Aussie Lunch Break, French Breakdown

‘How’s work?’ friends of ours asked my French husband Maxime recently. ‘Is it much different working in Australia to Europe?’

'In Australia, work is very casual compared to Europe,' said Maxime. 'There are no formalities to follow. You can even swear!'

Maxime made a few observations of this nature. Then he suddenly announced that at work in Australia ‘no one has lunch.’

The friends looked puzzled. ‘No one eats lunch at your work?’

‘They DO have lunch,’ I qualified. ‘Just not one that counts to Maxime. They eat a sandwich at their desk.’

That is, Maxime’s co-workers ingest various coloured pastes on pre-sliced bread, including margarine which Maxime believes is toxic (and pronounces with a hard ‘g’ so it sounds like a variant of Margaret). All this is Not Food, hence these people do not have lunch.

‘It’s so depressing!’ Maxime sighed to the friends.

Not Lunch

Our friends were at a loss. After all they’d been ‘not having lunch’ themselves for years. I explained that in France, everyone from the babies at the crèches to the school kids at their school canteens to the grown-ups in their grown-up canteens expect three course, cooked lunches. Processed paste on bread at your desk is such a far cry from the convivial lunches with friends Maxime used to have in France that it’s more of a distant whimper.

Now that he works in Australia, every lunchtime, Maxime leaves his workplace to forage for ‘real’ food. But sadly, he’s in a part of Melbourne famous not so much for super gastronomy as for supermarkets. In desperation, he ends up buying tins of tuna from Woolworths. This is all the more upsetting for him since he knows what Melbourne can offer in terms of food:

Before he started his current job, Maxime would occasionally go on a trip into Melbourne to network. He always prepared these trips very carefully, spending the evening before researching diligently. In The Age Good Food Guide. He'd adored The Press Club and Vue de Monde. Then one lunchtime, he really outdid himself. He came home on the day in question bright eyed and flushed. He was raving even before he was through the front door:

‘I just had one of the best meals of my life!’ he exclaimed.

‘Did you?' I said. 'Great! Where did you go?’

‘I went to Shoya. It was amazing.’

‘Is that Japanese? What did you have?’ 

I sat down and settled myself in for a lengthy conversation, knowing Maxime was going to describe every bite, down to the last grain of sushi rice in intricate detail.

‘There was this fantastic dish – sashimi served in a spherical ice container. Their degustation menu was incredible,’ he said.

‘You took a degustation menu?’ I was surprised. Degustation menus are usually about five courses long. I’d feel silly eating a meal like that on my own. Even provided I could fit it all in ‘How many courses were there?’ I asked.

‘Fourteen.’

‘FOURTEEN?!’

Maxime looked a little sheepish. ‘They were only small courses.’

‘Hmm,’ I said, trying not to imagine what this all cost. Then, (not) thinking of cost, something occurred to me. ‘What did you drink?’ I asked, narrowing my eyes.

More sheepishness. Much more of this and Maxime would be starting to grow wool.

It turned out that he’d washed his little lunch down with most of a bottle of Mount Mary. He produced a mostly empty bottle with a glass’s worth left in it that he said he 'saved' for me - to placate me for the fact that he had just literally eaten a giant hole in our budget. Thus I learned that you let a Frenchman loose in Melbourne at your peril.

It was very lucky for our savings that Maxime started work not long after that. Now, alas, he no longer dines on spherical ice receptacles of sashimi, but spherical tin receptacles of tuna. And no wonder Australian work lunches make this grown frog cry.

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