Iconic Aussie Foods

During the break we're exploring some of the Aussiest food memories we've had on the show. 

Hear Blanche D'Alpuget describe halcyon lunches moored on Sydney Harbour, Kate Reid drool over custardy baked goods motorside with her dad, and Phoebe Greenwood reminisce about salty fried goods in the sand with her mum. 

You can hear the full episodes released as follows - just search for the guest name or scroll down the episode listing by date. 

Blanche D'Alpuget - released October 28, 2025

Kate Reid - released November 25, 2025

Phoebe Greenwood - released August 5, 2025 

To find out more about the project and Savva - head to threefoodmemories.com
Insta - @savvasavas @threefoodmemories

Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you! 

TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

First food memory, it's typically Australian, and it's like biscuits on the water.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Yes, yes. My mum was a very good cook, and we used to go sailing every week both days of every weekend, unless it was steaming with rain. And back in those wonderful days, those Altian days of the forties and fifties, it never rained in in in summer in Sydney, as I remember it. So we used to go sailing, and we'd always take lunch, but part of the lunch was Anzac biscuits, and I've never forgotten them. She made a very good Anzac biscuit.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

What was the strongest memory of those weekends sailing?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Oh, it was it was adventurous because we used to sail into there were lots of the far fewer boats on the harbour then, and there were many more fish and many more interesting sea animals, sea creatures, so like Bash de Mare and so forth, and lots and lots of sea urchins. And we used to sail from Rushkutters Bay up usually up to quarantine and more there and ha and have lunch on board. But also explore lots of the other small bays on en route or and I'd go go ashore as a kid and investigate the rock pools and pick up the Bache de Mer, which would love me picking them up, the big, great, big, squishy black things, and uh poke my finger into sea and enemies, which probably wasn't very good. But yeah, th there were all sorts of really interesting m marine life. We used to see penguins and uh lots of dolphins. Penguins around around um quarantine. Yes, lots of little penguins.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

And when would the biscuits, the Anzac what to describe the the way the Anzac your mother would have made the Anzac biscuit?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

She made the Anzac. Describe how she made them. Oh my goodness, I have no idea. No. No. Magic. Mother magic. But uh they were good they were lovely ones. So they're sort of like big and like that, and they're completely flat on the bottom because she'd obviously baked them on baking paper.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

And they'd come out d you know, during that when you were moored?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

When we were moored, yes. We'd be we'd be anchored, we'd be we'd have our lunch, whatever it was, and then uh that the Anzac biscuit would be last.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

This will be for many of us listening here in Australia. It's the Baker's Delight Custard Scroll.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Oh, make me more hungry. How good is the Baker's Delight Custard Scroll? If you tell us. It's like it's like perfect white bread, like the white bread of our childhoods. You know, all Australian kids would have been brought up on probably tip-top sandwiches or, you know, toast with vegemite. It's that beautiful white bread rippled with that perfect vanillary bakery creme petissier that's riddled through it and then topped with a slab of coconut whip icing. Like, tell me you don't want that now. And like mum, being mum and being Irish, would cut it in half and slather it with butter. So you would have these scrolls with dad at the racetrack. Yes. So, I mean, this beautiful memory of Formula One with my father, we would go to the Australian Grand Prix every year for the four days. And I mean, there's incredible food offerings at the Oz GP now, one of them being a loon stand, which I'm incredibly proud of. But back then there was like the hot chips, the beer, and the Peters Magnums. Peters or Streets? I think it's Peter's, whatever, the ice cream stand. And so Dad and I would come with a cut lunch, and for morning tea, we would always go to Baker's Delight and get the custard scroll, and then we'd have our sandwich made up for us, and then we would have an ice cream in the afternoon. But there was that magical moment where, you know, it was maybe between races on circuit, dad'd pull out the big thermos of hot water, he'd have a coffee, I'd have a tea, and we'd have our custard scrolls. And sitting trackside with my dad at my favorite event of the year, watching maybe the Formula Fords or the Formula V's or the celebrity race, which they don't do anymore, I think to the disservice of the Grand Prix, it was always very funny. But just having it's again food becoming part of a social situation and a memory. And I can't even imagine my childhood without those moments.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

If this doesn't scream Australia summer to you, fry shop, I don't know what fucking does. Potato scallops with passiona with my mama on the beach.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

That's one of my favorite ever memories, let alone food memories.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

But it's such a good okay, so I think you've got to be really clear on just let's just describe the scallop first. We know what a beach looks like, we know what the it smells like, we know this white sand in Australia.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Talk about the scallop. Let's be really specific.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

So I have tried this many, many times because it's very important to me, and anyone who I love needs to understand what a potato scallop is. So there'll be many non-Australians I've tried to describe this to. And I've the the closest I've come to is it's a it's a very long piece of potato that's been tempured, but it's not really tempured.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

It's a big glamp.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

It's wrong, isn't it? It is just okay, so the potato needs to be soft and it needs to be like salty, even though it's within salted, crisp batter, and the batter needs to crunch and it needs to be covered in salt. I mean, if you're really going for it, you can cover it in chicken salt.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Which is something that they don't have here in the UK. Just something that the UK I think it's buckets of MSG, just chicken salt, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Total. Exactly. It's pure deliciousness. Okay, so the thing as well is that the importance of the potato scallop wasn't something that I came to by myself. I inherited it. So my mother is passionate about the scallop. So she and I share an absolutely like like ardent love affair with potatoes, which is probably also in the gene pool, let's be frank. But um mum always used to tell me that she was giving her bus money to get home from school, but rather than get the bus, she would walk like an hour in the heat.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Oh, they all walked an hour in the heat. They all walked an hour. Didn't walk an hour in the heat. And and m we'd wear out our shoes and we weren't allowed to buy new. And I was like, okay. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

We just caught the bus though. And she spent on her potato scallop. And so when we were having a loving mum-daughter kind of bonding time, it always involved the potato scallop. And this was like the rare thing that we're allowed for junk food. Once at a blue moon, we got to drive through McDonald's. But the real thing was a potato scallop. And the thing that mum would always do is that we'd have to get it with a passiona, which no longer exists.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Oh well, I I'm sorry, but I brought this back with me. No. Brought this with me, and it's um passiona.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

I can actually cry.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

I can actually cry. Well, it's actually, do you have a soda stream? Do you know what that is?

SPEAKER_03 7:13

We can't, because it's in the occupied West Bank, the soda stream.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

So actually have this with fizzy water, but it's like a cordial, it's a passiona like syrupy thing. Well, that we have them in cans as well, and there was no fucking way I was going to bring it back. Bring it in my suitcase up the hill.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

You don't understand. This is gonna be next to my chicken salt, and I'm gonna-if anyone touches it, they're gonna be like, so you can just have little bits of it with your um your fancy Scottish sparkling water. Honestly, the best present anyone's ever given me.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

So back. I loved you before the I hope you loved me before the pescio doesn't show up.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Now I know.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

So this is your story. Keep going to the potato scalp.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Okay. So the thing for me though, it was a very, very bonding thing with my mum. Because my mum is very funny and she we're very, very close. But her thing is always like, um, I'm not your best friend, I'm your mum. You know, that was like that was important, I think, because it kind of created a kind of just because there were those mothers who were a bit like, you know, like ice cream bed, let's talk about boys kind of stuff. And we were very close, me and mum, but there was always, I'm your mother and you're my child, you're not my best pal. However, there were these moments when we'd go and we'd both like be kind of covered in kind of salty fingers and having a funny little giggle on the beach, and it felt like she was my pal in those moments.