Melbourne's tasty melting pot

Lygon Street, by Michael Harden

Louise Johnson

Lygon Street by Michael Harden [©Murdoch Books]

Lygon Street is famous for great Italian food, amazing European produce stores, iconic red and white table cloths and fervent waiters touting for dinners among the crowds that stroll along the street each evening hunting for the best deal.

There’s also an underlying current of danger. The area has a reputation as a hangout for the organised crime gangs of Melbourne, making headlines when Andrew Veniamin, known as “the black prince of Lygon  St”, was shot and killed at La Porcella, a pizza restaurant on nearby Rathdowne Street.

I’ve spent many nights wandering past the restaurants, brokering deals of free bottles of wine with waiters only to be rushed through a meal so my seat can be refilled. The experience is great – lively, busy, invigorating – and the food is almost always amazing (not always so with the free wine).

I love Lygon Street during the day too. The shopping is great and dining is much less frenzied at lunchtime. I often take out of town visitors there, braving the crowds and push-and-shove for coffee and amazing cakes at Brunetti’s, exploring the shelves of Enoteca Sileno or praying for a spare table at Lebanese dining mecca Abla.

Lygon Street is often dismissed as a tourist trap, but it’s a great Melbourne experience. I was surprised to discover the history and colour of the street. In Lygon St. Stories and Recipes from Melbourne’s Melting Pot author Michael Harden traces the history of the street, which has over the years been home to thriving communities of Jewish, Greek, Lebanese, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, German, Thai, Jamaican and Malaysian immigrants – a real cultural melting pot, and a relatively harmonious one.  These histories and the majority Anglo-Irish residents of the area have been commonly overshadowed by the street’s reputation for great, authentic Italian home-style cooking.

Among achievements for the street, Harden lists the first espresso machine, the first pizza house, the first stockiest of extra virgin olive oil and fresh mozzarella cheese. Great Aussie chefs such as Tony Bilsen and Stephanie Alexander honed their skills here. But beyond food it is also home to the oldest continuously operating trade union headquarters in the world, the birthplace of the Australian Labor Party and was a world centre for Yiddish theatre in the 1930s and 40s.

For wine lovers, there's a great potted history of the legendary Jimmy Watson’s Wine Bar, which opened in 1935 with a colonial wine bar license that meant he could sell Australian wine and nothing else. Wine bars were considered “low life dens of iniquity, especially at six o’clock closing time when glaze-eyed drunks were shoved out onto the street.”

But Watson changed the wine bar scene, working around the early closing laws, encouraging punters to try good Australian table wine as well as the more acceptable fortifieds, organizing day trips out into wine regions and bringing winemakers in to talk to his customers. Visionary for the time, but common practice in wine bars today.

Recipes from the Jewish, Spanish, Jamaican and, of course, Italian residents are scattered throughout the pages reflecting the diversity of tastes. The photography is amazing and captures the essence of the area. Missing perhaps is a map showing the landmarks and developments on the street, though that perhaps crosses the line of catering to that tourist-trap rather than presenting a serious historical view of an amazing part of Melbourne culture.

Lygon St. Stories and Recipes from Melbourne’s Melting Pot by Michael Harden is published by Murdoch Books, November 2008, RRP A$59.95.  VisitVineyards.com Members and subscribers can purchase Lygon Street from our online book partner Seekbooks at 12.5 percent discount off the recommended retail price.


 

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• Melbourne (VIC)

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