Rameniscence.
“I’m here for the interview,” I told the first person I saw.
He gave me a nod, and disappeared behind the kitchen.
I stood there for ages.
“Where are you from? Hong Kong? Korea? Ni Hao!” The young kid behind the counter asked me.
“Take a guess,” I said.
And also, rude. I thought.
Finally, the chef came out, grumpily pointing at a chair, and sat down across the table.
Very Rude.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Harvard,” I said.
He gave out a grunt, and wrote the name down on a piece of paper.
H-E-R-B-A-R-T.
“Last name?”
“Wang.”
What?
“Birthday?”
WTF
Oh.
OH.
He thought I was there for an interview.
To work at the ramen restaurant.
I wasn’t sure to laugh, or cry in humiliation.
This was worse than pretending to be an influencer to score a free meal, this was ‘you don’t look like a writer and/or a photographer. You look like someone who needs a job.’
It was really a ‘this wouldn’t have happened if I was white’ moment.
The ramen restaurant has gone, but the secondhand embarrassment remains.
It’s one of my wife’s favourite stories to tell.
And I never saw the chef again. I think.
Maybe I just erased his face from my memory.
My experience with Mensho Melbourne reminded me of the story above.
Broadsheet asked me to cover them, and I sent them a message via Instagram.
No response. The website was a placeholder. No email. It was annoying, but also exciting. Old school.
The last option is to go in person.
I decided to go with Hana after picking her up from school, which was probably the biggest mistake in hindsight.
So 4pm Friday afternoon, I pushed the door open and asked for the manager.
A lady came and said she was the owner.
“I’m with Broadsheet, and we want to write a first-look feature of Mensho Melbourne,” said the father of my daughter.
Blank stares.
“No, we already have a marketing person. No thank you,” said the owner.
“Ok, I’m not here asking to be a marketing person. I’m a photographer and writer. Broadsheet is a local publication with quite a big readership,” I said.
Come on, catch up, pick up the hint.
“Look, I have to turn away one hundred people away every night. We don’t need any more business. Maybe in two or three months’ time. What’s your name? Do you have a business card?” She asked.
“No I don’t.”
Business card? Is this feudal Japan?
“Do you have an email?”
My daughter, staring at me.
Daddy are you a conman daddy are you a conman daddy are you a conman daddy
People queuing outside, thinking I’m using my daughter in dirty school uniform to cut the queue, begging for free food.
Get the fuck out get the fuck out get the fuck out get the fuck out
Five seconds left on the shot clock. And I had to decide if I want to spell my own name out loud again.
In the end, it’s always a mistake.
Some sort of misunderstanding between the higher up and lower downs.
The lady wasn’t owner owner, she was a partner, or shareholder, or the boss’ wife, or niece.
And I always end up with the photos.
Like that one time, I went to Box Hill to cover a series of restaurants, and 50% of them had never heard of Broadsheet. I had to pay to shoot for dishes as they seriously thought I was trying to scam food, the other 50% half chasing me away as I was cock blocking them to flip tables.
And you think my job is glamorous.
You think I have a badge, which I flash, and ramen broths part and make way for my chopsticks.
Nah uh.
Never ask for permission; beg for forgiveness.
There are a lot of cliche quotes in photography, but the one above has proven to be timeless. I have applied it many times, even in my marriage.
I have learned in life, especially in Australia, that to do things the ‘proper’ way, to get approval, a certificate, a permit, or an agreement will simply suck the time and money out of you.
The system is so broken, so against getting things done, so afraid of getting sued, that management usually has no idea what’s happening on the floor.
Even when I was shooting for Gourmet Traveller in Singapore, looking for a balcony shot, the bars, the restaurants would say I need to get in touch with the marketing department two weeks prior.
Like I’m some basic bitch influencer wannabe.
In the end, my solution was to become a basic bitch influencer wannabe. Walk in as a customer, pay for a gin and tonic, and shoot four million photos. Sometimes the staff was even more helpful than the management. They get out of the way, clean the table, and tell me where to get the best angle.
What consent form? What protocol?
Do it, and if something goes wrong, spend the money on a lawyer instead. (Not real legal advice.)
Maybe that’s why influencers influence, the tiktokers tickle.
Users understand that the ‘official’ way to create content is as sterile as snipped testicles.
They want that underground, found footage food review. Even though it’s zoomed in and out of oblivion, they’d rather take video reviews narrated by AI voice, than a polished PR statement by humans.
They’d rather take honest lies, than pretentious truths.
Melburnians like to make fun of queues, and then fly to America or Japan to join a longer one for cookies and crepes. (So woke, you guys. Didn’t I just see a reel of twelve laptops on standby to drop $600 on concert tickets? That’s not sad at all. )
After Disneyland with my daughter, I do not have any high ground to criticise the act of queuing.
In fact, if you go to a fine dining restaurant, it’ll take up four hours of your life. Half the time for a bowl of ramen at 1/50th the price? Bargain.
If you need to catch up with a friend, queueing up with a bowl of ramen at the end of the rainbow is such a fantastic idea.
Sorry, I was rambling.
You don’t care, you just want to know how was the ramen at Mensho.
And I’ve provided the context of why I’m in no position to offer an objective review.
At 6pm, I just wanted to get the photos and get out. Trying to extract as much information as possible to write the piece.
My experience was not your experience.
The premium Wagyu bowl with sea urchin and salmon roe, I ate it lukewarm.
I make tori paitan at home, so I really want to taste their version. If you do queue up, I suggest trying their signature dish first.
So maybe ask me again in a few months’ time, after I tasted it with more hindsight and less stress.
I did ask the customers on the bench if it was worth their 2-hour queue. 100% said definitely and will return.
To be honest, after two hours of queueing, ANYTHING will taste amazing.
That’s the real secret guys.
Writing for Broadsheet always requires a little bit of hand-holding. I was constantly reminded that I can’t just throw phrases around and hope customers would ‘get it’. I have to assume the readers have not heard of ramen before. That’s why fifty percent of the word count was dedicated to explanation and description.
Having said that, do we still have to explain pho? A better question, why are we not seeing more new pho restaurants featured in publications?
During our secret yakitori gathering last month, I told the crowd that I do not have any writer’s integrity or self-respect. Once the article is out, it’s out. I don’t care1. I don’t read it, I don’t want to know what the editors did to it, because they understand the audience better than I do.
Every time I’m obliged to feel guilty or embarrassed, I had to remind myself that’s what the money is for.
This time around, the editor came back with some questions, and my straight answers surprised me.
That I actually know what I’m talking about. Not a hack.
You think I have a badge, which I flash, and editors bow down and send it straight to print.
Nah uh.
Except for this time I did care, because my ‘char siu’ was written as ‘char sui’. But you know what, maybe twelve people would pick it up.