Meet the Meat!

When you walk around Sydney one thing that draws your attention are the signs outside pubs advertising for Steaks for 12, 10 or even 7 dollars. Mind you, these are Australian dollars, so that’s 3.5 to 6 Euros. If you talk to Sydneysiders they go, yeah, it has all changed. Back in the day, 5 dollars was all that it took.

As it turns out there still is a pub that still does 5 dollar steaks. I went there with a friend who insisted 5 dollars was the only way to go. It’s a 25 minute walk which on a sunny Friday afternoon means that you spend 10 dollars on beer in intermediate pubs, so count your blessings. But it is true. 5 dollars gets you fries, 300 gram of steak and mushroom sauce. And it is pretty good.

It’s not just the steak, there’s 5 dollar sushi lunch, 6 dollar bacon & egg breakfast with decent coffee and even cheaper Chinese food of course. It is quite a difference with the situation in Zurich where a packet of nuts tends to cost around that amount. I was talking to a friend of mine who is also a recent immigrant from Switzerland and he said, here a good steak is 7 dollars, in Zurich it is 25 franks (32 dollars).

I was about to nod in agreement, but then I started to wonder where do you get a steak for 25 franks in Zurich? I asked my friend. ‘ah, the supermarket’, he said.