Bite-size Stories

The sun loves Melbourne. In summer it is a harsh and demanding lover, but in autumn, its tender light spills gold from the trees, leaving the town half-naked for winter. I am off to Sahara, Melbourne in autumn, dressed as Morocco. Melbourne in autumn. A narrow stairway leads to a room scented with spice, warm with Moroccan charm. Tagine, kofta, wine. We talk of life, faraway places, the past and the future. The wide window lets autumn in. Faces, food, and stories steep in Moroccan spices, glowing in golden light. Autumn sun loves Melbourne the most.

This story is not about how we met at +39 Pizza Bar on a bustling Melbourne laneway for the love of pizza. It is not about how too much food was ordered. Food restraint is not my forte. This time I blame it on the Italian accent—perhaps rehearsed, but still, not helpful when it comes to saying no to a plate of bruschetta. Neither is this a story about the bottle of red we shared. I am not even going to mention how it had a grape-stomping party in my head the morning after. This is a short story about moments of life, little stills stitched together by the thread of time. Moments like these are the brightest threads in that thick, strangely cut fabric.

Italians grew up with ai frutti di mare ; the French with boeuf bourguignon . My Iron Curtain childhood is personified by Herring in a Fur Coat — a pickled herring dressed in seven layers of pungent veggie swagger. Nothing captures the kitsch of Soviet life — the outrageously tacky, overdone aesthetic — better than this playful dish. Its taste and colour stood in stark contradiction to the drabness of daily life. Naively optimistic, desperate to inject brightness into the shadeless Soviet grey, people served this magenta salad as the centrepiece of any gathering or celebration. The Empire may be gone, but this souvenir from the Motherland endures. From communal flats in Kyiv and Moscow to New York, Melbourne, and Monte Carlo — where the people go, Herring in a Fur Coat goes too. It doesn't sound promising. Pickled herring layered with onion and dill beneath grated beetroot, potato, carrot, egg, and homemade mayonnaise shouldn't work. Yet somehow it does. It's earthy, salty,...

Tuesday mornings don’t usually sound like freshly made raspberry slice and mulled wine. They sound like City-bound trains, spilling colorful crowds into Melbourne’s narrow alleyways, cubicles, and paper jams. Yet when the good things arrive, even in small batches, they sound like coriander-spiced falafels, buoyant poached eggs, warm corn and black bean fritters, and apple juice. At Hawk & Hunter Small Batch, mulled wine in hand, I watch the trains inhale the crowds while my morning hums like a raspberry slice.

You kept asking me why I want to go. You’d say I always leave you, and I’d remind you: I always come back. I will come back again. I just have to go and see where the Champs-Élysées flows into the Arc de Triomphe, and sit under the chestnut tree. When I return, I’ll bring you all my stories and we’ll laugh together. You know me - such a tragic case, always stumbling into ridiculous situations, unprepared, naive, childlike. Maybe that’s the reason I go: to travel, to learn, perhaps even to grow up. When I return, I’ll bring gifts from rolling lavender fields and the Côte d’Azur. My skin will still carry the salty sea air and the taste of wine baths. My stories will be sweet and cheesy. French stories always are - pastry stories, golden with butter and dipped in chocolate mousse. There will be wine too, in glasses, bottles, and barrels. And a bottle for you and me will go so well with the sweet and cheesy.

I don’t do attachments when it comes to gastronomy. It’s hard to know what makes it work sometimes. I’ve tried them all: Mediterranean - charming, but a little too self-absorbed. Asian - endlessly exotic, but too much mystery. French - definitely some sparks, but once you’ve had it, you know what to expect. With the Mexican, though, the connection was instant. Complex yet relaxed, never revealing its secrets, always leaving me hungry for more.

For most, it’s just an odd-looking beetroot soup. For me, it’s much more than that. Kiev - the old town perched high on its steep hills, clasped by the river. In summer, its narrow streets are drenched in lilac and chestnut blossom, generous under the sun. In winter, snow falls in heavy flakes, turning the city shiny, grim, and mysterious in the dark. Kiev is grandma’s borsch. Flushed pink and pungent, impossible to forget, impossible not to return to. At twenty-three, I crossed Australian border security with two hundred dollars, a suitcase, a new husband, and a baby bump. Who needs more to start a life? What I didn’t know was that beetroot soup came too, undeclared. It was the most important of all possessions. Decades later, it still is. Because the most important possession is who you are.