For quite a while now, Joe and I have had the practice of taking a leisurely brunch together on Sunday mornings. We go to the same place the same time and order the same thing week after week. That might seem boring to some but Joe and I subscribe to the old Mortein philosophy: When you are on a good thing stick to it.
Life is change however and that has now come to an end. Joe and Kate are both workers and Kate thought that weekends were the best time for her and Joe to do things together. And having Joe spending most of Saturday morning with his old father was inimical to that. So, being obliging souls, Joe and I changed our arrangements to Sunday dinner, with a trip to Sunnybank for Japanese hamburgers being the first case of the new arrangements on Feb 25th.
And Sunnybank is so Chinese that you might almost be in China while there. I greatly enjoy my occasional trips to the land of the Chin. They are only 15 minutes drive away so why not.
The Australian population is about 5% Han Chinese these days. So you see Asian people all around the place in Brisbane -- and many were born here. And they do not stand out in any way. Except for their eyes, they look and behave like any other Australian.
I am always bemused a little by the way the young Chinese women dress. In summer they wear a lot of short shorts and loose tops -- just as our Anglo ladies do. We also have a few Muslim ladies around the place -- in their vast wrappings -- so the contrast with their "modest" behaviour is great. The Chinese are not "modest" in that sense. They are one with us. I mentioned this to Joe -- that normal Chinese dress these days is totally Western -- and he told me that it is the same in Shanghai. He has been to China on work assignments several times.
Anyway, Joe has always been Sinophilic -- as I am -- so is very comfortable with all things Chinese. And one of the results of there being so many Han in Australia is that we have a couple of suburbs where they tend to congregate. And Joe and I went there last night for dinner again. And where we went -- Sunnybank -- is almost entirely Chinese. You could as well be in China. And I am always delighted to be in a crowd of people who are instinctively civilized. 3,000 years of civilization does leave a mark.
I have no idea how many eateries there are in Sunnybank but there are a lot -- and they are all different. The one Joe took me to last night was very modern. You ordered from a computer kiosk rather than from a waiter. They have no waiters. That is not very remarkable in that various U.S. McDonalds restaurants also now do that. But it was a first for Brisbane, I think
But the modernity didn't stop there. The food was assembled by the chefs onto a very hot iron plate and delivered to you semi-raw. Each dinner would have taken them only minutes to put together. And when the dinner arrived at your table, you mixed it around for 5 minutes and it was done! And given the Chinese expertise with herbs and spices, the result was pleasant to eat. It was a good dinner despite minimal human contact in arranging it!
A little sad, however that it took the Chinese to get us up with the latest
No comments:
Post a Comment