One of my favourite columnists in “The Australian” is demographer Bernard Salt.   Many of his articles are based on observations and analysis of Australian census data, and you can tell which section of the recent census he’s been analysing.  Other articles are on his interesting observations of collective human behavior and social trends in modern Australia; and a recent article on restaurant menus contends that the social aspirations of its clients are reflected in menu’s style.  Although published last month, somehow I missed it and only read it just recently, as it happens just after my first experience with a restaurant menu on a digital tablet.   After being seated at a restaurant table, we were each handed a small iPad – a tablet I guess, I’m a bit behind in the technology department, a late adopter you might say.  Anyway the whole menu was on it!  Bernard would have loved how it took social pretension to a rather more sophisticated level.  You could select whatever language you wanted – and as Australians and Brasilians were present, and all speak at least some Spanish, we agreet to have the waiter give the nightly specials in that.

As a late IT adopter, I had to be shown how to select a menu section of an item from a group, click twice and then scroll from side to side, but I got the hang of it easily enough.   Each menu item was photographed in colour with descriptions in Spanish and the chosen alternative language.  I noticed the photos really matched up very well with what we each received on our plates.  Great use of technology.   One thing I did find a little unsettling was that you couldn’t run your eye down the whole menu and get a feel for the total offering that night; there was no little ‘specials tonight’ slip tucked somewhere to let us know that the chef found particular foods either great quality of great value at that morning’s markets…

The restaurant not being very close to where we live, we hadn’t been there in a year or more, despite the interesting blend of European and Asian cuisines with lots of herbs and spices,  creative presentation and good value.  The owner-chef’s a creative man indeed – a Uruguayan returned home, bringing  influences from his world travels with him.  It’s a nice alternative to the most common menu of parilla, the marvelous bbq-d meat found everywhere in this part of the world.  The Uruguayan national palette is very bland, so although the food is nearly always tender and  wholesome, it’s never spicy, hot or creatively assembled on the plate.  Typical Uruguayan restaurant menus are gradually including or even giving way to creative changes, exactly equal to changes in dining out when I was a young thing: we were usually offered soup of the day, roast of the day, followed by jelly and icecream or tinned fruit salad and cream. (it was Tasmania in the mid ’60’s, after all)  Australian restaurant far and indeed peope’s home cooking is very interesting these days.

  A really delicious little cup of soup was a starter we all had – pumpkin with onion prolly, definitely banana, ground fresh ginger, and, um, not sure what else  – I have no recipe to pass on, just a nice idea, but I’m sure you can google something like it and experiment with the flavours.  We’ve managed to produce something like it here at home.