Smashed Down Under Pt 1: Getting there

or How Not to Write a Travel Feature

Sydney Opera House as viewed from Hickson Road Reserve, by the author.

I’m writing this on day 16 of our family holiday in Australia. I have become disconnected from normal life and work, having spent so many days exploring city streets and neighbourhoods, markets, sightseeing, enjoying museums, exhibitions, music, comedy and dance, and, of course, eating and drinking. I was told a long time ago by an experienced travel writer that a travel feature should never just be ‘what we did on our holidays’, but I am so out of practice writing at the moment that the only way I’m going to get anything out to you in a newsletter is to do just that and just tell you what we’ve been up to. As this is a family holiday and not a business trip, we paid for everything ourselves, so there are no freebies or sponsored content of any kind in these reports.

Spoiler alert: Australia is amazing and I would highly recommend visiting if you haven’t been. The weather has been wonderful, the locals are extraordinarily lovely and the food and drink has been knock out. Mullet watch has also been very successful with Melbourne just edging Sydney in both number and immoderation of style. We’ve divided our time between Sydney and Melbourne with a day out in wine country in the Yarra valley. Later this week, we also have a trip to Birregurra, about an hour west of Melbourne to eat and stay at Brae restaurant, and to Lorne on the Great Ocean Road where my son is head chef at Totti’s Lorne. So it’s a limited snapshot of an enourmous country and we’re not doing the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru or the outback, although we have seen some kangaroos in the wild (well, on a golf course actually).

I prepared for the trip by creating a spreadsheet based on the recommendations in Terry Durack’s substack posts and on Nigella Lawson’s Instagram feed (she spent a number of weeks in Australia earlier this year). I also trawled through the latest Australia Good Food Guide Awards and subscribed to The Sydney Morning Herald to read their restaurant reviews. It’s such a long way to come that I didn’t want to waste single meal. It hasn’t quite turned out that way but we have nevetheless eaten extremely well for about 90 per cent of the time (so far). Anyone with a good knowledge of the restaurant scenes in Sydney and Melbourne will not be surprised by the places we’ve eaten in so I can’t claim any great ‘discoveries’ but I hope you will enjoy reading about where we’ve been.

This first edition of Smashed Down Under is based on some notes I made on the flight over as downtime for writing since we’ve landed has been extremely limited. Over the next couple of newsletters, I’ll be writing about meals at Margaret, AP Bakery, Bessies, Gilda, Icebergs Bar and The Tilbury in Sydney and Harriot, MoVida Aqui, Chin Chin and Myrtle in Melbourne among many others, but in the meantime, here what happened on the flight over.

We flew Singapore Airlines Business Class from Gatwick to Sydney with a 50-minute stopover in Singapore. The first leg was a bit of a mixed bag. Things got off to an excellent start with very large and comfortable seats and plenty of storage space. I didn’t take any pictures of the seat but you can see what it’s like here. The downside to the current Singapore seat on the Airbus A350-900 is that it lacks a privacy door, and when converted into a bed, you have to lie diagonally with your legs squeezed into a corner void. It didn’t look like a comfortable option, so I just reclined the seat for the flight. Champagne was served before and after takeoff. The first food to be served was the famous Singapore Airlines chicken satay with peanut sauce, which was absolutely delicious and the best thing the entire flight. We have subsequently had better in Melbourne, but more of that in a future instalment.

Singapore Airlines’ famous satay.

The timing of the meals was odd and exacerbated by a problem with the chillers onboard. Lunch arrived at about 11 am UK time, before my appetite had really kicked in. The starter, created by Monica Galetti, was ‘marinated Yellowfin tuna in coconut cream with lemon, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, chilli, pepper, salmon roe, Oka and shiso and coriander cress. I quite liked it; it was nicely seasoned. It came with a selection of breads, I had the garlic bread and a pretzel roll, which were ok.

Yellowfin tuna starter and bread selection, Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines offer a Book the Cook service where you can order alternative dishes online before you fly. My choice of short rib was not great. The meat lack flavoured and came with watery cauliflower and very bland mac and cheese topped with pomegranate seeds for some unknown reason. There was some chopped kale running through it, which was a nice idea and one that I will nick for the next time I make mac and cheese at home.

This weird short rib dish could be yours for just several thousand pounds on Singapore Airlines

Dessert was a very good dark chocolate creameaux with a whipped vanilla mascarpone and a salted caramel. There was also a few pieces of hazelnut and ginger biscuit crumble. It was very good. I had a glass of Macon Lugny Louis Latour 2022 which was OK and some coffee and water. No further booze was offered although I could have asked for some, I’m sure.

‘Breakfast’ appeared at about 4.30pm which was a ridiculous time to serve it, but they had a problem with the chillers remember so that had to get it down our necks before it spoiled. Just what you want from Business Class. The service started with drinks. No alcohol was offered even though it was just the right time for a pint. A fruit plate with a slice of orange, watermelon, honeydew melon, pineapple and grapes appeared. The pineapple was by far the best thing on the plate. They offered breakfast pasties but as I was about to eat some prawn dumpling noodle soup, I refused. The soup was excellent and I’m glad I ordered it rather than a frittata or banana bricoche because at least it felt like the early dinner it was and not a madly premature breakfast.

Prawn dumpling soup. A bit more like it.

They came round with a basket of snacks at about 7pm, but no other refreshments were offered at all until the flight landed in Singapore at 10.15 pm UK time and 6.15am local time. The in-flight entertainment is basically pants and doesn’t feature the latest Hollywood blockbusters (I gave Top Gun: Maverick and Superman a go but both were shit. I’m sorry, but David Corenswet is just not Superman. I did however, highly enjoy watching some episodes of Morimoto’s Sushi Master. I’ve been a fan of chef Masaharu Morimoto since his appearance in the late 90s on the original Japanese version of Iron Chef and subsequently the US remake. He is a proper legend.

We had a frantic 25 minutes or so rushing from terminal to terminal in Singapore airport for the final leg of the flight. As it was a morning flight, no champagne was on offer, but there was more satay. Singapore carrot cake, a ‘hearty traditional dish of fried savoury radish rice flour cake with chopped garlic, pickled turnip, eggs, and prawns served with sambal chilli sauce’ made for an ace breakfast.

Carrot cake. Cream cheese icing not pictured.

More satay was followed by an OK plate of seared tuna loin with quinoa, edamame and pomegranate with citrus vinaigrette and romaine lettuce (just OK) and then an Indonesian-style chicken biryani from Book the Cook - enjoyable if not mind-blowing. A glass of wine was offered but it was too early/late in the day for alcohol, so I passed on it but a very superior chocolate Viennetta brought a smile to my face. More Morimoto and a couple of chapters of Hit List by Lawrence Block on Kindle passed the time. In total, I managed less than two hours sleep over the 24-hour travel time, which would turn out to have some impact early in the holiday, but overall, it was a very good experience.

Tuna and biriyani

We landed in Sydney at around 6 pm local time and transferred to our apartment in the Central Business District (CBD). We had decided to have an early night so a restaurant was not on the cards but sudden hunger pangs, tiredness and an unfamiliarity with the local area meant that some very bad KFC was our first meal in Australia. Let me tell you, KFC do not know how to make banh mi. Our first meal proper also turned out to be a bit of a disaster, too, but you’ll have to wait until part two to find out where and why.