FUNK FISH

Federation Square
Melbourne CBD

Several decades ago, in the midst of some deluded fiscal madness, I opened a New York style restaurant in Melbourne and called it Sardi’s – as a tribute to the great and famous show biz restaurant on Broadway in New York.

To add to the show biz theme I even managed to get Bette Midler to come to Little Collins Street and open it for me. She came for forty minutes and stayed for five hours getting pissed with me and Molly Meldrum and John-Michael Howson.

Owning a restaurant was an awesome and financially crippling experience – especially when your real job is in media and you are not always there to keep your eye on the cash register. Not there to see exactly what is going in, but more importantly, what is going out.

But there were other crises apart from financial ones. One day, after I got off air on 3AW and before I flew to Sydney to fill in for Mike Willesee that night on TV, I “swung by” Sardi’s for a quick, quality control, lunch.

I noticed that there were no salt shakers on the tables, mine or anybody’s, and pointed it out to the gay maitre’d. He airily informed me that he and the chef had decided that the precious dishes on our menu should not be polluted with salt. The salt shakers had been banished to a place more remote than the salt mines of Siberia!

I made the point, as subtly as possible, that if people were paying a heap of money to eat in my restaurant and they liked salt on their steak, or ketchup on their eggs, or mustard on their ice cream, they were entitled to have access to it.

It was worse than telling diners that “we only serve steak rare”. And the salt shakers returned.

That story flooded back recently when I had dinner at the newest, hottest, fish restaurant in Melbourne. At Funk Fish at Federation Square they have been “frying high” as one newspaper headline writer wrote.

The Herald Sun sent a dedicated foodie out to find the best, crispy, battered, fish and chips in town. And Michele Curtis came up with a list of the best 16 fish and chip shops in Melbourne and country Victoria.

The over-all winner: Funk Fish in Federation Square.

And having read that I went there to this “hole in the wall” city fish shop and enjoyed it.

They have beautiful, light-battered, Dory and King George Whiting. And crunchy chips.

You can get more exotic if you like. They have things like Barramundi baked in foil with lemon myrtle and BBQ Trevally fillets with Spanish onions and, I think, an apple salsa.

There’s also a couple of chicken and veal dishes – but why would you bother in a fish restaurant?

And then they lost me. A reminder of the SSS -- the Sardi’s Salt Saga – hit the table.

We ordered bread and some fresh rolls appeared on the table. There was no butter or dipping oil.

My dining partner asked for some and was told: “We don’t serve butter or oil with our bread”. Virtually said “our bread is that good without it”.

Now, I don’t ever put butter on bread as part of my diet. I only have salt and sugar in my house for guests. Never use it. But it is a matter of choice. A courtesy to a guest.

And when you are charging $23.50 for a main course of fish and chips, no matter how good it is, then the customer is entitled to have butter or olive oil or balsamic vinegar on their bread roll.

I left Funk Fish with my lunch partner in a funk and I wondered if my old maitre d’ from Sardi’s had come back to haunt me.

February 12, 2004