Mouthful

Australian phở safari

Phil Lees takes tasting tour of Melbourne pho establishments and encounters a new variation on the popular Vietnamese staple.

Can our cities feed themselves?

Probably not, if any of the forced, large-scale autarkic regimes (national economies that have been economically isolated, through choice or otherwise) throughout the last hundred years are used as a yardstick of success.

Why does canned beer taste tinny?

Part of the romance of drinking in a Third World nation is finding yourself in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar can of beer. Beer can often be trusted more than the local drinking water supply and the can is a sign that the beer within hasn't been destroyed by exposure to light, a problem with bottled brews the world over.

Smuggling ham

Is there a ham crisis on the cards? As China and America lift a ban on importing jamon iberico, Phil Lees anticipates a scarcity of the prized meat for all but the most pork-hungry gourmands.

Lost in Menu Translation

One of the smaller joys of eating abroad is a poorly translated menu; a small joy because it tends to precede a meal that contains a disproportionate quantity of offal. This happens regardless of which of the wackier named dishes that you order. The crazier the name is, the more lungs that it has to offer.

Saving Mediterranean food

Does Mediterranean cuisine even exist? Phil Lees asks the big questions in response to a bid by the Spanish government to put the Mediterranean diet on the world heritage list.

Comfort food

I steal other people's comfort food.

It's certainly not at all intentional but of the twenty or so recipes that I cook for the sole purpose of restoring my sense of mental wellbeing, probably one or two are those from my own childhood. The rest have been collected haphazardly from other people's cultures.

Thit heo kho is one of them.

The taste of test tube meat

PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, recently offered a million dollar prize for growing a saleable quantity of artificial chicken in vitro, slabs of meat grown in a laboratory destined for human consumption. The aim: to produce a meat product identical to "real" chicken meat without any involvement from a free-roaming chicken apart from the unwilling donation of a few starter cells.

Bhutanese is the next Nigerian

The two minute grab that tells you that mangosteens are the new hot fruit. That Bhutanese is the next Nigerian. That your life is incomplete without trying the all-new Wagyu burger, the freshest way for chefs to turn meat waste into raw profit.

The banana pancake syndrome

Phil Lees investigates what happens when Third World food destinations go bad.

The Taco Truck Wars

Without Californian taco trucks, there's a good chance that Phil Lees would be dead.

SBS Recipes in the Wild

Phil Lees feels his way through the SBS back catalogue - and contemplates lamb mechoui the size of Maeve O'Meara's hands - in an attempt to lower the bar for the home-cook and spread a wave of culinary underwhelmingness.