Tell me coffee roasters and connoisseurs, if Melbourne is the city of great coffee, who is buying the rows and rows of ground Nescafe, Moccona, Lavazza, and Vittoria in the supermarkets?
Turns out, not many people care about coffee as much as specialty coffee drinkers do.
The Japanese think they go to Starbucks for the coffee, but in reality, they are in it for the sugar. The reward.
Can you order coffee without a snack? A piece of cheesecake?
Even Coffee County in Kurume, the chillest town of all, people were there to extract quality time. To dress up, sit in a nice chair, catch up, and feel better about their lives for half an hour or so.
Coffee is supposed to be ‘bitter’, to accentuate the sweetness of the cake, the cookie, the fruit. In a Japanese sense, coffee is not coffee, but a cog in a wheel.
The best coffee doesn’t taste the best, it’s about scarcity.
Due to a trade deal, 80% of the Jamaican Blue Mountain beans are exported to Japan. Everyone who gets their hands on it can charge triple the market rate. Jamaican Blue Mountain ran, so Panama Gesha beans could defy gravity and logic.
The most exclusive cup of coffee I had this year (possibly my life) was the 6 am long black on seat 1A from my flight back from Jakarta1.
When everyone was trying to enjoy champagne, airplane food, and switching into their pajamas, I switched the chair into bed with my eyemask, telling the guy DND until we landed. I sensed pitiness from the cabin staff as if I did not understand the business class protocol (he was right) and he insisted I have at least a coffee as the plane was descending2.
The most important thing about an airline’s reputation should be the safety protocol, the pilot’s condition, and the system in place. But what do customers care about?
The food. They only remember the food. - Sayaka.
It was a shock to my system to realise the last movie I watched in the cinema was Star Wars: Episode VIII in IMAX circa 2017. No, I did watch a movie this year. It was Frozen accompanied by the Melbourne Symphonic Orchestra.
Is that better or worse, I can’t decide.
Succession, The Bear, Beef, The Last of Us … this year’s best television shows are reflections of society. People watch stress-inducing content and complain to their therapists that they … are stressed. How about a different interpretation: people who are suffering like to watch others suffer more. No, how about the middle class’s fixation on the ruling class’s misery? Either way, modern fantasies are pretty twisted and leave a nihilistic aftertaste. I only managed to finish one out of the four shows above.
The show that I enjoyed from beginning to end was Loki.
I can talk about the production and retro-futuristic cinematography, but the theme is finding one’s glorious purpose in life.
Actually, I also watched Only Murders in The Building, which is much more straightforward. New York’s real estate is so competitive, people are willing to live next to a murderer if the price and location are right.
With Chika at work and Hana at school, most of my lunch routine this year was to cook a single serve of fried rice, champon, or maggi goreng, and eat the dish while watching an old episode of A Bite of China on YouTube.
Fifty-minute episodes on history, food, people, and relationship across different regions of China, ABoC revolutionised food documentaries like the steam engine revolutionised London in the 1800s.
My favourite episode (above) depicts the ‘three meals’ in China - an old couple enjoying dim sum, a female worker in Foxconn (that shot in the iPhone-making dining hall was unforgettable), a power station worker, a mother making lunch for her daughter getting ready for exam … It was the Koyaanisqatsi of food. Put on some Philip Glass and you can’t help but feel we are small; the world out there is huge.
Once they saw the impact on the nation’s self-esteem and tourism, the local naysayers who claimed it to be ‘too idealistic’ (since it was funded by the government’s CCTV) STFU almost immediately.
Twenty years later, ABoC is remembered for its scale, ambition, and beauty. You can’t help but see Chef’s Table and other chef-centric food shows as narrow and pretentious.
This year, I enjoyed making snapper rice. The secret is Japanese sansho. The one that comes with a mill; not the pre-ground one.
Like COVID, cooking on charcoal finally infected us, especially with white bread and rice balls.
Champon noodles were surprisingly easy to make.
Fluffy baos. Harumi Kurihara’s muffin.
Vinegar rice, Chika said my torched salmon don with King Ora was better than Japan. I made green sauce, canele, soba, yoshinoya gyudon, souffle pancake, sambal, chicken balls…
Best restaurant experience? Maybe Ambi’s Chai in Sydney. Even though a chai place opened up right next to Market Lane Victoria Market, I could not take it seriously.
This happened last week at yakitori restaurant - the best yaki onigiri ever. I found out you can cook and serve rice like toast. Insert rice into sandwich or waffle maker until brown and crusty, and serve with butter.
I made a 180 on CC Wok since I discovered they do Char Kuey Teow on Fridays. Their prawn noodles are also the best in town, since my curry puff uncle closed down.
I’m biased but the kaya toast set at Little Cardigan is a steal. Toasted shokupan fresh from the oven, sous vide eggs, tamari soy sauce, Gaban grounded pepper, house-made kaya and fermented butter for $10.50? I told them to increase the price but a loyal customer told me to mind my own business.
One of the bakers left Little Cardigan to work at Lumen People. After a week of drama (someone broke into our garage and ran off with my lights, tripod and stand) we went there to unwind. Chika had a baby sardine on toast with pickled onions, roasted nuts, currants and cheese. It was sweet, tangy, and crunchy, like a course out of a fine dining restaurant. It’s hard to imagine it’s in a humble brunch menu in North Melbourne.
Pastry of the year and all because I’m a savory person: the Reuben from Small Batch.
I tell people food photography made me jaded about the fine dining industry. I found out recently the seed was planted way before that.
Everyone in advertising has read David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man. I was trying to look up a quote and rediscovered the first chapter which was all about working in the kitchen.
So no, it wasn’t Bourdain or Jacques Pépin or Broadsheet or the closing of Noma or Calia that kept me away from slave labour; it was a man who spent a year in the kitchen, and decided to be a door-to-door kitchen stove salesman instead.
My favourite photograph of the year was taken in Lorne, titled ‘the almost camping trip’. We took a gamble but the rain kept coming and going for four hours. I told Chika it was pointless to camp as we wouldn’t be able to start a fire, or do any fun things for that matter. She tried to prove me wrong for another hour before giving up and driving back to Hana’s godparents’ home for a real barbeque.
Second place was taken during bread delivery. Melbourne was in her spring attire at 6.45am on a November morning. Half an hour later, hot air balloons.
Ever since we watched the BBC documentary that follows kids in seven-year intervals since 1964, I thought that as long as my child is ‘normal’ when she turns seven, then my job is done.
Hana turned seven this year, and as much as I’d like to boast about her achievements, her talent is good at being happy and carefree.
My proudest moment this year was when she ‘busked’ in Chika’s hometown:
Since kinder, all her teachers stress that we ‘keep doing what we’re doing’, which is the only reason my wife lets me do what I do.
Last week, she told everyone her favourite food is my spagbol.
Is it too much to ask to keep making pasta for her until she’s sixty-three?
Once we were all seven years old.
Father-in-law says ‘yoka yoka’ a lot.
It’s the equivalent of ‘chill, friend’, or ‘relax, bro’, or ‘she’ll be right, mate’.
Whenever someone is overthinking (‘what would people think?’ ‘what if we buy too much beef?’) before he said it, my brain already responded silently: Yoka yoka.
I’m nearing the limit of this post. I’m not done reminiscing.
Time is running out. The day, the year is almost over.
But it’s time for the new year soba.
Yoka yoka.
I did not spend a single dime on the business class upgrade. I probably should pivot to be a finfluencer rather than writing, but who’d believe in a photographer who delivers bread, and walks his daughter to school while holidaying three times a year in Japan, right?
When the guys at the back are ordered to put their seats and trays upright, the guys at the front are being served coffee. True story.
I couldn't finish Beef cos I found my heart racing too much after every episode. I finished The Bear (lol obviously), Succession and Only Murders in the Building though.
Also, Vittoria forever. I'm a basic lady.
A great 2023 wrap up. Sad I only got around to it now, but 2024 is gonna be a good one for you Harvard - I can feel it!
Happy 2024 Harvard! This was lovely. Post the recipe for the spagbol...? <3