‘You’ve got cheese on it, so it won’t be so bad,’ Jennifer said. : In Land of Aus, Even Innocent Children Consume It

It wasn’t pretty, but somebody had to do it.

So I went to Jennifer’s Place in Woodland Hills recently and ordered a Vegemite sandwich.

Jennifer’s is a self-styled Australian cafe. And, as anyone whose child spent all of 1982 playing Men at Work’s “Down Under” knows, Vegemite is a self-styled Australian treat. People native to the koala continent, even innocent children, spread Vegemite on bread and put it in their mouths.

There is no accounting for taste, as the haggis lover observed.

Now I understand that certain culinary enthusiasms transcend the raw data provided by the senses. Some things taste good for reasons that are best described as mystical. Take milk toast--please.

Obviously, no sane adult would voluntarily ingest milk toast on its merits. But there are grown-ups who get so dewy-eyed at the thought of how sweet it was consumed on Mother’s lap that their taste buds short-circuit, and they approach a steaming bowl of the murderously bland stuff with the same emotions the fully lucid reserve for raspberry torte and frozen Mars bars.

The same nostalgic magic that turns nursery pap into ambrosia can accrue to regional dishes as well. I don’t give a damn that scrapple is made from pig’s lips. I’m from Philadelphia, and I say it’s great.

But Vegemite is a real puzzler for non-Aussies. I offered some of the dark, viscous yeast paste to a friend. He gave it an exploratory sniff and asked, “Do you rub it on sores?”

Even its California distributors recognize the limits of its appeal and confess right there in their advertising: BECAUSE VEGEMITE IS A CONCENTRATE, IT’S MIGHTY HARD TO LOVE ALL BY ITSELF.

I don’t buy that. I’ve only got a couple of rules about food, but I live by them. One is that, if you have to slather it with chocolate or cheese or something yummy before it’s palatable, why bother? Eat the chocolate straight, and cram the hard-to-love-all-by-itself stuff down the throats of your enemies. You can also try feeding it to pets dumber than the cats.

I learned that principle while living in the South where wily natives, still peeved about Reconstruction, try to trick hapless Yankees into eating grits by telling them how wonderful they taste with cheese. In Hawaii, I bet they urge mainlanders to try chocolate sprinkles on their poi. Even with cheese, even with sprinkles, grits and poi are enough to make you lose your faith in carbohydrates.

My second food rule occurred to me at Jennifer’s Place over a Vegemite sandwich: Never eat anything that smells like it used to be beer.

Jennifer McGrath, whose place it is, tried to reassure me as I took my first bite. “You’ve got cheese on it so it won’t be so bad,” she said. A lot of her customers, she added, love the stuff with cream cheese on a toasted bagel.

I rest my case.

Jennifer’s Place is one of several Australian restaurants in the Los Angeles area, catering to Australians in exile and Americans who believe they will go mad if they eat one more Thai or Cajun meal.

McGrath gets as sentimental as the next mate when she hears “Waltzing Mathilda,” but she doesn’t lie. When asked if there is a distinctive Aussie cuisine, she promptly answered, “Not really.” Her menu features lots of lamb dishes, beef sausages made locally according to her recipe, curries and such homeland desserts as lamingtons and rice bubbles. She also stocks Australian staples, hence, the jars of Vegemite and stacks of Four’n Twenty brand meat pies.

These are foods that displaced Aussies long for the way expatriate Americans dream of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Singer Helen Reddy, for example, regularly rings up to see if Jennifer has made trifle. “She has meat pie every time she comes in,” McGrath added.

Jennifer runs a catering business that is more American/French in its orientation than Australian. But her cafe is as Australian as joeys, Olivia Newton-John and “barbies,” or barbecues. Its clientele includes the occasional wildly naive curiosity-seeker who wonders what language people speak Down Under, a term eschewed by Australians, whose standard nickname for their homeland is “Aus,” pronounced “Oz.”

Many of Jennifer’s regulars make the pilgrimage to Woodlands Hills for High Tea or to hear a Sydney accent. Perhaps no one who hasn’t leaped into an alien culture understands how nourishing a meat pie can be, served by a woman who knows what a kookaburra sounds like.

McGrath, who came to the United States five years ago, loves California but misses her family back home, especially 15-year-old son Anthony. Some lovely things don’t travel well, like the scent of the Australian bush. Her native eucalyptus trees have a sweeter perfume than those that grow along the Ventura Freeway. “The dirt smells different, and the ferns. If I could package it, I’d make a mint,” she said, reaching over to finish my Vegemite sandwich.