Maybe it was your mate’s wedding photo. Or the omakase restaurant review you bookmarked. Or the three-ingredient teriyaki recipe your uncle recently ‘discovered’. You’ve seen Harvard Wang at work. He’s a photographer, food writer, and recovering art director with bylines scattered across The New York Times, Gourmet Traveller, Broadsheet, and The Age Good Food Guide. His anti-cookbook cookbook, Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin was born from a Japanese curry recipe that went mildly viral during the sourdough era of lockdown.
His newsletter reads, he says, like a conversation overheard at the back of a mah-jong parlour – part confessional, part midlife crisis, barely enough recipes, riddled with typos, with the occasional detour to his wife’s hometown of Fukuoka, where he eats better than most, but somehow still complains.
My local is Ying Thai 2 along the Southeast Asian end of Lygon Street. I call in an order, press play on the rice cooker, and hobble across the street in my PJs and slippers, returning with a tight-knot plastic bag containing smoky tom yum, pandan-wrapped gai tod, fiery som tum, and stir-fried crab meat with yellow curry. They also do a proper pad Thai – with the dried shrimp and chai po. It has outlived relationships and the first Ying Thai itself. Divorce is easy; pad Thai is hard.
My favourite image or photograph of food and drink here is whatever Charlie Duffy decides to magic out of laminated dough this morning at Small Batch.
The best new thing I’ve found is xanthan gum. A pinch of nothing that binds your dressings, fluffs your breads (0.3 to 0.5 per cent is plenty), and thickens sauces without that chalky cornstarch aftertaste. It’s gluten-free, too, if you’re into that.
When I want to celebrate an occasion with a special meal, I ask my wife if she’d like a box of sushi from Uminono Prahran, or for me to make korokke, Japanese croquettes, contributing to the greasy yellow Rothko on our kitchen ceiling. My daughter inevitably interrupts, asking for spag bol.
When I want to show off the city to friends from out of town, I take them to Brunswick, where we begin with a za’atar and halloumi pie at A1 bakery. Then to Little Cardigan for their kaya shokupan toast set, because nothing says “Melbourne” quite like Singaporean breakfast filtered through third-wave baristas. We walk to Tofu Shoten, try to justify buying Minhi Park’s ceramic mug at Mr. Kitly, before looping back for a scoop at Luther’s. The climax is a hard choice between Malaysian roti/rice slop at Nasi Kandar Penang, or the Americana of Juanita’s. By then, I’m probably late for school pick-up.
But if we’re in the CBD, I take them to the Curtin House rooftop bar – ground zero of the city’s obsession over getting intoxicated at high altitude. A browse through Metropolis, Cookie on the way down, and a mandatory glance (and scoff) at the queue snaking from Bakemono to that Kardashian sisters’ graffiti. Lunch could be Shoya, Tipo 00, or Hong Kong Cafe, passport and wallet dependent. Dessert might be Chokolait in Royal Arcade, maybe Kori ice cream, and a final magic at Bench Coffee. By then, I’m definitely late for school pick-up.
My favourite place to load up on supplies is KT Mart for kimchi, mentaiko and the roasted seaweed called gim, Tang’s Emporium for wok-friendly everything, D&K Footscray for bougie instant noodles and rice koji (to make miso), Hinoki Pantry for regional soy sauce, Mediterranean Wholesalers for bulk pasta, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and Reggiano, and where I pretend to impress an imaginary Italian grandmother.
There’s no better value in the city than 4pm Sunday at Queen Victoria Market when everything has to go for TEN DOLLARS, TEN DOLLARS, EVERYTHING TEN DOLLARS.
And I wish more people would experience the excellence of owning a dish. Not just cooking it – owning it. Making your (or better yet, your family’s) favourite meal with your eyes closed and muscle memory. Simple stir-fry noodles. Mapo tofu. Rice from the donabe. Gyudon. Hand-pounded sambal. No scrolling, no “inspo”, no rules by strangers on the internet. Algorithms and delivery apps should not be dictating our eating habits. It’s your temple. Own it. One dish at a time.
My defining food moment in Melbourne was Chinatown, circa 2009 when Dainty Sichuan had sticky floors. Eating the violent la zi ji, then downing cold soy milk, was a realisation that spice can amplify sweetness – an epiphany on par with the hot-and-cold tea from The Fat Duck.
If there was one thing I could change about eating and drinking in Melbourne it would be fewer flashy fit-outs, fewer menus written by a Japanese thesaurus. More simple, good things that speak for themselves.
But the thing I hope never changes here is the tap water. Yes, the water. Melbourne’s soft water comes from protected mountain catchments, delivered by solid plumbing – the reason our coffee tastes better. Coffee is 99 per cent water, and bad water makes bad coffee, no matter how single the origin of your beans may be.
Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin (self-published, $37.50) is available online, at Readings, Books for Cooks, and selected Asian Grocery Stores. Subscribe to Harvard’s newsletter, his food tour, or hire him to shoot your next big thing here. He cooks and eats at @harvardwang