Douwe Osinga's Blog: Meet the Meat!

Monday, December 15, 2008

When you walk around Sydney one thing that draws your attention are the signs outside pubs advertising for Steaks for 12, 10 or even 7 dollars. Mind you, these are Australian dollars, so that’s 3.5 to 6 Euros. If you talk to Sydneysiders they go, yeah, it has all changed. Back in the day, 5 dollars was all that it took.

As it turns out there still is a pub that still does 5 dollar steaks. I went there with a friend who insisted 5 dollars was the only way to go. It’s a 25 minute walk which on a sunny Friday afternoon means that you spend 10 dollars on beer in intermediate pubs, so count your blessings. But it is true. 5 dollars gets you fries, 300 gram of steak and mushroom sauce. And it is pretty good.

It’s not just the steak, there’s 5 dollar sushi lunch, 6 dollar bacon & egg breakfast with decent coffee and even cheaper Chinese food of course. It is quite a difference with the situation in Zurich where a packet of nuts tends to cost around that amount. I was talking to a friend of mine who is also a recent immigrant from Switzerland and he said, here a good steak is 7 dollars, in Zurich it is 25 franks (32 dollars).

I was about to nod in agreement, but then I started to wonder where do you get a steak for 25 franks in Zurich? I asked my friend. ‘ah, the supermarket’, he said.

2 comments:

Antti Vilpponen said...

Douwe - have you tried the Landsdowne Hotel? They used to sell 5 dollar steaks a few years ago. It's by Victoria Park.

Pi. said...

Come on Douwe...
Is europe that bad..?
But mind you, I haven't bought a 300 grams steak in years...
I will look into it at the local Digros...