I write this in despair. I write as someone who adores food. As someone who adores coffee and adores the way the Europeans do both. I write this in the hope that things can improve. I do this for those members of the Melbourne café scene who have been faithful to this Faraday St. icon for most of their lives. To those familiar faces on Saturday mornings. To Barry Dickens, who even wrote a play about it, such was his love for the place. To Red Simons, who I used to see most Saturdays, and to my family and their wonderfully faithful friends who all share a furtive and nostalgic tear each time they get a bitter, watery coffee. I allude, of course, to Brunetti.
I was born in 1982, a few years after Brunetti had opened. It was in 1985 that it moved to Faraday St. It is from this location that I remember many of my first encounters with real continental food. The panini were always very good, but as a child I enjoyed the hot chocolate and the gelati. Ahhh, Brunetti's gelati. Such memories. Where most children were waving down Mr. Whippy to get a soft serve cone with nuts and that strange chocolate coating, I was deciding which combination of Brunetti's flavours I would have. After experimenting with Bacio, Limone, even nocciolla (hazelnut), I eventually settled on the heavenly chocolate and tiramisù: a combination I remain faithful to wherever possible to this day. I grew up at Brunetti. I mean that in the sense that if my life were a film, you could shoot important moments there. Amusing child-like clumsiness, teenage awkwardness and adult self-importance. A sequence involving past loves could have them change as the camera tracks through the different rooms.
As Brunetti expanded, knocking down one wall to accommodate their ever expanding gelati bar, then putting up terrible rendered polystyrene imitation frescos, so did my tastes, with the opening of the restaurant, I discovered I enjoyed duck. So much so that the portly Italian man I remember as being called Gingin called me "duck boy" (although on second thought,s perhaps he was referring to my striking resemblance to ducks)... he also called the marinara "spaghetti marijuana", a pun I found both hilarious and naughty as a ten year old. Eventually Gingin moved on, or retired, or something, and was replaced by a very efficient young man with obvious experience but no devilish sense of humour. it is possible the decline and fall of the Brunetti empire started here... but the panini bar remained good as did the coffee, which, now in my teens and therefore able to enjoy, was ever reliable. I can still remember the place as it was, with wooden tables, an inconvenient and uncomfortable bar next to the coffee machine and the wonderful cakes at the pasticerria, right up until the end of first year uni, when they took over the crappy pizza restaurant next door and Johnny's green room upstairs. There had always been space issues. The place was packed every single day in the mornings and was only empty during week days in mid afternoon.
They spent months renovating, turning the place into what looked so enormous and monolithic that it was almost Freudian in its dimensions (I will refrain from jokes about Italian men and their mothers here). When it finally opened there was a sense of the bittersweet. Sweet, because it meant I could finally drink my coffee without the sound of a jackhammer in the background, bitter because I saw it as the inevitable decline of the place. Its sellout. Its appealing to the LCD. But I was wrong. And, at least momentarily, there was more space. But the "build it and they will come" phenomenon started and it filled up, making even this massive behemoth packed. Where did all these people come from? It didn't matter to me, I could still get my Crostata di patata and a damn fine latte. But I should have taken heed of the clientele.
I have absolutely no evidence for this, so forgive me if I'm wrong....but here is an anecdote to describe them... When I was in year eleven, I moved to a new school. I made friends with a wonderful bunch of people, many of whom I still see and am very close to. One of these friends was Italian. Well, his Dad was. Although, his dad couldn't speak Italian and had an accent so broad that it could rival Paul Hogan's. But at a certain point, my friend (perhaps in the midst of a teen identity crisis) decided that he was italian and should therefore adopt the Italo- Greek- Lebanese-Australo drawl... you know the one... alla Nick Giannopoulos and the crew from Acropolis Now, or Joe Dolce, that sketch from Fast Forward with the Lebanese guys in the car...only these are genuine representations of the migrant's child in Australia. My friend was a fraud. This kind of person. The kind with some vague connection to Italy, who jumps up and down at World Cup time pretending that they're actually Italian and not Australian, that in pronouncing Italian words with a rolled "R" believe themselves to be displaying their mastery of the language, who then pronounce bruschetta "brushedda". They have heard of La Dolce Vita but not Silvio Berlusconi, of Vespa but not Garibaldi (unless you intend to indicate a company which supplies a range of sub-standard smallgoods). This kind of person I call the fauxtalian. And yes, it was the fauxtalians that moved into Brunetti's in their droves. And yet, for four years, the standard remained the same. Top food. Good coffee. Inexpensive. Oddly, though, it suddenly started to slip... was it the fauxtalians? Did Brunetti's think they could finally turn a quick buck by selling out on quality? Whatever it was, it turned ugly.
The coffee became VERY inconsistent as a flood of new people appeared on the machine, until it finally became consistent again....consistently terrible! And the food too, pastries became limp and unflaky, panini became dull, using what I suspect is tasty cheese in lieu of the provolone from before and a giant chocolate fondue counter was set up! Waah? I began to go around the corner to Carlton Espresso Bar, where they serve a great little coffee and damn fine pizzas and panini like fare. But I felt like I was cheating. Sleeping with a younger, firmer and more attractive girl. So I went back last week. I wanted so hard for it to be good again.... we ordered 2 hot chocolates and two chocolate cannoli... and I knew we were in for disappointment when the hot chocolate arrived and the foam looked like pubic hair. It took me ten minutes to bring myself to have a sip without gagging and when I did it was soooo sweet. Now, lovers of a good hot chocolate know that for it to be good, it should be slightly bitter- so that you can taste the chocolate. All this thing tasted of was sugar. Revolting. And as for the canolli, the hitherto ever reliable Brunetti standby, the filling was over sweet, the pastry almost oily in its consistency.
Alas, as the demise of Brunetti's seems complete, I will continue to go to the Carlton Espresso Bar. It is a great place. But any true Italian would be equally sad at having to change their café due to a demise in quality. Indeed, it would not stand well at all. The problem that has emerged is that the changing clientele have demanded less and less in terms of quality, opting instead for being seen, for parading their children in the latest offerings from the Osh Kosh B'gosh catalogue and having loud conversations about their trips to Positano, the south of France and the "cute little" boutique hotels they stayed at. This same clientele will demand larger and larger serves at the expense of the quality which shrinks and shrinks and my moans of despair grow ever louder. I urge all and sundry to take arms against a sea of mediocrity and demand more from this hitherto glorious institution. Brunetti's fans of the world unite!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment