Cross-Cultural Communications

Food and Culture -- A Chef's Journey from Melbourne to London

Perhaps no one is more sensitive about the differences between the world's cultures than chefs, who are often specialized in one cuisine or another. The specific ingredients involved in a dish are like the unique customs of a culture. Most of the time they stay unchanged, so that everybody uses the same ingredients when cooking this dish.

However, it takes curiosity, courage and constant practice to improve a dish, to attempt the use of new ingredients and cooking styles, and to discover new taste sensations. It is the same when we encounter a new culture. It takes time and extraordinary patience for us to learn about the histories, customs, beliefs, manners and foods, and to get used to "doing what the Romans to when in Rome". It is also in this process of experiencing and learning to accept a new culture that we discover more about ourselves and our own culture.

In an article published by The Age (Melbourne) Magazine, chef John Torode talks about his experience of working in Melbourne and London. Torode was born and raised in Australia where he was used to "really fresh, delicious produce, simply cooked". Yet, when he arrived at London in 1991, he thought the food there was "ghastly".

Torode says: "I came over here [in London] and people seemed to have little inspiration and were coating everything in thick brown sauces, which I still detest… I remember going to a restaurant in Notting Hill and the only things worth ordering were calamari and lasagna and the calamari was frozen - just rough, tough, disgusting squid. Even the simplest thing like a decent cup of coffee was impossible to find in London."

He continues: "Restaurants [in London back then] were only for the elite… You couldn't expect to go to a restaurant in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and get something good to eat for a reasonable price - it was all very formal and formulaic and bombastic. Nobody cared about food and I found that really strange, because people in Australia did care about food and do care about food."

Torode recognizes that things have changed a lot since then. Now he has his own restaurant in London, and his achievements are certainly part of the changes witnessed by the Londoners throughout the years.

He says: "We opened [the restaurant] five years ago with the idea of making great, reasonably priced food that everyone could afford. I think attitudes to food have changed a lot in London since the early '90s. Eating out is not just about ceremony and anniversaries now - people go out for dinner with friends after work. There is still a long way to go but you can get a good cup of coffee in London now and a glass of house wine doesn't mean warm piss out of a box." (Please pardon the language.)

Torode admits that he is a typical Australian, and that he misses the relaxed attitude in Melbourne, the "G'day, how are you?", the smile on a face, and the Australian people's ability to be helpful. But he is also full of ambition about being successful in London, "a place you can do well in if you want to do well". His willingness to explore various aspects of the Australian and British cultures enables him to accept and further appreciate the differences between them.

"Melbourne and London are two contrasting worlds," Torode says. "In Melbourne you open the back door in the morning and the sun is shining. You shower, you go to work. On the way home from work you stop at your local butcher and pick up some meat and stuff from the deli and you go home and you cook it. In London, we drag ourselves down to the station, we get ourselves a junky coffee and get the train to work and do it every single day and on a Saturday morning, when we should be with our kids, we end up going to the supermarket and we buy a load of food which we end up throwing away by the following Thursday."

Does Torode sound like a grumpy chef? Perhaps he is simply an explorer who is always looking for the freshest and most extraordinary ingredients of a culture.

[Cross-Cultural Communications -- Archives]