Canberra 1989

One of the major critiques made of the enlightenment, and subsequently modernity, is that "progress" can be a funny thing. What may seem to be liberatory may simply turn out to be a new prison. What does this have to with eating in Canberra - we can't quite put our fingers on it, but maybe call it a vibe...

We've been recently reading through an old Lonely Planet guide to Australia from 1989, back when Hawke was PM, and locally, the Raiders used to win things. Heady times indeed.

Anyway, along with suggesting that you might go see a cultural institution or two, the book inevitably also recommends places to eat and drink - and on the whole, Canberra doesn't sound all that bad, especially in the context of the frequent contention made in food pages and food shows that we - middle-class consumers - are now all so much more sophisticated these days. To oversimplify the stock story, over the last two or three decades, middle Australia has been allegedly led, by courageous pioneer figures (usually with non Anglo-Celtic surnames), through the initiation rites of espresso and outdoor dining, to a nirvana of mass taste, discernment, and connoisseurship.

Being too young to know better, we wonder if it ever really was that bad, and observing the frequent, if glossily packaged, mediocrity we see around us now in the hospitality industry, with apparently willing consumers, it does make us wonder how far Canberra has come.

Reading the Lonely Planet, a few things are striking. First, is the turnover of places - only Mama's in Garema Place, the Pancake Parlour in Civic, Gus's, and Rasa Sayang in Dickson seem to have survived the last 20 or so years. Gone are the other dozen or so places suggested, some of which sounded ok.

Second, perhaps unsurprisingly given the period, is the paucity of Asian food places. Also interesting is their generally very straightforward naming. The Vietnamese place is Canberra Vietnamese Restaurant, the Malaysian place in Civic is the Malaysian Restaurant.

Third, is the decline of live music and particularly jazz venues. It may be arguable, but the replacement of live jazz venues with the doof-doof music, could perhaps be seen as precisely the sort of uncertain progress of modernity we began with.