Tannic Teeth

If Chairman Mao were alive he’d like Kitsch Bar.

It might have been for the oriental beauties stoically smiling in the tawdry beer adds that canvas the walls. Or the palm-sugar-and-fish-sauce wafts emanating from the kitchen. One thing I’m sure, he would have agreed on though:

Kitsch can do good noodles. With somewhat Asian frugality.

My antennae for a meal was prompted by a friend who suggested to try the “pad thai and chang” night on a Tuesday.

Sure, $19.20 was a reasonable price to pay considering the location, besides, not having to find your way through an Asian enclave forfeits price for convenience.

For a Tuesday night, perhaps under the allure of the “pad thai and chang”, Kitsch was bopping along. A personable waitstaff greeted, spieled and serviced us with a less austere nature than most traditionally run Asian eateries. That I suppose is a bonus.

How was the Chang and the dimpled beer glass? Solidly good.

How was the pad thai? Damn good.

The complexity of flavour was like the yin and the yang. Spot on. Peanuts, beansprout, shrimp, fish sauce and lime juice all in direct quantities. The serving bowl is as authentic as the rickety wooden chair we sat on.

Though the noodles were gluggy in consistency, unlacing them with a fork was a feeble business—chopsticks would have been the perfect dining implement. I was actually surprised they didn’t have any upon request.

Strange huh?

Kitsch Bar has an Asian resort meets shabby chic meets post WWII prosperity feel to it.

The menu is neat and well thought through with the pad thai being as real-deal without the need to buy an air ticket. South East Asia is the Kitsch’s focus and street food what they wish to evoke.

Now if only they were at street food prices.

For those of us who have grown up under the southern sun with parents who were immigrants will know what I mean when I say culture clash. There is something perturbing and possibly deeply traumatic about upping sticks and settling down in a foreign country. Especially when English is not the spoken language ‘back home’.

Alice Pung’s account of her parents struggle to adapt to Australian way of life from South East Asia is particularly poignant. Well for me anyways as my parents are from that landmass but further east, that is, Burma. It deals with the expectations put upon the generation of children by their parents to become doctors, lawyers and engineers. The auspiciousness and prestige when they can say their child is a doctor, thus increase the auspiciousness and prestige marrying you off. Say nothing of the arts or farming. For they are the realms of the esoteric and serfdom.

It’s a huge theme and complimentary to that, the questioning of what is means to be ‘Australian’. Flag-wavers love to throw around the word ‘UnAustralian’. What does that mean? Do you discard your (Asian or whatever) culture, and assimilate into Australian society? How far can this envelope be pushed before it becomes something it’s not? Before something breaks?  The word assimilate itself has an undercurrent of a forced existence. Force against force negates itself. Cronulla riots of 2005 was case in point.

An interesting read. Funny at times, plyably frustrating at others, and in my view I’d call it  NuAustralian.