My Heart is on The Dinner Table

This project began as an ode to the importance of dinner time; cataloguing  the meal time that the four of us share each night after our service at Fleet – Josh, Rob, Si and myself. We aren’t a family because we work together, we are a family because we eat together. We don’t just share a space at the table, we share the freedom of resting our aches after a long day. We share the aggravation, the joys, the delirious laughter. We add our own bit of soul, a touch of realism and plenty of heart. This is the most intimate seating we offer in the restaurant – our dinner.

 Words and photography by Olivia Evans @olivia_evans_

Saturday, 25 Jan 2020 – 2:25AM
Pho-reals, this is dinner tonight?
Beef stock, albacore, Vietnamese mint, holy basil, chilli, garlic, ginger, lime. 

I want to live in my bowl. I want to be a scuba diver in my bowl of Pho and never care to take another breath of anything other than this elixir that is nourishing my bones like it is in this moment. The boys are locked into a conversation about fishing for marlin. I’ve learnt a lot about marlin lately in ways that have seemed both euphonious and tedious. As fish go, they are some of the toughest in the sea and will put up a fight for hours when at threat of being caught. They are oceanic pelagic fish and potentially murderous when their sword-like bills get involved. Seems I was listening to more about the marlin than I let on. As my work big brother, I have to pretend that I’m not interested sometimes. I keep to my hot broth of heaven. A scraggly dressed man walks past as we are slurping. Nightlife is rare in our quiet town, but never boring. 

“Hey, is this your guys’ house?”

“Nah mate, this is a restaurant.” 

Yet I thought, actually …

Thursday, 8 Feb 2020 – 12:16AM
Maryland night!
Without failure we have Maryland chicken once a fortnight. I can’t comprehend why it’s an inexpensive cut at the butcher when it has all of the best bits; bones, high skin to flesh ratio, fatty thighs. In Australia, the name Maryland is used to define the cut but the name is actually derived from a historic dish associated with the US state of Maryland. Tonight, Josh cooked ours skin side down on the pan and then finished in the oven. The sauce was made with anchovy, thyme and, wait for it … beef stock. Deliciously viscous fat, salt and vinegar poured over crispy skin chicken with juicy flesh. I always have one, the boys have two. We call it the Auntie-Livia portion. Alongside it we had shredded sugarloaf cabbage and kale dressed with savoury yeast dressing. Eating meat off the bone with bare hands is at the top of my list as one of life’s true pleasures. 

Sunday, 9 Feb 2020 – 11:00AM
You guys should open for breakfast …
I left the house this morning with my eyelids only partly peeled open. Sunday is an early start for us. We finish service late on Saturday so my choice between a bit more sleep or finding time for food on a Sunday morning is a compromising argument. Needless to say, I was hardly expecting to be welcomed by a giant pan being flipped over onto Rob’s bar-side chopping board revealing a spaghetti-bloody-frittata for breakfast! This is what happened; leftover egg whites from making ice-cream and leftover egg yolks from making meringue were reunited like separated lovers. They cooked into clouds held together by a scaffold of leftover spaghetti and a perfect overdose of pepper. There were bits of spaghetti that escaped from the surface that became slightly singed and crunchy. It was cacio e pepe frittata and I don’t know how this Sunday would have gone had it not existed. 

Sunday, 23 Feb 2020 – 8:05PM 
Sanga Sunday.
Every Sunday from the moment the last guest leaves, and sometimes even before, the oil is warming on the stove. Within minutes we each have a freshly fried veal sweetbread schnitty and a glass of whichever fizz is open. If it’s Champagne, we naturally start there. We toast to the beginning of our weekend. Sometimes I wonder how we managed to pull off another week. We never say it, but I know we stand unified in feeling that we have accomplished something. The sanga enables that brief yet modest relief. It’s the exclamation of reward, the symbolic pat on the back, the fried and salty comfort. The anchovy, parsley and mustard mayo dollops the floor between our feet, unless you’re the one smart enough to eat over the bin. Simultaneous chewing and heavy breathing prevails.

Saturday, 29 Feb 2020 – 12:45AM
A succulent Chinese meal.
I can’t actually tell you what goes into Josh’s fried rice, but it is his speciality and it features on our dinner plates once a week.

There are spices that dress the rice which I know only as an orchestra of aromatics and heat. He always makes an omelette that gets chopped and mixed through the fluffy rice. Tonight the eggs were whipped with crustacean oil. The depth of flavour in that oil glorifies any food which it drenches so you can only imagine what the concentrated crustacean character does when wedded with eggs. Bits of fresh zucchini, or courgette, as Rob likes to say in an overtly pronounced accent (knowing that it will elicit giggles from me). It’s his “favourite vegetable in the whole wide world”. This fried rice made me forget about everything except how to use my spoon. 

Thursday, 5 March 2020 – 11:30PM 
Ramen ft. Daiki-San or Japanese Spaghetti according to Chef.
May I have the pleasure of introducing you to Daiki-San. He works at Fleet on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Daiki-San is a legend and tonight he brought his Japanese mastery to our faces as they hung low in our bowls of chicken ramen. He has been using our staff dinner as an opportunity to practise his ramen and I speak for all of us when I say nothing but a simple … yes. The stock included dried anchovy, shiitake mushrooms and a salty sauce called Tare that is used to add a complex combination of flavours. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, sneaky Daiki. I wouldn’t want him to anyway. Daiki will be a famous ramen chef in Australia one day. I tell him this all the time and he modestly chuckles. Too modestly. He is a genius. 

Saturday, 7 March 2020 – 11:40PM 
That’s Amore! Or Italian Ramen according to Chef.
When I saw the beef mince coming out of the Kitchen Aid, I wondered if Josh was working on a new dish. Later, during the fleeting 60 seconds he had free during service, I saw him rolling the mince into balls and I realised, “Holy shit, these are for us!”.  Sometimes I get so excited about staff meals I think that I physically cannot wait any longer for it to be ready. We ate spaghetti and meatballs in Pomodoro sauce with fresh parsley. Dean Martin serenaded us on the speaker while we indulged and talked about the lyrics from “On top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese …”. In that moment we are happy and joyous. It felt like dinner was a song and I was singing.

Saturday, 21 March 2020 – 1:18PM
A snack for morale with a side of sanitiser.
It is 1:18PM on a Saturday afternoon. We have never had a staff meal at this time before, unheard of in fact. Less than two hours before service means heads down. I’m forced to refocus my eyes as I realise that Josh has landed a plate of food right next to where I’m folding menus. A dishing of leftovers from last night’s fried rice topped with a freshly fried egg (double eggs, always a good thing). We are eating at this hour because I don’t think anyone has actually thought to eat anything yet. We are all shaky and nervous. We have no idea that tomorrow we will be advised that, nationwide, restaurants are to shut down for the foreseeable future. I washed my hands for what feels like the one hundred and forty-sixth time this hour and dry them on the limp, overused hand towel. Being given a snack at that moment was like a life raft in the ocean. Not certain to save you, but at least offer a breather. All the while your legs tread furiously under water. 

Sunday, 22 March 2020 – 9:05PM 
The last one for a while.
Astrid and Isla came in to have dinner with us tonight so that we could all be together. It helped to share the weight of uncertainty. But were we even hungry again yet?

We were. 

“So chef?” as I ask each night to take notes of the meal. I feel comforted by the familiarity of this situation and yet devastated that we won’t sit and talk like this for a length of time none of us care to think about. These dinners are the dependable spirit of our work life. It’s our fresh air, our nourishment, our time to be together. 

“So chef, what is it?”

“This is everything we have …plus a piece of fish”.