Pork souvlaki at Melbourne restaurant blows New York Times food editor’s mind

HE found it in Melbourne’s outer suburbs. Days later, including the 14-hour flight home, this top food critic could think of little else.

Get in my belly.

FOR MANY a Melburnian, it’s the go-to greasy, late-night snack after the pub shuts.

But for a food critic for one of the world’s pre-eminent cultural publications, the New York Times, the humble pork souvlaki has blown his mind.

Like, seriously.

The Times food critic Sam Sifton had the apparently life-changing experience at the aptly titled Kalimera Souvlaki Art, in the southeastern Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh, where, presumably, the fare may have been of a little higher standard than the souvas churned out by food trucks to hungry drunks.

In a piece in the publication, which recently launched its Australian bureau, Mr Sifton wrote that he had, of course, sampled the staple Greek dish referred to a gyros throughout most of the world in both the lamb and beef varieties but had never previously encountered one made with pork.

Hands up who wants a souva. New York Times food editor Sam Sifton in Australia last month.

In the words of Seinfeld’s great Cosmo Kramer, it was apparently, for Mr Sifton, “an orgiastic feast for the senses.”

“A few days later, I was still thinking about the meal. I had a long flight home,” he wrote.

“There wasn’t much to do. I thought about pork gyros for the better part of 14 hours. Then I dreamed about them while I slept.

“I have been cooking them ever since, in the oven and under the broiler, on the grill.”

Kalimera Souvlaki Art, he told his readers, is reliably cited as one of Melbourne’s best souvlaki restaurants.

As a food critic in one of the world’s greatest cities, he confessed to being embarrassed that he had no prior knowledge of a pork gyros before entering the Oakleigh restaurant.

”I was with a friend, who ordered our meal at the counter while I secured a table,” he wrote.

“He brought me a platter, the meat steaming. I thought at first it was chicken. I was vaguely bummed that he had not ordered lamb. I ate.

“Wait, I said, is this pork? ‘Of course it is,’ he replied. ‘That’s what they’re known for here.’

“The dish was as marvellous and strange to me as a wallaby or a kangaroo.

“Imagine not knowing about strawberry ice cream, then eating your first bite. It was a little like that. You wouldn’t tell anyone. Too embarrassing.”

The New York Times Australian bureau, based in Sydney launched early last month, the latest in a string of international publications to set up Down Under, including the UK’s The Guardian and BBC.