Julio's
| Where | 171 Miller Street, Fitzroy North—View map |
Contact | 03 9489 7814 meandjulio@digisurf.com.au |
Website | — |
Open | Monday to Sunday 7.30am to 4.30pm |
Payment | — |
Diet | Check with venue |
Seating | Inside and outside |
Kids | — |
Pets | Welcome |
Me and Julio down by the school yard
Jan van Schaik 6 June 2008
You know that feeling, when you meet someone, and you feel like you've known them for years? That special instant-old-friend feeling. You know it. Well that's the feeling I got having breakfast at Julio's. Now I guess you're thinking, well that's a nice little analogy for a dining experience, but this is no analogy, it happened. It goes like this:
So I'm sitting at this large shared table with four people that I know a little too well, all being tetchy with each other dealing with our hangovers by denial. I'm looking at the illegible menu on the wall. As I start to rant about the failings of d.i.y. graphic design I realise that nothing I'm looking at is coming in to focus, and the hangover lurches from neutral to first gear. This is when the chef drapes herself out of the kitchen; she's on a break it seems. She looks over at our group with the surprise of someone looking at their own hand, walks over and sits down with us. She leans back in her chair and chews on her glass of water. This is when I get that feeling. I look at her and she is my oldest friend. She looks right through my eyes into my soul and finds only the hangover, which has colonised my being, and exercising precision intuition says, ‘I think I'll make you steak and eggs for breakfast'. I'm just stunned. She finishes her glass of water and wanders off back towards the kitchen. ‘Bananas,' I shout.
‘Bananas?'
Yes, I have a thing about bananas for breakfast-cooked
bananas. ‘So no steak then?'
‘No, no, no! Steak,
eggs AND bananas.'
A difficult customer I am, but she appears unperturbed, although I do notice she paused mid stride to think a little. Turns out she was making a plan for the bananas. You see, I KNOW what to do with bananas, which is you fry them in butter, but I'm really not up to giving instructions on this day. So after some more griping and snitching about the world with my embittered friends, the steak and eggs and bananas arrive. The steak and eggs are a sort of magic medicine, but the bananas I will NEVER forget. I mentioned I KNEW what to do with bananas: well it turns out I only thought I knew.
What I now know is that, yes you DO have to fry them in butter but, and here's the thing: you have to get an old friend to do it. No no, I'm just toying with you. That's just too cute. What you have to do is fry the banana with its skin on. You cut them in half and place the naked edge face down in the pan, and the banana skin traps all the glory-filled-banana-frying-sugar-starch-stuff that magically changes a banana from a piece of fruit into a piece of heaven.
Now what I'd like to say here is, ‘Only on the menu at Julio's,' but I kid you not, my chef (that's right I said MY chef because she's mine now) had never done that before, and I don't think it's on the menu. It wasn't so much that she prepared food, but more that she looked in to my soul and saw the cavernous lacking within, and retired to her magic kitchen to concoct the remedy.