Nosy Nostalgia
Matt Golinski shares his favourite food memories that are really on the nose and embedded in his heart.
Sometimes we don’t give our noses the credit they deserve.
We love to look at pretty things with our eyes and listen to nice music with our ears, but it’s our nostrils that are responsible for capturing and storing all the scents and the happy memories throughout our lives that go with them.
The chlorine vapour that transports us back to the summers when we spent 12 hours a day in the pool practicing our handstands and somersaults, only getting out to devour big chunks of sweet, icy watermelon and juicy mangoes.
The ‘freshly mowed lawn with a hint of mower fumes’, just before the ‘minerally afternoon thunderstorm’ wafted in, sends us straight back to all those carefree Christmas holidays when our main priorities in life were riding bikes and eating ice blocks.
Whether you live or holiday in Noosa, it will have no doubt provided you with an arsenal of olfactory triggers that will evoke an emotional response.
The familiar perfume of a favourite sunscreen mixed with salty sea air, the peaty earthiness of a rainforest, brewed tea and warm scones on a balcony framed by jasmine, even the diesel smell of a four-wheel drive that meant you were going on a beach adventure.
But the aromas that really send us spinning back in time are the food ones.
As a kid I was bought a hamburger from a little take away shop on the Maroochy River, and now when I get a whiff of that combination of toasty bun, grilled beef, charry onions, beetroot, tomato, lettuce and barbeque sauce, I almost become that 8-year-old boy dangling his legs over the edge of the Chambers Island bridge again.
A parcel of fish and chips might bring back that perfect family moment in time watching the sun set over the mountains with the river lapping at your feet.
Prawns grilling in their shells and garlic sizzling in olive oil could be that first date at a fancy restaurant with the person who you now share children and grandchildren with.
We’re so lucky to live in a paradise where building those beautiful fragrant flashbacks is easy.
We have some of the best quality and most diverse produce that’s easily accessible through weekly farmers markets, our switched-on fruit shops, fishmongers, butchers, brewers, distillers and providores – and hundreds of cafes and restaurants from Maleny to Kandanga, Caloundra to Noosa, all desperate to lodge their little piece of heaven deep into our hippocampus.
And if forward bookings for restaurants and accommodation on the coast over the next few months is anything to go by, there’s going to be a whole lot of schnozes at work inhaling everlasting memories and planting them forever into the subconscious of locals and visitors alike.
Happy sniffing!
