The Italian restaurant Brunetti in Melbourne, Australia is my happy place. Upon entry you are treated to a case of desserts longer than most rooms, crammed full with jam cookies, tarts, buns, domes, cakes, croissants, and macaroons. Nearby refrigerators display full-size cakes with glossy sheens. Eating a savory meal when this awaits is difficult, but the menu is excellent. I lived in Melbourne for the first half of 2023 mostly with the intent of watching the Australian Open in person, but Brunetti's prosciutto sandwich on focaccia made me forget all about tennis. Such was my trust in the institution that I abandoned my hatred of breading and tried their fried green olives, which irrevocably bonded me to the crispy salt bombs. I started going every day to inhale as much sodium as possible. Then I'd have the crown jewel of the dessert case: a chocolate oblivion, this cylindrical cake heated up until its insides liquefy, with cream to balance the richness. At night, I'd watch TV with two close friends in my program and bring takeaway treats from Brunetti for us to gorge on during the shows. I had very little variation in my days, and they were completely euphoric.
The city remained a utopia in my head after I left. Before living there I depended heavily on cup noodles at college; after eating real ramen in Melbourne I couldn't possibly go back to the store-bought stuff. I'd gone to school in empty upstate New York under the assumption that I wasn't a city person, but I was apparently mistaken. I missed the proximity and density of great food. Were I not three flights and an uncomfortable number of dollars away from Melbourne, I'd have gone back almost immediately. This summer, one of my aforementioned friends did an internship in Sydney and planned a quick trip to Melbourne after the commitment ended. I had just finished my senior year—visiting her seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
Actually getting there was another story. I had to take a quick flight to Newark, a five-and-a-half-hour schlep to Los Angeles, and then the big one: 14 hours to Melbourne. The first leg went fine, but after boarding the plane to LA, the captain announced a delay due to weather. The pair sitting next to me had been trying to get home for the entire week and quickly devolved into understandable madness, alternately crying, yelling at each other, and cuddling. Our captain, innocent soul doomed to absorb everybody’s angst, heroically took the mic every half-hour to provide the fiercely anticipated update that were no updates. I wasn't at my breaking point like my neighbors, but my layover in LA wasn't long, and a sense of dread that I'd miss the connection to Melbourne leaked into my gut.
We took off after rotting on the tarmac for almost three hours, more time than my layover could afford. A flight attendant said that there were eight people on the plane who were going to Australia, and in such instances the next flight might wait for us, so I had hope. The gate was even across from the one we'd be arriving at. I ran off the plane, weaving through those ahead of me, tore over to the gate, and ... the flight to Melbourne had left already. I waited in a line to get rebooked, was directed to another line, then another. I finally settled on three new flights to get me to my destination a day later than initially planned, instead of a direct flight a day after that. The clock read midnight by the time I had my new boarding passes in hand. No nearby hotels were open, so I embraced an all-nighter at LAX, the most harrowing option available. When I finally touched down in Melbourne, I’d been in the same outfit for 60 straight hours. I needed two showers to fully purge my feet of their stench.
But I was there! My friend and I caught up, elated at our ability to recreate a combination of setting and company we thought lost to the past forever, and we went straight to Brunetti for lunch. There was the glowing display case of refined sugar to the left, and the expansive dining room straight ahead. All was good. I reviewed the menu with glazed-over eyes, already fully certain of what I would order. But sirens started blaring in my head when I couldn't see the fried olives.
"Do you still have fried olives?" I asked a server in a minor panic. They gave me a blank look and shook their head.
I was disappointed into near-silence but heroically put my head down and demolished the prosciutto sandwich. My friend empathized and we kept chatting. We headed to our favorite ramen shop for dinner, where we'd gone the night before she flew home at the end of our semester in 2023. Upon seeing the empty restaurant, our first thought was that we'd forgotten about an Australian holiday. The reality was worse: a sign on the door announcing the location's indefinite closure. Frantic examination of a Reddit thread from nearly a month earlier unearthed speculation that the company hadn't paid their rent.
This was almost too much for me to take. So much of what made Melbourne special to me was the glorious sameness: Every day I went out for Italian food and ramen, and every day I knew I would be thrilled with the same order. To a fault, I'm prone to relying on old favorites. I read shuttered websites to entertain the illusion that they're still active. I'll listen to old podcasts and watch old shows instead of trying new ones, I'll play back highlights of the 2012 Australian Open final instead of watching the early rounds of a tennis major happening right now, I'll order chocolate ice cream at every shop instead of taking the smallest risk possible on an unfamiliar flavor, even if it looks delicious. After settling into a close friend group in my first semester of college, I spent winter break hoping desperately that nothing would change. Instead of moving on when inevitable drama sowed fractures in the group, I tried to convince myself that things were fine and spent months in limbo as everybody else proceeded with their lives.
I can't escape my internal logic that the quickest path to satisfaction is relying on past formulas rather than developing ways to navigate the present and future. Melbourne had been the ultimate static fantasy in my head when I hadn't been there, and the changes forced me to alter a very specific outline in my heart I had expected to be filled perfectly. That hurt.
I might have continued wallowing, but I had another problem. Even though I got in a day later than expected, my bag was on an even more leisurely schedule. Aside from some shirts and two pairs of underwear in my backpack, I had nothing to wear. I'm as allergic to new clothes as I am to new anything-else, but after a day went by, my hand was forced and my friend and I went to H&M to restock my depleted wardrobe. I bought long socks, then short socks when the long socks made my ankles itch. Underwear required two tries as well after the first batch had a tag that rode up my butt. I bought $7 pairs of dark green sweatpants that shed lint prolifically, plus a dark green hoodie. I walked around looking like I'd made a bodysuit out of the Daintree.
I felt lost in a stranger's outfit as I wandered one of my favorite places. But we couldn't stay upset at Melbourne for long. We went an arcade at Melbourne Central, an indoor shopping mall with everything from sushi to smoothies, and played coin push until our dopamine receptors burned out. We tried new restaurants—more Italian, Greek, a steakhouse—and were never disappointed. We gorged on chocolate oblivions at Brunetti and went to other ramen shops twice. The city whose consistency had been so comforting to me in the past was now guiding me through a painfully obvious lesson: Change is inevitable, so stop being dramatic, you dummy.
On my next-to-last day in the city, I played tennis with a hitting partner from last year (I blew a lead and lost). I'd come down to the suburbs to meet at the courts near his house. As we parted ways, I mentioned Brunetti, and he said they'd recently installed a new location near the courts. I meant everything I said about having a great time in Melbourne even with the changes, but god help me, I perked up like a pathetic dog. I walked the half-mile there—it's a little shop tucked into a hallway at the entrance to a mall—and tried to keep my expectations low. The location wasn't as good as the one in the city center, lacking fried olives but also my other favorite menu items. I shrugged sadly, headed back downtown, and dove into chocolate oblivion once more.
