Last night Chris and I slipped over to Soul Mama’s for a bite to eat. We were after food, not ‘tude, dressed as we were in our office junior best - slacks, daggy jumpers and woollies - and feeling a tad sheepish about it, especially with glamourous, slick St Kilda types all around us. So we got off to a bad start when the kerrrayyzee!! pierced and shaved extreme sports waiter – complete with ‘pineapple’ hairdo, a piercing you could pass a small rodent through and a broken arm – pounced upon us with glee, spying Chris’ cast (yes, Chrissy has fractured his wrist – a saga in itself) and an opportunity to earn a tip. An ‘awesome dude’-spattered, injury-trading conversation later (of course, being knocked off a bike on your way home from work doesn’t earn the cred points of a snowboarding incident after a late season dump at Hotham) we sat scratching our chins like a pair of straight laced old farts, puzzling over the menu and wondering why we weren’t at Smorgy’s. It was one of those nights. If you’re having ‘one of those nights’, don’t stumble haplessly into Soul Mama’s. You’ll probably be forced to sit at the bar for an hour anyway, if you haven’t booked, so stumbling in isn’t much of an option.

I don’t have a real gripe about the food, but it’s not of the restaurant standard its price or surrounds would suggest. You get to choose four or five mains from around the world, which all keep each other company around a little mound of rice in a big bowl. Thing is, I’m not sure I like dahl bleeding into pasta sauce in turn contaminating a beetroot stew. By the end of the meal, you’ve got a transcontinental fusion you never bargained for, and you might as well be eating the whole lot with a spoon. That or go to Crossways for lunch instead, the fabulously predictable and cheap Hare Krishna ‘restaurant’ that slaps down a vegetable curry and a rich custardy dessert in exchange for six bucks. Much better value!

Real vegetarians probably don’t have much truck with Soul Mama’s 1970s vision of their diet, because they’ve probably had enough of well-meaning, carnivorous hosts cooking them those dreaded soupy, tomato-based lentil and chickpea concoctions for tea. In 2006, there are many more satisfying ways to be a vegetarian. One is called the Vegie Hut, the best Chinese vegetarian food in Australia (and I’ve scoured the Eastern Seaboard at the very least, so I know) the other is called Shakaharis, which dares to acknowledge that vegetarians have tastebuds as well as a conscience.

Now, I’m no restaurant snob (or vegetarian, for that matter). My parents took me to Sizzler on the occasion of my 21st birthday, and Chris and I have been fixtures over the last few months at the aforementioned esteemed bastion of suburban gut-stuffing that is Smorgy’s. But I prefer low rent food to come with all the low rent trappings. Glen Waverley (or other outer suburban) location; lots of grease and fat; people of similar purpose and aspiration as yourself (i.e. dressed for gorgefest comfort in trackies and other girth-adjustable attire designed to accommodate a heavy eating session) and staff who don't try to hide their boredom behind day-glow smiles and banter. To that end, Smorgy’s is everything you could want on a lazy Sunday night. Roasts, lasagne, Chinese, soup - even some fruit for the end of your meal, when it finally comes. Because the thing about Smorgy's, like Sizzler and the Swagman before it, is that you are there to eat as much as you possibly can, and then some to store for the winter. It's the reason my parents love the classy old Manhattan Hotel - a 'brasserie' in the depths of the outer suburbs, where a long hard day at the discount outlets and hardware shops can be finished off (quite literally) with an all you can eat pig out. For their generation there's something magical about the abundance and variety at these establishments. And I have to admit the Smorgy's hit is all about being let loose on loads of crappy, fatty food, and stuffing yourself to the gills, surrounded by people ever larger and hungrier/greedier than yourself. You learn to watch the old ladies when you're angling your plate to catch the roast tatties being dealt out at the carvery - they've got the sharpest elbows. And the kids swiping your knees with their softserve.

Most of my friends who also grew up in the outer suburbs fail to share my enthusiasm for these places (and the 'burbs themselves). One night we told my caffeine-addicted, soy drinking, terminally inner-city friend Robin we were taking him to Smorgy's. With a wry chuckle he jumped aboard my Micra, only to have the knowing smile ripped from his gaunt mug as he realised there had been no irony in our claim. As he watched den-like bars and 'decent coffee' outlets give way to big ugly bungalows and shopping malls, he realised that he had been kidnapped - a hostage to bad taste - and was in for a long night!