Blog #2 - Brunswick St Foodscape.
Walk along Brunswick Street with a Spanish or Italian craving and you won't find yourself hungry for long. The street in Fitzroy has an abundance of Spanish / Italian restaurants each with their own unique take on the original cuisine.
Finding good food on this street is easy, finding authentic food however is blurry line leading down a rabbit hole.
Starting on the south side, we visited Naked for Satan, a "Basque" pinxtos bar. Talking to the owners we found that the bar has stopped selling anything Basque related and only kept the essence of the small share style plates, which regardless have more in common with Spanish tapas than pinxtos (requires bread and a toothpick). Beautifully red decorated Kanela bar oozes in Spanish authenticity yet the Madrid born chef confessed to adding chorizo to her paella to appeal to a Melbourne clientele, something that is otherwise known as a sin in Spain. Spelt pizzeria Farro offers a truly authentic Italian experience with imported Italian ingredients and regional specials yet uses a French developed recipe by the French owners for their spelt dough.
As we travel further north along Brunswick St we find an authentic New-York pizzeria; a 1980's Italian Trattoria steeped in tradition while simultaneously offering French breakfasts and English muffins; Il Melograno, a gelato store with nothing Italian about it bar its name; Bontempo, an open space modern restaurant appealing both to authentic Italian traditions and ingredients while offering 'Mexican' and 'Fitzroy' pizza and pasta with avocado??!
Some of the restaurants are clearly appropriating and using perceived authenticity as a marketing and clientele strategy, while others such as Mario's are proud of the evolution they have taken, even if it has driven them to a blurred area of authenticity. While some clearly classify nodes into levels of authenticity, even as far as calling Naked for Satan a true modern "Basque" bar, actually delving further into each node discloses that defining authenticity is virtually impossible.
Authenticity, as seen in the Fugazza blog is complicated; is an Italian man creating something in Buenos Aires considered more authentically Italian than a French man creating something in Italy? The earth doesn't create borders, humans do, and we love to do it. Brunswick Street and Fitzroy is a blurry mixture of cultures, having received multiple waves of immigration from earlier Italian migrants to asian. The fact is that the suburb itself answers the question of what we will find in its restaurants: an authenticity that cannot be defined, and it doesn't care to either, because the only defining factor is that the food will please you anyway.
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