Merry Christmas everyone

A very introspective and bittersweet time of the year when we remember our fierce new friendships forged in Ann Arbor and wish we could be closer to everybody. It’s the same for all of you in Brisbane, London and Melbourne.

To ease the pain we eat, honouring culinary Christmas traditions as the best way we know how to feel a little bit closer to you all. Here’s a new tradition brought back from Ann Arbor: gingerbread. I picked up a packet on a whim after I couldn’t find (fruit) mince tarts anywhere, and I remember devouring it, piece by piece, curled up on the couch with my new Christmas books with the snow-covered lake just outside the window.
Our lake in Ann Arbor. A long way from the sandy feet and frangipani of a Sydney Christmas!

I didn’t have any luck finding real gingerbread in Sydney so I made my own, and now its heady perfume fills the house. It’s dense, rich and moist: sticky with golden syrup and black treacle, with the rasp of fresh ginger. Tastes perfect with a cup of green tea or a glass of Prosecco, but I’m going to crumble it into a loaf of stuffing with onion, ham, apples and allspice to go alongside tomorrow’s Christmas pork dinner with Jemima and Mark.

I love eating at Jem and Mark’s. Last month we had a decadent meal of cacciuco – the garlicky seafood stew from Livorno – because Jem was reading Michelangelo’s account of it in The Agony and the Ecstasy. Their house a real Aladdin’s cave with the ever-changing display of their latest canvasses hanging from the walls, stacks of books and journals by the squashy lounges, and an eclectic mix of great music pumping out of the living room. They truly live a creative life, and their food can take its cues from the same places their artistic inspiration is sourced. And they’re real hedonists, like me. We’re spoiling each other with food this year, and we have a long menu lined up for a full day of feasting. As well as the gingerbread stuffing, I’m making a quivering jelly made with sparkling shiraz and studded with plump strawberries, raspberries and blackberries – a Maggie Beer recipe from Maggie’s Table.

Merry Christmas, all. We'll toast you tonight with cups of chilled egg nog and Sufjan Stevens' holiday album.

And bring David Hicks home.

Sour grapes

Somewhere between five and 10 per cent of wines suffer from some sort of spoilage, usually cork taint. How many affected wines are we drinking without realising it?


Last weekend in Melbourne I tried a Yarra Valley pinot noir at one of the terrific gastropubs. The wine was glorious, tasting of dirt, rhubarb and cherry with smooth tannins, and a superb match with food. I was so enamoured that when I saw it at a bottle shop the following night, I picked it up for another go. It could have been a completely different wine. Flat and featureless, it had no obvious smell or flavour of cork taint, yet something was amiss.

Had this been the first time I tried the wine, I would have assumed it was a dud. How many times does this happen? How many good wines have been written off after a disappointing experience due to some sort of fault or spoilage?

Tastes of Melbourne

Friday night dinner at the Courthouse Hotel dining room, a gastro pub in North Melbourne near Ferg's place:

With the Walkleys out of the way, we got down to some serious eating, and this is a city which takes its food seriously. Had perhaps some of my favourite wines of the year with the Courthouse tasting menu. Not an Aussie wine among them, sadly:




Lightly cured tuna
crab and couscous salad, avocado, water vinaigrette
N.V. Larmandier Bernier Terre de Vertus 1er Cru, Champagne France

Seared Scallops
escargot with garlic cream, pancetta, potato crips
2005 Domaine Thomas Sancerre, Loire Valley France

Terrine of Rabbit
spring vegetables and pinot gris "en gelee" truffle cream vinaigrette, soft herbs
2005 Valminor Albarino, Rias Baxias Spain

Roasted Veal Loin
saffron gnocchi, peas, asparagus and broad beans, sauce noisette
Descedientes de J.Palacios Petalos Mencia, Bierzo Spain

Queso Valdeon
with accompaniments
2001 Chateau Pinsan, Sauterne France

Assiette of Blood Oranges
blood orange sorbet, blood orange and campari jelly, blood orange salad
2005 Vietti Moscato d'Asti, Piedmont Italy

Coffee & Petit Fours

Throw in Saturday breakfast and lunch at the slender Superfino on Flinders Lane - deli, provender and cafe with a menu full of generously flavoured tastes - and Sunday brunch of Eggs Benedict and a bellini at Rathdowne Street Food Store in North Carlton with its counter laden with brioches, fritatta and other treats baked on the premises, and we didn't want to leave.

Walkley night

Thanks for your hundreds of sweet congratulatory messages; they all meant so much to me. And now, finally, are the photos you've been asking for. You all saw the biffo but you would have had to be particularly keen to sit through the entire awards telecast on SBS to see us take to the stage.

Here's the official shot. Paul (the correspondent) is on the far left, Darren (my video/audio producer) and Matt (the designer/Flash programmer) are to the left of me:


And here are Darren and me with Gerard and my editor, David, as the night wore on:


And here's what we won for: The War of Ideas. (And here's what the judges said).

Australian Thanksgiving

In no way claiming to be an authentic Thanksgiving feast (OK, I admit I'm trying to muscle in on somebody else's holiday), here's the meal we put together last night on the spur of the moment after Gerard suggested roasting a chicken. We ate it in memory of last year's snowbound Thanksgiving dinner with Ken and Linda in northern Michigan, and of all of our cherished American friends. (Sorry we couldn't get organised to do it on Thursday with you, Lex and Justin.)

* Roast chook, Gerard-style (rubbed with lemon, with a peeled lemon and 4 garlic cloves inside the cavity, and thyme and sage from the garden tucked between the flesh and the skin)
* Creamy mashed potatoes
* "Stuffing" cooked outside the turkey (cubed Sonoma Bakery spelt fruit bread - the half we didn't eat with French butter this morning - chestnuts, ham, onions, celery, sage, melted better, egg and nutmeg)
* Brussels sprouts with butter, lemon and walnuts
* Allspice gravy (Nigella Lawson's recipe, but omitting the honey)
* Cranberry sauce (dried cranberries warmed in a bit of orange juice then left to set)

With the closest thing we had to my current obsession with white burgundy: a 2004 Freycinet Chardonnay. Started with a whisper of vanilla and green apple, finished with melon flavours. No dessert necessary; this was satisfying enough.

Even better the next day on the couch in front of the Ashes! This is one pleasure you can't get in Michigan...

To absent friends... love them all

This one goes out to the one i love

For my mate Amber, working in South Korea, who wanted to see my new frock.

Beaujolais Nouveau: for the love of wine

At 10am this Thursday the clocks will strike midnight in France, setting off hundreds of wine-filled lorries speeding towards towns and cities in France and across the world. Eager drinkers will greet the new wine, which only a few weeks earlier was mere grapes on the vine, and in doing so take part in one of the world's largest and most exuberant harvest festivals.

Beaujolais Nouveau is not a serious wine but it's an event: a charming annual rite for the wine lover and a celebration of the vintage.

It has also become a marketing stunt with its race around the world dreamt up by a savvy winemaker in the 1970s, but the event actually has its origins in the nineteenth century when the harvest's new wine would complete fermenting in cask en route to nearby towns and villages. While the whole practice certainly provides a quick financial return for winemakers, the annual event is looked upon by the French - who cherish their provincial traditions - as part of the national culture. Much like their wine.

Valérie Nicolas, the director of the Alliance Francaise in Sydney, says the first wine of the French year is "something sacred". Like Proust's madeleines, the ritual is an olfactory memory: "I recognise the smell. It's the smell of the harvest and then you have it in your mouth".

For many French people, Nicolas says, the third Thursday in November is a "rite" - a day of the year for getting together with friends, telling stories and singing in the streets beneath party lights and braziers in the chilly November outdoors. A day when all generations mix together in enjoyment of the light, quaffable red.

Although the Beaujolais Nouveau is at the centre of the festivities, which start earlier in the day when the wine arrives (Nicolas says her parents will open a bottle as an aperitif before lunch), the wine is really an excuse for the annual celebration. "It's a way to set up the culture, it's tradition ... so many things. Beaujolais is like 1950s Paris, old French songs, Robert Doisneau, lively streets, the beret and baguette, the French thing you can do. It's also about the notion of pleasure."

For Brice Pinoncely, a Parisian living in Sydney, the Beaujolais Nouveau itself isn't much of a drawcard: "I think the Beaujolais Nouveau is not a good wine at all. [The day] is a pure tradition that's part of the French culture. Probably just an excuse to get pissed the same way as Australians do for the Melbourne Cup."

We can participate in the ritual too; because the phenomenon went global in the 1970s, some cases of Beaujolais Nouveau are permitted to be released early enough to be rushed around the world. On Thursday, French restaurants are hosting fêtes so that Australians can practice over-imbibing French-style simultaneously to (or, thanks to our timezone, even earlier than) our Parisian cousins. At Sydney's Alliance Francaise they're having a knees-up with accordionists, former Wallabies in attendance, and a groaning buffet of cheese, quiche and charcuterie. If that doesn't sound like the perfect conditions for a party, I don't know what is.

Beaujolais Nouveau is the sort of stuff people tend to glug lustily, making it a perfect party wine. It is exuberant, tastes of juicy red fruits, and its youthful zip and acidity refreshes and stimulates the appetite. It's fantastic with food but is more suited to finger food than big dinners, where its shortcomings quickly become obvious.

This is by no means a great wine; in fact it's sometimes an awful one. Just don't be too precious about it.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a wine to be enjoyed with laughter and conversation, then swallowed and forgotten. Wine critics disparage it, and it's sometimes raw and unfinished, but for wine romantics that's part of its appeal. What more can you expect from a wine made so quickly? Don't judge the product too harshly - Beaujolais Nouveau is about celebrating all wine rather than savouring this one example. Drink a glass and give thanks for the gift of vinification.

Should you bring home a bottle from a wine store, consume it immediately - it won't last. Tradition holds that Beaujolais Nouveau shouldn't be drunk after January 1st; the idea was to get it out of the way before the better stuff arrived. The speedy winemaking process (a matter of weeks) means the wine doesn't have much structure, but if you're curious to try some well-crafted Australian wine from the same grape, gamay, look for the extraordinary Sorrenberg Gamay out of Beechworth, which is grown in granite soil similar to that in the Beaujolais region of Burgundy. Or try some "real" village Beaujolais, which is a very different wine to the Nouveau, although not as ephemeral, and with none of the significance of new beginnings.

Do you drink Beaujolais Nouveau in November? What's your opinion of the wine and the tradition? Do you think Australia should honour the release of rosé wines with an annual festival?

This post originally appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.

How to have your own Sideways experience

There are few excursions quite as enjoyable as a trip to a cellar door, whether you're a wine snob or not. What's not to love about free-flowing wine, country air and all the weathered barrels lying around?


Many people ask me how to get the best experience out of a winery visit, so here are some pointers.

* First, a bit of research. Having a wine guide like James Halliday's isn't essential - just drop into the region's information centre for a winery map.

* Read the information booklet for a bit of description about the different cellar doors and try to come up with a mix of larger and smaller ones. The bigger operations often hold tours where you get to see behind the scenes, learn how the wine is made, maybe succumb to a little romance thanks to the well-funded facilities. But the smaller outfits are the ones to seek out. If you're lucky you may be served by the winemaker him/herself, so here's your chance to hear them explain all of the elements in their creation. Interested cellar door staff aren't restricted to boutique wineries, but you're more likely to get a quieter moment at smaller ones where the server can spend a bit of time talking you through the range. If they're family of the winemaker they probably have a bit of investment in making sure you get the most out of their wines. Besides, you're more likely to get served a bit of the extra "not for tasting" drops if you aren't sharing the tasting room with a crowd.

* If you see a tour bus in the car park, leave immediately. Being inside a crowded tasting room is no fun. You don't want to be trying to catch the pourer's attention, and you won't learn much if they are too busy to talk to you. Come back another time.

* Don't overplan your trip - allow for serendipity. Perhaps a dusty, unsealed lane will entice, or a wending drive up a vine-covered slope, or a particularly fetching, ramshackle winery building. The places you arrive at without any expectations are often the find of the trip.

* Don't squeeze too many into one day. Four or five should be the absolute maximum, otherwise all the samples will start to taste the same (and your designated driver will be over the limit)

* Don't rush in order to fill up on free drinks. Apart from being boorish, you'll have more fun if you enjoy the cool of the tasting rooms and the country surrounds at a langourous pace. Should you be lead outdoors and given a seat beneath a vine-covered pergola and invited to share some wine, why rush?

* Ask questions and show interest in the cellar door and you'll often be rewarded with a lot of wine knowledge. Can there be a more enjoyable method of self-education than this, with glass in hand?

* When you walk into a winery you'll be asked what you'd like to taste, but unless you only drink whites or reds, start at the top and go through the list. They'll tend to start you off on dry whites, work through to the reds and finish with sweet and/or fortified. Be adventurous - try ones you think you don't like. Chances are, with somebody explaining the wine to you and in the spot in which it was made, you'll see something in the glass to admire.

* Ask what the winery are proudest of, or what they are well known for. Ask the winemaker what taste or effect they were trying to go for. Ask how the climate and the winemaking decisions contributed to the finished product. Ask if their wines are estate grown or if they buy in fruit, and why. Ask what types of wines they like to drink and whether they are trying to emulate them.

* One way of cutting down on the volume of alcohol consumed is for you and your companion to try only one glass of each wine on offer. This allows you to share glasses and compare different years or different versions if available. Many Hunter wineries, for example, do at least two different styles of shiraz. Taste them both, and discern the differences. Ask why they taste they way they do.

* Don't be afraid to ask as many questions as you need to. You don't have to be a show off and demonstrate your wine knowledge (in fact, please don't. You wouldn't want somebody from a different industry to walk into your office and tell you about your job, would you?)

* Finally, it's polite to buy at least one bottle before you leave to help subsidise your free tastings. Unless you really, really hated the wine, or in the rare case that the staff abandoned you when other customers turned up.

* Once you're finished, hang out in the winery's garden or make use of their picnic tables. Buy a bottle and have them uncork it - wine always tastes best when drunk at the winery. Hunter Valley wineries don't as a rule have cafes attached, but you can bring a lunch or some bread and cheese from the Cessnock supermarket. Entrepreneurs take note: Cessnock needs an upscale deli with takeaway lunch hampers.

What do you love about the cellar door experience? What bugs you? What magical winery moments? have you had?

This post first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.

When it comes to wine, does price matter?

How much would you spend on a bottle of good wine?

And can you discern the difference between a $30 bottle and a $200 one?

When weighing up what to spend on wine, for most people it probably comes down to a couple of factors:
• is the bottle worth the price?
• does the occasion warrant the expense?

So if you're proposing marriage you'll probably justify splashing out on a bottle of Bollinger; likewise you'll spend a little extra on something special for a magical dinner on a Roman holiday. Whereas for Tuesday night at your local bistro you're happy to restrict yourself to a modest BYO.

For wine lovers, it comes down to the difference between drinking a great bottle and an ordinary one. Pricier wines have nuance, length, and ageing potential (or "bloodlines") and are definitely more enjoyable. But how much is that experience worth?

A wine educator, Peter Bourne, reckons the best-value drinking in Australia is in the $30 to $50 bottle range and I tend to agree. Wine, for the most part, is fairly priced in Australia – unlike some countries like France where a lot of what you are paying for is land value and legacy. Coveted parcels of land in the Bordeaux region, protected by the French appellation system, is just one of the factors contributing to the $1000 plus price tag.

The average Australian wine drinker doesn't know much about the pricier imports so is justifiably reluctant to take a gamble – for the price of a top local wine you could well end up with a mediocre French one. For less than $50 you can get a Stonier Reserve Pinot Noir or a Henschke Keyneton Estate – Australian experiences that won't leave you wanting.

I can't help but wonder if the fetishising of fine wine raises expectations so high as to take all of fun out of the actual drinking.

How high will you spend for a special occasion? What is your usual price range? And can you discern the difference between a $30 bottle and a $200 one?

This post originally appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Why men should think pink

There's no wine quite as perfect for the Australian heat as a rosé. I'd even go so far as to say it's better than beer.

Don't believe me?

Served nice and chilled, it's every bit as refreshing on a warm day. Actually, I would go so far as to say this is one of life's greatest pleasures. Like a beer, rosé has some crisp acidity to quench a thirst and is deliciously dry – not as sweet as it looks.

Today's rosés are nothing like the ones our parents guzzled in the 70s, but in some circles are still tainted with this legacy. In the US, where the wine-drinking population is less mature than in Australia, they're still shunned by all but the savviest, chicest drinkers. Here, rosés are a serious beverage. Don't be put off by the pink hue: this is a drink with brawn.

They're also a lot more food-friendly than beer. A social beast, rosé goes with any sort of food imaginable: barbecued meats (red, white and sausages), salamis and cheeses, middle eastern meze, tapas and Spanish flavours, even spicy Asian meals. If rosé were a person, it would be the exuberant friend who gets on with absolutely everybody in any social group and is always terrific fun to be around.

Rosé is a wine to drink outdoors for lunches in the sun and drinks at sunset when the colours in the sky match those inside your glass. They're easy on the alcohol and light-bodied guzzlers, but they don't compromise on flavour.

Rosés are made from red grapes in a white wine method, so they taste like a lighter version of a red wine – tannins and all. There's a bit of spice on the palate with a primary flavour of rosehips or cherry fruits or even raspberry. They don't have as much grunt as a big red though, so if red wines usually give you a headache roses can be a good compromise: you get the flavour without the weighty whack over the head.

Then there are the gorgeous aromas: sunshine, warm earth and the scent of herbs on the breeze. If Cezanne's paintings of the south of France had a taste, this would be it.

Rosés offer instant gratification: they don't need cellaring or maturing and are such a pleasurable, uncomplicated drink. Lively, friendly and impossible to drink without smiling: rosé is truly the happy juice.

And they're cheap. You'll get a great one for around $15 and rarely more than $20, which gives you another reason to smile.

If you've been reluctant up until now to give it a go, take a bottle on a picnic or try one this weekend with a barbecue.

Turkey Flat make theirs from a combination of grapes, including grenache for tannin, which gives the wine a bit of spine. It has a lovely pigmentation from time spent sitting on the skins. Mistletoe in the Hunter Valley make some barrel-fermented ones a savoury European style; these taste of oak and really come into their own with food.

Another Aussie rosé made in the French style is the almost tawny Dominique Portet from the Yarra Valley. Down the road is Yering Station and their coppery rosé made from pinot noir.

A terrifically minty rosé with real length is the Rosato from Amulet Winery in Beechworth. As the Italian name might suggest, its principal ingredient is Sangiovese (the grape of Chianti), alongside Shiraz and Cabernet.

Or you could experiment with some Spanish, Italian or French ones – they tend to be more savoury than the the locals and are serious food wines.

Which rosés do you enjoy drinking?

This post originally appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Drinking on a cheap: a cleanskins road test

If you've been in a bottle shop lately you might have noticed you can buy some Australian wines for less than the price of a bottle of water. But are these unlabelled "cleanskin" wines good value?

That depends on how willing you are to take a gamble.

Cleanskins – wines sold without the usual branded labels – are nothing new; wineries have been offloading extra stock this way for years. Some are cancelled export orders and some are "museum" releases of respectable old bottles nearing the end of their life span. In fact, they can be real finds. Dig around in the sale barrels next time you're at a winery cellar door and you may pick up some aged bargains.

But now, with Australia in the middle of a wine glut and grape prices ridiculously low, retailers are taking the unsold excess off wineries' hands and selling them for next to nothing. The wineries are happy to realise anything at all for the bottles, and consumers are happy to drink on the cheap.

And some cleanskins are really cheap. Like $2 a bottle cheap. Plenty more are on the market for less than $5.

Make no mistake though – these are generally bulk-made wines made from fruit grown well away from premium vineyards. For many wine drinkers, however, that's quite OK. Especially when you're only after something to quaff mid-week.

Most of the big wine retailers have them, from Dan Murphy's and Vintage Cellars to the connoisseurs' choice of Ultimo Wine Centre. There's even a store in Sydney that deals only in cleanskins: The Wine Point at Birkenhead Point. Kemenys in Bondi have created a Hidden Label range with more than 20 cleanskins, all specifying the region of origin. They even sell a few premium options, such as a Marlborough sauvignon blanc, a Coonawarra cabernet and a Heathcote shiraz – proving not all cleanskins come from cheap, bulk Riverina fruit.

To find out what's good and what isn't, I had a taste test of more than a dozen different varieties with some regular cleanskin drinkers, Chardy and Murray Rivers. The prices ranged from $1.89 for a "Get the Roo for under $2" chardonnay to $18 for a Kemenys merlot.

When it comes to wine, do you spit or swallow?

54 red wines to taste and compare - all of the same variety.

Do you really think you'd be able to tell them apart?

Drinking white wine in winter

When you think about warming cold-weather wines, the imagination usually conjures up a luscious, velvety red - the perfect accompaniment to a sticky, slow-cooked casserole or beef pie.

But you don't always want to eat red meat in winter. How about a lemony roast chicken? Pasta with a creamy seafood sauce? Cheese fondue?

When you find yourself scratching your head in the bottle shop in front of the shiraz selection this week, live a little - try a winter white instead.

By "winter white", I mean something voluptuous, almost creamy. A rich mouthful instead of a tangy young lunch wine. Think hints of butterscotch rather than acid. What you're after here is a rounded taste, an aromatic drop. It will probably be one of the more alcoholic white wines - you're basically after the exact opposite of those light, summer lunch styles you quaff easily in the sun.

I still call Australia home

Bangkok bliss

R&R at our new favourite hotel, the Bangkok Marriott Resort:

Roman holiday

When the airport food is this good, I can drink red wine before lunchtime.

Maltease

No wonder there are so many Maltese in Australia, because it's a shithole. There's barely a tree in sight. The tiny island is built up - in the best case a jumble of stone buildings sitting cheek by jowl; in the tourist ghetto it's virtually all concrete highrise.

Okay, so I was expecting a lot. I thought Malta would be a mix between Sicily and North Africa. It did have the African mistral, a very hot, dry wind. It has miles of coastline, towering baroque cathedrals, walled cities and archaeological sites. And we were here for my little sister's wedding... what's not to like?

Plenty, as it happens. Driving is a colossal headache. There are no navigational signs, and curved city walls and built-up peninsulas are a recipe for aggro. Gerard and I very nearly killed each other between the airport and our hotel. Then there was the Valletta Incident, when a carpark attendant smashed our rented Peugeot but refused to admit responsibility. Add the $600 insurance excess to the total sum of money wasted visiting this overrated archipelago.

Now that I've blown off steam, let me say it wasn't all bad! Our Le Meridien hotel was a dream. A chic, beachy palace on aquamarine Balluta Bay.

We loved lounging and reading by the rooftop pool with ocean views, the bowls of rose petals available on the room service menu, and the French ambience.

We were blessed to be at the quieter part of St Julians, instead of the ghetto of English pubs (reeking of salt and vinegar), highrise hotels, pumping night clubs and lazy pasta and pizza restaurants at the Paceville end. We did find some terrific food one night... take a bow, The Kitchen Restaurant in Sliema. The menu screams of an ambitious young chef flirting with fusion tastes, but he pulls it off - just. It moves beyond the usual Maltese fare of Italian seafood: fresh pasta with crab meat and spinach in a mild curry sauce; black squid ink tortelloni filled with salmon mousse, on caramelised mango puree with a kaffir lime veloute; fresh green asparagus with a white bean puree and vegetable tempura with a tomato "fondue". Tried it with a sauvignon blanc which, like most Maltese wines, was made from Italian-grown fruit.

And, of course, there was Sam's wedding:

which gave us the chance to see Dad again.

We saw all of the prime sites, which doesn't take long on an island which is at the most 30km long. We gasped at the awesome St John's Cathedral with its floor of inlaid-marble tombstones,


we climbed the hilly staircases of the fortified city of Valletta, overlooking the ocean,




and strolled through the silent streets of the walled city Mdina.

You can see the whole island of Malta from Mdina. Here are the Porteous chicks with their husbands atop the massive city walls:

The second-largest island of the Maltese archipelago of three is Gozo, the sightseeing island. Access is by car ferry, which raised our hopes that there would actually be something worth seeing. Granted, there were the 3rd millennium BC megalithic temples at Ġgantija, but don't hope for much in the way of interpretative centre.

After walking around that pile of boulders, most tourists then head for the jutting coastline ... and then you've seen Gozo.

Not every visitor has the pleasure, however, of a stoush with the Bozo of Gozo - a pigheaded young motorist who inspired an explosive display of road rage from Gerard and I. Evidently Lady Luck was smiling upon us, and our pranged Peugeot.

London calling, en route to Rome

The incredible journey continues. Comfy and chipper in Heathrow: unlike fetid US terminals it's clean, spacious and bright. There are plenty of jaunty leatherette armchairs on which to set up a nest for the long stopover, and you can browse in Bally, Boots and WH Smith. Enjoying the familiarity of shops, brands and accents. 70p buys a couple of hours of decent entertainment with The Guardian. We're back in a country where the World Cup is on the front page (unfortunately, so are the Beckhams) and the sport section covers cricket and rugby. At reliable Pret A Manger you can get excellent salmon nigiri and cartons of miso soup - my ultimate comfort meal. And adults drink coffee or water, but not Coke.

Finally, some two days after leaving Ann Arbor, we get to shower and sleep in a real bed. But not until I had soaked up some Roman air. We're staying in Ostia Antica, the ancient Roman port and an archaeological site, and as we sit in the balmy dark on our balcony, with a bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, I fancy I can sense the history and the ghosts in the midnight air.

The next morning we down glasses of blood orange juice and a sweet pastry before heading back to the airport, with our four suitcases in tow, for our flight to Valetta. The Alitalia desk baulks when it sees our mountain of luggage - we have become the very travellers I sneer at in airports - but as our journey originated in the US, they have to honour our imperial baggage allowance. Alitalia must sense our short-term status as global dominators because they bump us up to business class.

Leaving Camelot

The Last Supper in Ann Arbor was actually a roadtrip brunch. After we closed the door at Packard Street the rental car pulled up at the curvaceous silver caravan in the Zingerman's Roadhouse carpark for some cold-brewed espresso and a paper bag of warm doughnuts: crunchy and dark, encrusted with sugar, and with a hint of spice and citrus. Devoured on I-94 before I could scramble up the camera to commemorate the moment.

The iPod seemed to sense the mood and dialed up some tracks suited to the melancholic drive away from the place we had made our home for nine months: Paul Weller's Sunflower ("I miss you so"); Powderfinger's These Days ("It's coming 'round again, slowly creeping in, time and its demands"); Sia's Breathe Me ("Be my friend, hold me, wrap me up"); Death Cab's Transatlanticism ("I need you so much closer").

We broke the drive at Chicago's Navy Pier for squishy-soft hotdogs and some bracing breezes off Lake Michigan.


Our last meal in the US was dinner at the O'Hare Wolfgang Puck outlet, where I had a surprisingly tasty butternut pumpkin soup with a typically American salad of caramelised pecans, blue cheese, apple wedges and spinach leaves.

Top tastes of Ann Arbor

As we point the rental car towards Chicago and tune the iPod to Sufjan Stevens, it's time to pay tribute to what fuelled us during our stay. Apart from the grown-up's food at the West End Grill, here are some of the tastes which delighted us in Tree Town. They're mostly fast food and the sandwich is over-represented, 'cause it's the US after all.

* Morgan & York's bocatas: great, chewy baguettes with various delish fillings. we liked the parma ham and local dairy butter
* Big Ten Burrito's vege deluxe burrito with hot sauce
* Chilli cheese fries from Red Hot Lovers. Lattice-cut potato doused in beef and bean chilli, with orange cheddar melted on top. Keeps the chill of the snow from your bones
* The doughnut sundae at Zingerman's roadhouse. Golden goodness
* The "dirty sheed" coffee from Zingerman's Deli. A latte over ice with a shot of Mexican vanilla
* Zingerman's "Kelly's Menage a Turkey" sandwich: turkey breast with zingerman's own double-cream manchester cheese, roasted onions and dijon mustard on farm bread
* Tanquery and tonic with lime
* Sangria in a jam jar in the beer garden at Casa Dominick's
* Zingerman's habit-forming Magic Brownies
Updated June 28 - more Stateside tastes recalled:
* Humboldt Fog cheese. A washed-rind, ashed goat.
* Cava
* Mimosas, made with the above
* Prosecco. Turns out it doesn't have to be sickly sweet. Great with...
* Gingerbread. Moist, spicy, perfect at Christmastime.
* Lara bars. Raw fruit, nuts and nuthin' else.
* Salads made with praline pecans and sweetened, dried cranberries.

Found! Great Ann Arbor dining

Just in time for us to drive off on Sunday morning. Aaaah, bugger.

Not that food in AA is awful. It's just that it's mediocre. You pay a fair price in this town for uninspiring meals, often made with ho-hum ingredients. And there is rarely any sommelier on hand to give advice on the wine lists. By the time you add up the markup on the wine, you have a not-insignicant bill for a typically unmemorable meal.

Not so our indulgent girl dinner at the West End Grill, one of Gail and Foley's favourite haunts. It serves "new American" cuisine with Asian accents, but the exceptional and warm service sets it apart from the rest of the eateries in this student town. It's a romantic and elegant spot with lovely pressed metal ceilings, and is especially intimate when seated at the short bar in full view of the stained glass peacock.

Gail and I started with a scotch and a G&T respectively as we sampled the appetisers. The black and white sesame seed-coated Hawaiian ahi tuna was seared rare and supple, sliced for dipping into soy and wasabi, and sitting beside a sprightly green seaweed salad. The seafood strudel was a high point - a filo parcel of scallops, lobster and prawn in a rich bechemel sauce. We also had a plate each of teasers from the appetiser menu: southwestern crab cakes, shrimp 'lollipops' - crumbed, fried, with a tamarind-ginger sauce, and pan-fried veal dumplings wrapped in wonton skins with corn, which tasted in alternate mouthfuls of chinese chili and salsa.

Next up was a teacup of slow-roasted tomato and basil soup, then a plate of salad with crumbled blue cheese and dried cranberries. We also went with Jordan's recommendation of Duckhorn's 2003 Goldeneye Anderson Valley from California - which had all of the hallmarks and complexity of a great pinot.

We shared their signature dish, a luscious steak of Chilean sea bass, steamed in soy and ginger, before the main courses arrived: Tuscan swordfish and veal roulade. The swordfish was zesty with roasted tomato, basil and green olives, and the veal roulade was rich with brie, pancetta and porcini demi-glace, pooling alongside an opulent scoop of mash.

In lieu of dessert we had a generous splash of Buller's muscat, a solera nectar from the Victorian Rutherglen, and I could taste the Murray River sunshine.

My only regret is that we were too full to try their basket of beignet rolls.

The long goodbye

As the rain continues to deluge Ann Arbor and north-eastern USA, we've been gathering to say goodbye to new and dear friends. Chuck and Lisa (pictured above) have headed off for a new life in New York City while Chris and Julia (pictured below, at right, with Gail) have an exciting prospect in the works which will bring them back to Ann Arbor.

The fellows with kids - the Lindsays (Drew and Sally pictured below at Zingerman's with Graham and Gail)...

... and the Butters - are staying put until the end of the schoolyear. Here's little Ruth "Roothster" Butters with her new pal, the Mad Australian.

Staying put for even longer is hometown boy wonder, John (the rake pictured below with Julia). Fara is also settling down nearby, already hard at work in her freelance career, while Charles is hanging around for the summer to work on his book and his tennis serve.

Getting down

Just in time for the final round of farewell drinks and dance sessions in the Camp Foley kitchen, Blender magazine has listed the The 500 Greatest Songs Since 1980. (Actually, the list was the best 500 songs since you were born, but we're old farts.) Guess who makes it to number 1?

Even the Go-Betweens are represented. If you haven't heard their work, and most Americans haven't, here's a tribute to Grant McLennan from Australia's cherished national youth radio network, Triple J.

Best pizza in the US?

Oozing with olive oil, thick with chopped garlic cloves, and topped with salty clams - one of the flavours of New England. This is Pepe's famous white clam pizza from their landmark coal-fired pizzeria in the town of New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University. Pepe's claims to be the birthplace of American pizza and the queue usually inches along for an hour or more, but New Englanders deem it well worth the wait. We were glad to make the pitstop en route to New Jersey: the taste was a revelation. Who'd have thought you could have pizza without tomatoes? We downed the the golden, chewy pie with another local flavour: "birch beer" - white birch-flavoured soft drink - which smelt more than a little like Deep Heat.

The dinner followed a lunch of more clams, this time crunchy and fried, along with milky potato-studded chowder, onion rings and lobster rolls at the teaming Woodman's of Essex, just north of Boston.