Remember when "What You Want!" was as polite as it got?

Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, before Sydney worked out that peking duck deserved better than a curious glance and a dog meat joke, before it ended up vacuum sealed next to the lasagne at Coles for a quick microwave dinner, there was a very specific kind of restaurant I grew up eating in that doesn't really exist anymore. And weirdly, I miss it.

These were the days I'd copped it at school for my packed stir fried bean sprouts and rice, and Mohammed copped it for his cucumber wrapped in leb bread, and some random freckled face kid would hold his nose like I'd smuggled in a dead animal. Meanwhile Gavin's Vegemite and cheese sandwich that actually smelt like dead fish, was somehow acceptable lunch. Funny how a sandwich made of mystery black spread and fermented milk gets a free pass and rice doesn't.

Then the weekend would come and undo all that shame in one sitting. You know the type of place, the obviously Asian, slightly dodgy looking shopfront your Aussie mates would never walk into on their own, laminated menus gone sticky with years of soy sauce residue, dusty bottles of chilli oil and soy sauce sitting on every table like they'd been there since even before the dinosaurs went extinct.

The person behind the counter was never "my friendly host," it was aunty or uncle, almost certainly related to whoever was cooking, and they had approximately zero interest in whether I felt welcome.

I'd walk in and get one of two responses. Either total silence, just a flat stare that made me feel like I'd wandered into their actual living room uninvited, or three words delivered in a tone cold enough to freeze the soy sauce solid: "what you want!" Not a question mark in sight. I didn't get a recommendation, I got a decision made for me, on the spot.

Niceness was rationed strictly to the people aunty actually knew, ideally by their kid's name and what school they went to. Everyone else, myself included half the time, got the bare minimum required to legally complete a transaction. I'd order, get looked at like I'd personally insulted the family ancestors, and sit down anyway. Because the food was that good, and everyone in the room had silently agreed the trade was fair.

I'm not saying bring back the cold shoulder. Genuinely, being treated like a customer instead of a convict is objectively better, and I'll take today's "hello welcome" energy every time. But there was something almost reassuring about a chef so sure of their own cooking that they never bothered selling it to me with a smile and pretty pictures. I wasn't a guest they had to win over, they already knew their reputation far exceeds people's expectations. Somehow that confidence, rude as it was, tasted like the real thing.

Maybe I'm just nostalgic for my own trauma, the way people get misty eyed over old gangsta rap about impossible life choices compared to today's rap about Menulog and what to order. Or maybe that's what authentic actually tastes like.