My Melbourne: Triple R’s Cam Smith on Where He Goes For Beautiful Food and Excellent Coffee

Cam Smith’s been hosting Eat It, a radio show about Melbourne’s food scene, since 1987. It’s aired weekly on Triple R, which is hosting its annual Radiothon fundraiser right now.

The veteran broadcaster and MFWF Legend has a wealth of memories and anecdotes about the industry – from insider observations to unforgettable experiences dining out around town.

Here, he shares the Acland Street institution he’d like a time machine to visit, a basement restaurant he misses, and his favourite eateries at the moment.

Hey Cam! Tell us a bit about yourself.
Although I’m not from here originally, I certainly regard Melbourne as my own city. When I was younger, I lived in a whole bunch of places. I was born in London, lived in New York and Montreal, and spent a bit of time in Sydney before I came to this town, and I adore this town.

What do you love about Melbourne?
First of all, the people that make this such a cultured city. Secondly, the seasons that we have – these beautifully defined seasons. The Hoddle Grid, as opposed to the chaos that is Sydney. But mostly, I love the city for all the great people that are working in hospitality … It’s one of the great food cities in the world, I think. There’s a relaxed, self-assuredness that characterises the hospitality scene in Melbourne.

Do you have a favourite restaurant right now?
Wow, does it have to be just one? I love Caterina’s because of her incredible specials, and I wanted to mention her because her restaurant’s been closed indefinitely following the flooding, although I think it’s set to reopen soon-ish.

I love DOC in Carlton – in autumn, sitting outside, eating a sensational bowl of pasta.

But I think my favourite restaurant has got to be Cicciolina on Acland Street. I’ve been eating there since it first opened in 1993. It’s just a beautiful, eclectic space with all of that beautiful art, and I’ve never, ever had a bad dish there.

Is there a now-closed restaurant you’d love to revisit?
One place I’d love to go back to is Izakaya Den. The chef was gonna come on the show, then he couldn’t because the restaurant was closing and I never got to do that. The food was so good. Basement restaurants are really hard anywhere, but to discover a hidden gem like that was great.

Another place I’d go back to is an institution that closed a while ago on Acland Street is Cafe Scheherazade, which was an epicentre for Holocaust survivors. You used to be able to get the most beautiful, clear chicken soup with dumplings called kreplach, served by these no-nonsense women. They didn’t mess around – beautiful schnitzels, great soups. It was an institution that sadly just ceased to be.

Where do you go for coffee?
There are two answers here. I love a little place in North Melbourne called Small Batch. First, it’s a roastery. I think roasting coffee is one of the greatest smells in the world. It’s such a small, independent place, and you’ll always get great coffee there. And maybe some of the greatest pastries in Melbourne.

And my second answer is the Sunday ritual of communing with the Triple R coffee machine with my producer, Matt Steadman. Pretty much every Sunday, we stand in front of this old coffee machine – I do the milk, he does the coffee – and it makes a pretty good coffee.

And drinks?
Whenever I want a drink and I want to go to a great bar, it’s going to be Gerald’s. I wish I was lucky enough to live in North Carlton and be able to call it my local. I think it’s one of the best bars in Melbourne.

Where do you go when you want to impress someone?
There are a couple of places. One is spectacularly unoriginal, but it’s got to be Lune on Rose Street, to show off what a sensational food city we are. It looks like a blacksmith’s shop outside, yet when you go inside, it looks like a Formula One garage with the sensational “cube”.

And 279. Great coffee, super relaxed, chill environment and Japanese food – musubi, tempura. Beautiful, beautiful food just on the outskirts of town. It’s an astounding place, and again, to me it’s an embodiment of Melbourne’s diversity and the harmony of the multicultural city we reside in.

What’s underrated in Melbourne?
One: the water. Straight from the tap. We have the most beautiful catchment areas, and we have an unbelievable water supply. Buying bottled water is one of the most ridiculous things you can do when the water you can pull from the tap is extraordinary.

Two: this is actually also water – but watching the sun set over the water from St Kilda. Being on the east coast, it’s one of the best places you can actually watch the sun set over water. That’s pretty special.

Who makes the city a better place?
Others who have chosen to make this city their home. A great example of that is Hamed Allahyari from Cafe Sunshine & Salamatea on Dickson Street, Sunshine. Here’s a man who escaped religious persecution in Iran and has endured so much hardship to now have this beautiful cafe with beautiful food, and he’s a really beautiful person himself.

Where do you go to escape the city?
The west coast. I was lucky enough to be working at Little Pickett with Jo Barrett in January, and my daily commute was half an hour’s drive through state forest, descending down from the plateaus, tumbling down through forest until I got to the Great Southern Ocean. It’s an extraordinary place – the waterfalls, forests and places around there. I love the west coast.

Is there an essential song, film or book about Melbourne?
There’s two things. One isn’t necessarily about Melbourne, but from a Melbourne son. Tim Rogers’s song, Heavy Heart.

I was trying to think of movies that personify Melbourne and the one that I thought of was this movie from 1990 called Death in Brunswick. It’s set in the Greek and Turkish community in Brunswick in the 1990s. Sam Neill gets a job as a cook, and he accidentally kills one of his coworkers and they have to dispose of the body. It’s very dark, very Melbourne, very northern suburbs pre-gentrification. It’s not the northern suburbs you’d know.

What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in Melbourne’s food and drink scene in the last 40 years?
The biggest change I’ve seen was the Nieuwenhuysen Report, which [led to] the liberalisation of the liquor laws. And this is one of the things that gives Melbourne such a defining difference compared with Sydney.

Also, the waves of new nationalities that have come into Melbourne … It’s the waves of multiculturalism that have contributed to a huge palette of food and offerings. Understanding of food becomes understanding of the people who serve it, and through that we become a better, more harmonious, multicultural metropolis.

Triple R’s Radiothon is on now until Wednesday September 25. You can subscribe and donate here.

@camsmith_eat_it

“My Melbourne” is a regular column about the places and spaces that entice Melbourne’s well-known residents.