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Bird's eye view of a tapas and jamon restaurant called Portello Rosso

Once upon a time, in a winter wonderland called Melbourne, there was a lady called Tubbymistress and a tapas-slash-jamon restaurant called Portello Rosso. Their long-awaited rendezvous took place on an icy Saturday night in June – not so much a meeting of minds as a meeting of empty stomach with Spanish-inspired food …

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The pork belly (background) and eggplant (foreground): two dishes on offer at Izakaya Den

SOMETIME IN THE LATE 1980s

Little Tubbymistress is sitting on the carpet in her primary school classroom, cross-legged, petite and shy. Despite her small stature – and a brain that has never loved processing numbers – she has no hesitation belting out the 10 times table with three other children in her class, harmonising in the monotone, singsong way that primary school children do.

As she sang, Little Tubbymistress could not know that basis mathematics (and a lack of research) would be her undoing some twenty years later. In May 2010, a section of Russell St became a catwalk for the hungry and navigationally challenged, as three Melburnians searched in vain for one elusive number.

LITTLE TUBBYMISTRESS (sings earnestly): Fifteen 10s are … hun-dred and fiff-ty!

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The Big Vic, in all its glory

EARLY ON A SATURDAY MORNING
It’s a calm, crisp Melbourne morning. Tubbymistress is ‘jogging’ along the beach, her ragged breathing punctuating the sound of children laughing and women talking on their iPhones. The bay is a serene shade of blue, its waves too sleepy to cause more than a ripple. Suddenly, a beacon of light looms up ahead.

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