Eating in Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road

Eating in Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road

April 17, 2012

Since arriving in Australia, we have seen that fried food is everywhere including fish & chips, hamburgers, and steaks. We have always tried to avoid too much fried food, but when on a trip, it is more difficult. We even found in Apollo Bay, a resort down along the Great Ocean Road, that when you actually order grilled you may get….. Here is the story.

During vacation along the Great Ocean Road for five days, on the first day I had deep-fried calamari with a shipload of chips (French fries in American English). Dinner was a pizza, of sorts, made with salsa. So on the next day in Apollo Bay, Yoko decided to break away from greasy food, or at least try. I was not so adventuresome, so the greasy food in my stomach was increasing the number of visits to the toilet for, shall we say, gas episodes. Why does grease increase my gas output? But that is the topic of a different story.

We walked into the restaurant and I ordered the scallops and then asked what they had to drink. The young employee, smiling says, “Look behind you.” There was a long six foot tall double row of coolers filled with soft drinks. Now, where did that come from?

The employee, whispered to Yoko, “They always do that?” I wonder if THEY means guys? Because we always do that. We can walk into a restaurant and see nothing but the employee in front of the register.

“What do you have?” and they point behind them to a whole wall listing at least 200 items on the menu. We say, “Oh, didn’t see that?” How can we not see that? And we keep doing it over and over. I did it at the pizza place and this fish and chips place.

I ordered the scallops and a 600 ml chocolate milk because I did not want to ask where the smaller size was. Of course, though not written the scallops will be deep-friend and include a shipload of chips.

Now it is Yoko’s turn and she has just watched me make a fool of myself. Actually, I did not make a fool of myself because I am too insentive to know when I have been made a fool of. Yoko would have to enlighten me, saying, “Scott, you just made a fool of yourself.” Even then my answer would be, “Huh.”  Yoko, however, wants ordering a meal to go smoothly without any cultural bumps, as she thinks I just rode over a big one. Yoko wants the “perfect” order. And she wants grilled fish, which is a forewarning to me, that the perfect order is in jeopardy. I have a feeling that in Australia “grilled” fish is just another way to say “deep fry it.”

At this point in our ordering, curiosity got the best of the employee and she had to ask, as many Australians do, “Where are you from?” I think this question comes because though I am a Caucasian American, as soon as I open my mouth, it is obvious I am not from Australia and Yoko’s English is pretty American, too. Sometimes we try complicated answers, such as, “My wife is from Japan, I am from America, and we live in Japan”, but today, with an eye on the perfect order, we kept it simple, “United States.” But the employee pushed the envelope and followed this with, “Where?” Again, a short question that leads to potential cultural bumps. Be careful of short answers! Being honest, I answered, “Michigan.” To which we received a blank stare. Yoko, trying to help added, “The five Great Lakes.” Silence. I popped in, widening the area, “In the middle of the U.S.” and got the reply of, “Oh.”

Enough about our background.

Unfortunately, this interlude also caused some stress on the part of the employee, as she had just gone through a cultural bump herself, not knowing what the heck we were talking about, though the conversation seemed to be, to her, kind of English.  A bad omen for Yoko’s quest for a perfect order.

  

Yoko moves forward with her order, still confident and positive, speaking slowly to reduce the possibility of being misinterpreted by the Australian employee saying, “I’ll take the grilled fish, please.”

Which is follow by silence? Like an enormous cultural bump building between Yoko and the female employee, who is waiting. But for what?

Then, “What kind?”

Yoko, “Grilled.”

“What kind?”

Yoko, losing some confidence, slowly repeats, “grilled”, enunciating very slowly.

I realize we have the beginning of a cultural bump here as the perfect order was disintegrating into a “my worst nightmare order.” I jump in and ask, with the perfect-order smile, “What do you have?”  I always ask this question when things do not look good or I do not know what the heck is going on. This question was very useful when first arriving in Australia and making a complex order of coffee. My short requests for “I’d like a coffee” were always, and I mean always, followed with “What kind?” For those of you who are not familiar with coffee in Australia, the kinds include long black, short and white flat. So “What do you have?” became a lifesaver.

The employee relieved, quickly, and I would saw at super Auzzie speed, delivers some words I do not understand: flakes, bassa, barramundi, adkjfkafiajfaesijfadf, and adkjfprfjeipjfpa. She is obviously relieved to be back in charge and having dispensed with that scary silence that had been present and building, like a cultural bump.

Yoko and I look at each other, as neither of us understands what she says. But I have to help Yoko save face, or what she has left of it. I ask my second most popular question when ordering food, “What do you suggest?”

Smiling, as this conversation style is fitting her expectations, the employee answers, “Flakie, is a local fish and adkfjak;f asdjfak;djfkadjfkajdfjadj.”

Yoko, trying to get some control back, says, “Flakie, please. And could I have a salad instead of chips?”

To our surprise, “Sure” sails back at us.

Yoko, then pushing her luck, or feeling more confident, I am not sure which, asks, “Can I have tea, too, please.”

Of course this was followed by the usual, “What kind?”

But we are ready for this one, as it is not new. This always follows, “Can I have tea?” Yoko, playing it safe, asks for English breakfast, which is available everywhere.

The ordering bump is over. Now we just have to wait for the result, like when you take a test in school and wait to see your score. We sat by the window to watch the people, mostly Chinese tourists, walk by and take photographs of everything, including us staring at them.

As we rested, getting over the cultural bumps in the now historical perfect order attempt, the food arrived. My four baseball-sized scallops, of which 3/4 was deep-fried batter and a 1/2 pound of deep-fried chips was placed in front of me. I could feel the grease already. Great, this will keep me going to the toilet for gas visits for a few more days.

As for Yoko, amongst all the small talk and quiz of WHATS, the word “grilled” got lost like a ship at sea. She got a deep-fried flakie, some kind of white fish it turns out, and a salad---covered in oil, to make up for the oily chips, I guess. Usually, she would have said something about the fish, but she accepted her fate of another oily supper. The dream of a perfect order is on hold for a while. And we learned an important lesson: if you want grilled, keep the employee focused and repeat “grilled” again and again and again. And then some more. It might work. But we would not know.