pinili
Solitude Banjo Harris Plane
Dining alone with Madame Taittinger Kate Punshon
Dinner for two Carli Ratcliff
Velvet Karen Reyment
The harvest fog Eloise Riggs
Dining alone, annually Alister Robertson
Chardonnay or Nebbiolo? Mandy Rowe
That cherry pie Catherine Shepherd
Last meal Carly Slater
The only pub in town Natasha Stewart
Bitter Roz Taylor
Contributors
Preface
Barbara Santich
This book is a compilation of short stories, mostly on the theme of ‘Dining Alone’, by food writing students at the University of Adelaide from 2007 to 2013, all written as part of their overall assessment.
Only a handful of universities worldwide offer courses in food writing, and the University of Adelaide might well have been the first. Certainly this is the only accredited course of its kind offered in Australia.
I must have had the idea in the back of my mind for some time, but it crystallised one summer morning as I sat through the ritual start-of-year Faculty meeting in one of the University’s more modern lecture theatres. Idly listening to the Dean, only half-focused on his evaluations of the faculty’s performance, I allowed my brain to wander. As he urged everyone to achieve more and aim higher in the semester ahead, a scenario started to form. The more I thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. Rummaging in my bag I found a scrap of paper and, over the next half hour or so, sketched out plans.
It just so happened that, at the beginning of 2006, Professor Nicholas Jose was newly appointed to the University’s Chair of Creative Writing. At the end of the meeting, as staff milled in small groups around the stainless steel catering urns, I approached Nick with my proposal—because it would not have been possible to host a food writing course in History and Politics, the School in which I was based. To my everlasting gratitude, he seized on the idea with enthusiasm and the Graduate Certificate in Food Writing began to take shape.
The requirements were simple. The course had to be online in order to attract sufficient students—but at the same time it was vital to include an on campus component so that students could meet us and, more importantly, get to know one another. Both Nick and I already had full teaching loads, so we decided to invite a small team from outside the University to contribute to the week of on campus teaching. As well as a practical solution, this would give students the opportunity to learn from and interact with professional writers, editors and journalists.
Finding the right people willing to help teach and mark students’ work was surprisingly easy. For the first five years the team included: Gay Bilson, for many years an acclaimed chef and restaurateur (Berowra Waters Inn, Sydney) and winner of the 2005 Age Book of the Year with her memoir, Plenty: Digressions on food; Kerryn Goldsworthy, essayist and short story writer, long-time editor of Australian Book Review and also a teacher of creative writing; Marion Halligan, an award-winning author who subtly weaves food and eating into her novels, short stories and travel writings; and journalist David Sly, food and wine editor of SA Life magazine, formerly food and wine editor of the Advertiser.
Five years of online teaching and learning had given me some understanding of what students wanted from online delivery, and what worked best for them. It was important that the online experience was as close as possible to classroom teaching and learning, which meant personal attention: corresponding with students individually, replying promptly to all queries and giving detailed feedback on all assignments. By 2007 we could also take advantage of ‘virtual classroom’ technology that the University was introducing, on a limited scale, allowing teachers and students to meet and talk online. This became a vital component of the course. Admittedly, in the early years the technology was not foolproof; arbitrary and capricious might be more appropriate descriptors. Still, it was possible for students to discuss their ideas and projects almost as if sitting around the table in a tutorial room; those who could not log on at the agreed time at least had the consolation of a recording.
It’s easier to understand how students might learn about food writing than to resolve how it might be taught. Nick already had experience in teaching creative writing, in addition to writing novels, short stories and essays; I had been writing about food, cooking and eating for many years, but my teaching was in food history and culture. Yet I think we agreed that the
best way to learn was to encourage students to read widely and, especially, to write, write and write. Fortuitously, University assessment standards required a considerable number of ‘assessable words’, making it possible for us to set a variety of assignments, of different lengths, to encourage students to develop their writing skills.
We also agreed on a very broad definition of food writing: ‘Food writing, from restaurant reviews and cookbooks to memoir and social history, is a dimension of both professional and creative writing, recognised in its own right and in conjunction with other kinds of writing, from travel articles to fiction and poetry.’ Since versatility is key to success as a food writer—perhaps any kind of writer—students experimented with different writing genres and styles, in concise and extended forms: restaurant reviews, book reviews, reportage and research-based journalism, short stories, memoir and travel, essays and opinion pieces and, from 2011, a blog assignment to be completed over the course of the semester.
In February 2007 the first students arrived. One of their first day activities was a ‘Tastes and Words’ session where I asked them to find words to match the flavours and textures they were tasting, in both cheese and chocolate and a mystery product, which that year was purple yam paste. The aim of this exercise was to encourage them to describe tastes as accurately and evocatively and meaningfully as possible so that others, readers, might also experience them, vicariously—and it’s not as easy as it sounds. In another year the mystery food was durian jam. Food writers might not like to call themselves ‘public stomachs’ but they recognise the importance of communicating to readers the taste of a particular food or dish, whether in a restaurant review, a work of fiction or a journalistic article. As Elizabeth David wrote, a food writer has a responsibility ‘to exercise his or her critical faculties to a high degree and with a backing of informed experience’, and to express opinions to readers ‘in lively terms’.1
While the essential core of the course remains faithful to the initial back-of-the-envelope sketch, various changes and refinements have been introduced. When Nick Jose accepted a new position in late 2008, Brian Castro and Jill Jones took over his role; and when the Master of Arts in Creative Writing was discontinued, Food Writing found a home within the new Graduate Program in Food Studies. In the beginning years students were taken to the Kitchen Door restaurant at Penny’s Hill Winery in McLaren Vale for lunch and a seminar (they were also required to write a review of the meal). As students asked for additional content in the intensive week, the lunch venue moved to the much closer Art Gallery Restaurant, and in 2013 became an evening meal. The visit to Adelaide’s Central Market—again, the stimulus for a writing assignment—changed in 2013 to an evening cheese-tasting class. Blogging became part of the course in 2011, and Amanda McInerney and George Ujvary, both University of Adelaide graduates with respected food blogs, have shared their experiences with students in the classroom. For the past two years, journalist and PhD student Tania Cammarano has contributed to the teaching. Throughout its entire history, Food Writing has been supported by Penny’s Hill Winery, co-sponsor, with the Adelaide Review, of an annual prize for the top student.
One other significant change was in the creative writing assignment. In 2007 students were asked to write a short story of 1000 words involving food and eating; from 2008 this became a short story on the theme of ‘Dining Alone’. Some amazingly creative scenarios have been imagined—from different viewpoints, with different resolutions, in a range of settings in Australia and overseas: in New York and Paris, India, Italy and Greece, on the Camino de Santiago. The lone diners are men and women, young and old, aggressive and reflective, wistful and resolute, some content in their cloak of solitude while others envy the love and laughter at other tables. The stories are poignant and surprising, sometimes with a hint of mystery or political intrigue; some have bittersweet endings while others celebrate brave new beginnings.
Almost all the students I was able to contact—and there were only a few who could not be found—agreed to offer their work, edited and revised, for this book. These stories are a tribute to their authors’ imagination, energy and enthusiasm.
Elizabeth David, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (Penguin, 1986), 12.
Allard, alone
Vikki Moore
I’m holding the menu in my hands. It’s worn and wine-stained and smells like a library book. At the top is the date in smudged, watery ink; leaky edges fading, numbers clinging, losing their grip.
I didn’t notice you at first. Lost in the labyrinth of those rooms, I stood spellbound. Colours of gold like toast and honey, walls dripping with stories and scenes, oozing memories of lovers and friends, husbands and wives, celebrations, devastations. Under my feet, a maze of mosaic with paths worn bare by the hordes who’d been before. Large windows veiled the frost outside, opaque in a screen of steam; firelight flicked shadows on whitewash. Amidst the chaos and clatter of cutlery, elbow room was for a lucky few. The food sucked at my senses, held my gaze hostage from one plate to the next: enormous mounds of snails, swollen and shimmering, glittered with garlic; stacks of fried frogs whose legs had leapt their last. Langoustine and foie gras; rabbit braised with truffle—this was the place of my dreams.
I drank too much, talked too much, didn’t notice you at first. My eyes followed an iron pot bubbling with coq au vin, and in a corner of the kaleidoscope you appeared: a lone, flinty-grey flicker in my untarnished golden globe. And I wondered, even then, how you could ever hope to eat it all. I talked, drank, got back to my lunch. But you stayed on my mind, a tiny black ant tickling my skin, punctuating my thoughts with sharp, selfish nips.
I judged you to be as old as my father—maybe sixty, no more than sixty-five, but with years etched hard, a concertina of creases, graphs of laughter and regret. Eyes sunken and sallow, skin yellowed, not gold like the room but more green, almost grey, and mottled, like a tired old grapefruit. Your deformed ear, buckled and bruised, held my morbid fascination. I looked away, slightly ruffled, substantially repulsed.
The whole roast duck made me think there’d been made a mistake. But you took it, and thanked her, never raising your gaze. Her smile was sympathetic. Olives like sage salt barrels were strewn over a tanned duck crust, the flesh underneath leaking oily nectar onto the plate. I watched as you took a forkful to your mouth, eyes closed, not a movement too many.
A fillet of sole buried in beurre blanc—she set it down and studied your table: six plates, each piled high, barely touched. Her question wasn’t spoken, but you answered her anxiety without affect. ‘It’s perfect,’ you whispered, your voice husky and dry.
I watched you then, lost track of conversation, abandoned my excitement. I watched your movements, slow and deliberate; your expression sober; pulling me out of my sanctuary, back to the reality of a cold, grey day. I saw the bloated bumps, the bruises branding your arm like spilled purple paint; skin sores and scars, a topography of torment.
You sipped at your water; you had no wine. I should have poured you some of mine, but instead I stared, tracing your dents and disfigurements, wondering how you’d come here and where were the people who loved you?
To me you were old, and so different to me: your sombre resignation; the pathetic scene of a last lonely lunch.
It’s been twenty years since I scrawled that date, and it’s only now I realise: your lunch at Allard was no different to mine. We were wringing the last drop from that magical place, possessed by the fear of not seeing it again.
I close the menu and return it to its dusty, derelict coffer. Still the numbers cling.
Alone
Marianne Robins
Last Thursday, Mandy tried dining alone in a restaurant. Hovering just inside the entrance, she allowed her hair to fall over her face. A waiter strode towards her through the maze of tables, his eyebrows raised.
‘Just one?’ he boomed.
‘Just one,’ she echoed.
He led her to a table laid for two near the window. The
view opened onto a busy street. Feeling on display, Mandy sat down while he removed the extra setting. She had neglected to bring a book and the menu was too small to hide behind. The wine lists looked a little taller, but no one had offered her one of those. Anxiety surged up her throat. Hushed conversations and the subdued clinking of cutlery seemed to amplify her wildly beating heart. Filled with panic, she fled before the waiter returned.
Tonight, having bought her meagre supplies in Coles, she makes her way to a food hall, where she feels safe. This evening she chooses McDonalds, nameless, her face closed, she knows no one will notice her there. As predicted, the teenager doesn’t look up when he passes her order across the counter. She sits at one of the plastic tables between two filled with boisterous families. The children, bouncing off the tables and chairs, keep their parents too busy to notice the lone diner.
Mandy eats rapidly. Sharp bites cut into the bun with precision. Moist cardboard texture swirls around her mouth. It is hard to swallow. Anger fills her stomach and throat; there is no room for nourishment. She slurps a mouthful of fizzy fluid to help swallow the pulp.
One of the children tumbles into her. Mandy’s drink spills out onto her burger. Soggy bun becomes mush. Taking another bite, she almost enjoys the feeling of revulsion. It’s a welcome relief from the anger and self-loathing that has burned within her for the last six months.
The families leave. Without camouflage, she feels exposed. Leaving no trace of her meal, Mandy clears the table and carries two small shopping bags out to her car. Still, she cannot shake the feeling that people are staring at her, wondering what is wrong.
The answer is everything; everything since that day at the back of the church. The memory is still frozen in her present. Back then she was a glowing bride; laughing with her bridesmaids, she floated into the church. Urgent whispering barely penetrated her happy haze, but what did catch her attention was the silent organ. Instead, the shuffling of 180 bottoms, their owners turning towards her in unison, echoed around the walls. They looked at her because there was nothing to see at the front of the church. It was empty. David hadn’t come.