The best 20 underground takeaway options in Melbourne

Psyche. This is not that list. But hell, that would have been great for SEO.

Food media has been reduced to listicles on best takeaways, best pizzas, best pasta, best dumplings, best [insert innocuous food here] lists and profiles on that famous white chef doing their next Big Thing which is exactly like their last Big Thing but it is cooked over fire, there are no quenelles and they’re reducing food costs by ‘stripping back’ the dishes so they can deliver something honest and visceral while being redefined as an artist. My god. Such poetry. This has never been done before- especially not next to these light fittings, this concise wine list built from a total of five distributors, or this room which has just received a minor refurbishment after the last tenant left without paying their bills.

At least we don’t get food served on slate anymore. Mostly.

We are now living in the era of Covid. Like all other industries, there is a lot of uncertainty about the future. We can all sit around and make semi-educated guesses on the hospitality industry, who will survive and what it will look like, but I am telling you now, it has been broken for a very long time. Underpayment of staff has been around since hospitality became a business, rents have been too high for too long, the industry is unregulated, every distributor extends lines of credit, there are too many restaurants, not enough people and everyone is living in debt (and accruing more of it). Covid is the great flood and we are all animals on the ark waiting to hit dry land. As for food media, aside from the poor-taste of reviewing, rating and even criticising venues in a time where business owners are wondering how they’re going to pay their rent or feed themselves, there are only so many people who have the ability and want to write listicles on a single food category while being paid peanuts for the displeasure of it. Food media is now barely fact-checked good news stories, gossip under the guise of news, or viral (yes, poor choices of words) recipes.

So, in a long-winded way, I have reverted back to my university days and I will be writing the modern-day blog: a newsletter. Subscribe if you want some weekly(ish) insights, strong opinions, rants, hyperbolic language and sarcasm. Basically, it will be all the shit that people ask me about offline that can’t get published in a traditional format. It will be like the good old days, except I give way less of a shit now and I am no longer at the mercy of a limited, share-house internet connection.

So you’ve got an idea of how I will format each newsletter, like most people with a healthy amount of ego, I’ll include stuff like this:

What I am reading:

I won’t tell you the name of the novel or who wrote it (but you’ll work it out if you’re a reader), but I just forced myself to finish the debut novel of a best-selling author. The only way I can describe it is: a bunch of white people who don’t communicate with horny bits littered throughout. Maybe it was the fact that I just read Girl, Woman, Other which is now in my top five books of the last five years, or maybe I just wasn’t that into it.

What’s grinding my gears:

Plastic. Streets, rivers and oceans of single-use plastic. While I appreciate that there are few cost-effective alternatives to it for takeaway and we are all trying to support small businesses, I can’t justify the amount of plastic. Remember the bushfires? Remember the climate emergency? Remember Greta?

What I’m eating:

It’s mooncake season, motherfuckers. The Mid-Autumn Festival is upon us, which means it is time for you to head to the Asian grocer, buy at least one, four-pack of cakes filled with lotus seed paste and salted egg yolks (no less than two) and give it out to your friends and family. If you’ve never eaten one before, cut that shit into eight pieces and share that bitch around.

I am a traditionalist, so ‘mooncakes’ covered in snowskin with durian or custard insides are total imposters and can only be truly appreciated by Gen-Z.