The Cocoanut

One of the things ubiquitous in the streetside café scene, besides fish and chips on the menu, is the tagline “the place to see and be seen”. This phrase is now permanently employed by tourism brochures and hosts of TV lifestyle shows to sell the next big thing in street dining.

I never quite understood the rationale behind the “to see and be seen” concept. When I go out my main motivation is to enjoy the food and the company of friends and family. I couldn’t be less bothered about being seen, or performing the whole ‘people-watching’ thing that’s as entertaining as seeing paint dry. Is it simply one of those taglines that everyone carelessly repeat without giving much thought, a bit like how any discussion involving lefties are almost always preceded by the phrase “latte-sipping”?

The thought of someone dressing up and eating out at a joint for the sole intention of being seen there is so absurd. Why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to constant public scrutiny in the middle of a meal is beyond me.

In Melbourne, a lack of obvious physical attractions that grace say, Sydney, has meant that its charm is more understated, one fine example being the laneways that criss-cross the city’s CBD.

Melbourne’s laneways are heavily promoted, but luckily, instead of advertising them as another place “to see and be seen”, the people behind the tourism campaign are smart enough to sell them instead as a maze for one to wander and get lost in, while rediscovering the city from a whole new perspective.

Unlike streetside malls, the narrow laneways are totally pedestrianised and protected from the noise and smoke of passing vehicles. And rather than being a place to see and be seen, these back alleys provide an escape for Melburnians to hide away from it all and just enjoy the food and company.

Mayo just goes down so well with so many things. I know it’s no longer socially acceptable to publicly endorse McDonald’s, but back in the days I used to enjoy chomping down on a McChicken, eagerly pressing on those soft buns to squeeze out the mayo and lick it in its pure state.

The cult Melbourne burger chain Grill’d serves their chips with a choice of herb or sweet chili mayo, and on breezy sunny days when you eat outside, there are few things more satisfying that dipping hot salty chips into those tiny plastic tubs of herby mayo.

I tried making mayo at home, and although I knew mayo is fattening, it never occurred to me that it was essentially all fat. Home-made mayo is at least 85% fat; that is the amount needed to sustain the emulsion of oil and egg yolks. I became so flabbergasted by the amount of oil that was going into the mixing bowl that all those happy childhood memories of licking mayo transformed into scenes of what might be the culinary equivalent of a horrow flick. How could I have dipped all those chips into this?

The thing with mayo is that it is quite deceiving in its appearance. Mayonnaise lacks the greasiness of oil that puts so many people off, and its viscosity makes it easy to pile a huge dollop onto your food, be they tuna, chicken, chips or sushi.

The experience of making home-made mayo, far from cementing my appreciation of it, has actually turned me off. Well, not really. I will probably never dip my hot salty chips in mayo again, but drizzling just a bit of it onto a pile of leftover tandoori chicken pieces is hardly insane.

The leftover tandoori is now my adult version of the tuna mayo sandwich. I love the deep red color of the chicken pieces, shredded from the bone and piled up high inside Turkish pide bread, soft and doughy in the inside, crusty on the outside. And unlike the canned tuna, the tandoori doesn’t merely serve as an excuse for mayo. I actually look forward to biting into a pile of shredded tandoori.