Australia, The BLT And Me

For a while in the early 1970s, I used to visit friends who lived in Forster on the coast of NSW about 200 miles north of Sydney. They had a private beach. They had free-range chickens. They had a couple of acres planted as a vegetable garden. It was a lovely place to be and they were lovely people to be with. Sometimes, it seemed like I was commuting between there and Sydney on weekends.

I recall one Sunday, when I was driving back down south, being rather hungry. There was a café I knew of on the way and I stopped there. I'd had a sudden craving for a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, something I hadn't thought of in years but there it was, bright in my imagination. Of course it wasn't on the menu there or anywhere else I'd eaten in Australia. I'm not sure anyone had even thought of it. When the waitress asked me what I'd like, I asked if they could make a BLT. She, of course, had no idea what I meant so I explained and asked if she thought they could make one. I was very specific as I described it saying that all the details were important, especially that the small bone-like thing needed to be removed from the bacon and that the bacon needed to be over-cooked to the point of crispness. She went to the kitchen to ask if it could be done and returned to tell me that I'd have my sandwich shortly.

I don't remember what sort of lettuce they used but I suspect it was romain. The sandwich was very good, the bacon done just right so that it broke as I bit into it instead of having to tear it with my teeth which would have pulled the sandwich apart. Satisfied after my little lunch experiment, I headed back down the road.

That craving was one of those odd things I get from time to time where something will stick in my mind and will stay there until it's satisfied but then will not come up again for a long long time.

Some time later, a month or two maybe, I stopped at that café again to get a hamburger with no beetroot. As I looked over the menu, I was surprised to discover they had added "the BLT" with a nice description of "mayonnaise, crispy bacon, tomato, and lettuce on toast."

Now I wasn't the only American in Australia at the time, not by a long shot. I'm sure I wasn't the only Yank to have a nostalgic craving for a BLT. I'm not silly enough to think I introduced the BLT to Oz but I know for sure that I introduced it to one café along the highway between Forster and Sydney. When I returned to to Australia in 1989, I did notice the BLT on the menus of various places I ate the featured sandwiches.