It was cold and the wind whipped and people on the street were bent over almost double just to make any headway.
I struggled on. Lunchtime is like that. It makes you persevere, otherwise you would fall by the wayside and starve.
I was back in St Kilda Road for a few nostalgic days, and it was lunchtime.
Bleak? St Kilda Road is always bleak. Always was. That gentle, gracious curve past the gardens and the Shrine and Domain Road and Toorak Road is the perfect wind tunnel. Whichever way it's blowing from.
Today it was blowing from the north-west. I struggled past the Willows (the Willows has been there forever but I have never known anyone to have eaten there - why?), made Leopold Street and stopped at the red light. Two haggard, bent men clutching coats to their bony frames had just finished crossing Leopold Street the other way and saw me, and a thin hand reached up from one of them and a quavery voice called out to me. Apart from the gauntness, they were just the same two I used to work with in the city.
We were out for lunch, they said. But there was nowhere to eat, they said.
It's your own fault, I told them. It was your choice to leave the CBD and take up a job in the vast frozen wilderness of St Kilda Road, I went on. You may as well be in the Tarkine, I added, just to be nasty. It was a nasty day.
It's not as if they didn't know. The last thing one of them very quietly confided to me before the two of them left the company was nothing to do with career matters; it was that he had a nagging sense that the few extra dollars in his pocket would not be enough to make up for missing lunch in the city.
Miss it? This pair had made an artform of city lunching. Each weekday saw them at not one, but at least two cafes. Sashi Don at Don Don followed by coffee and chocolate at Koko Black. Something at Vue de Monde cafe followed by short blacks at Nick's in Queen Street. Yum Cha off Little Bourke Street, then sacher biscuits and machiatos at Brunetti City Square. Something different every day followed by something different to follow. They were back into the office by 2.30 most days with a smirk on their faces.
What now? Ribs at Barbarino's? Something from 1983 at the Willows?
No. We had lunch together, just to catch up, at a windblown vestibule cafe at the base of a towering office block halfway down St Kilda Road. The wind picked up the leaves of our stock standard Caesar salads and threw them at passers-by.
I struggled on. Lunchtime is like that. It makes you persevere, otherwise you would fall by the wayside and starve.
I was back in St Kilda Road for a few nostalgic days, and it was lunchtime.
Bleak? St Kilda Road is always bleak. Always was. That gentle, gracious curve past the gardens and the Shrine and Domain Road and Toorak Road is the perfect wind tunnel. Whichever way it's blowing from.
Today it was blowing from the north-west. I struggled past the Willows (the Willows has been there forever but I have never known anyone to have eaten there - why?), made Leopold Street and stopped at the red light. Two haggard, bent men clutching coats to their bony frames had just finished crossing Leopold Street the other way and saw me, and a thin hand reached up from one of them and a quavery voice called out to me. Apart from the gauntness, they were just the same two I used to work with in the city.
We were out for lunch, they said. But there was nowhere to eat, they said.
It's your own fault, I told them. It was your choice to leave the CBD and take up a job in the vast frozen wilderness of St Kilda Road, I went on. You may as well be in the Tarkine, I added, just to be nasty. It was a nasty day.
It's not as if they didn't know. The last thing one of them very quietly confided to me before the two of them left the company was nothing to do with career matters; it was that he had a nagging sense that the few extra dollars in his pocket would not be enough to make up for missing lunch in the city.
Miss it? This pair had made an artform of city lunching. Each weekday saw them at not one, but at least two cafes. Sashi Don at Don Don followed by coffee and chocolate at Koko Black. Something at Vue de Monde cafe followed by short blacks at Nick's in Queen Street. Yum Cha off Little Bourke Street, then sacher biscuits and machiatos at Brunetti City Square. Something different every day followed by something different to follow. They were back into the office by 2.30 most days with a smirk on their faces.
What now? Ribs at Barbarino's? Something from 1983 at the Willows?
No. We had lunch together, just to catch up, at a windblown vestibule cafe at the base of a towering office block halfway down St Kilda Road. The wind picked up the leaves of our stock standard Caesar salads and threw them at passers-by.
Go down the backstreet that runs off Park Street paralell with Bullshit Boulevarde (AKA StK Rd) there is another Don Don there - same food - and even better try Peko Peko. Or get some frozen roti and dumplings from the Asian grocer and nuke them in the office. There's also an average Indian cheapie down there.
ReplyDeleteThe Olive Tree still does a mean steak, the Botanical is a sprint up Domain Rd and a tram ride gets you to Fitzroy Street or down Prahran way to pubs like the College Lawn.
Stickyfingers and Don Don to the rescue.
ReplyDeleteThank you - you just saved a bunch of St Kilda Road office workers from certain starvation. I have just flashed a mirror out my 16th floor window across the road to Fawkner Park where several are blundering around, lost.
(Unfortunately, the tram ride to Fitzroy/Acland Street is too slow to make a lunch trip worthwhile except on Fridays when no-one is back in the office before 3.30pm.)
No probs I consult to a few firms down that way. Peko Peko I did a post on it's Taiwanese and do great bento. Don Don is in Little Bank St, off Wells st and occasionally has a queue out the door for takeaway orders but turns people over fast.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall there's a decent cafe 2 doors down from the Clemenger building, it has a funky outdoor area serving moderately priced but decent tucker. I've heard that there's cheap and decent Indian with the bowels of 251 and the cafe under Justin Synman Bialek Architects in Coventry Street - around the corner from the Christian Reading room - is a nice venue for a rustic italian meal.
I've has some ok food at Dish at The Royce Hotel near Toorak Rd if you feel like rubbing shoulders with D Hinch and his South Yarra neighbours.
Stickfingers, in the old days before any of the new places it was either the sandwich bar in the 'mousehouse' at the back of the TAB building; or else we used to drive down to Barolo, Pinocchio's and similar places in Toorak Road. Don't even know if they are still there.
ReplyDelete