After we returned from Wellington this afternoon, I went to go meet an Instagram friend for dinner at a popular Italian restaurant near Chris’s parents’ house. Chris’s parents had already been, and they said that an Italian client of Chris’s dad, originally from Rome, declared that it was one of the best Italian restaurants in the area. So that just added to my expectations for how good this place was going to be (not to mention that my Instagram friend is a huge foodie, so I figured she would have good judgment in choosing a spot!).

Usually, I am a bit wary of Italian restaurants because so many just have generic offerings, but given it’s a popular and “neutral” cuisine, the prices are always jacked up. This spot, Cucina & Co., was anything but generic. We shared a pear, rocket (arugula), and grana padano salad; eggplant parmigiana; spaghetti ai fruitti de mare (seafood spaghetti); the zucotta pizza (mashed pumpkin, buffalo mozzarella, sausage, thyme). We ended with a scoop each of gelato — she had chocolate while I had pistachio. And every single thing we got was just amazing. The pear and rocket salad was so fresh it seemed like everything was picked just before we ordered it; the spaghetti Napoli sauce was so addictive that I almost wanted to lick the plate, plus the seafood was perfectly cooked and fresh. The pizza was delicious as expected, but what shocked me the most was the eggplant parmigiana starter. Eggplant parmigiana has always felt hit or miss (mostly miss) to me. Most of the time, the eggplant layers are too thick, and the tomato sauce tastes bland. But this rendition had super thin layers of eggplant that pretty much just melted in your mouth. This was the best eggplant parmigiana I’d ever had in my life — I can say this for certain! And the ending of pistachio gelato was so rich, thick, and decadent: it tasted like loads of toasted and pureed pistachios mixed in with cream, milk, and sugar. All of that, plus two lemon and lime bitters drinks, and we spent only $45 USD each — what a bargain; that would never happen in New York City.

I met this Instagram friend during the pandemic when we each had our respective food channels on YouTube, and we were trying to build our Instagram presence. I messaged her out of the blue because I saw she was based in Melbourne, and we just started messaging on and off and clicked. We both love food (duh) and travel; she was married to a Sri Lankan while I was married to another brown guy with origins in India. 🙂 She’s a year younger than me, and after we started chatting, she gave birth in June 2021 to her baby boy. Kaia was born six months after that. So it felt like even though we were from very different parts of the world leading different lives that we had a lot in common. Since December 2022 when we came back post-pandemic, we met up with our babies; then in December 2023, we met at a children’s play museum with our kids, but given it was a museum, it was hard to have a real adult conversation since we were chasing our kids around everywhere. In December 2024, we had a Greek dinner catch up, and now we’ve met again for the fourth year in a row, also sans kids. We both get along really well and have a lot of opinions in common. She’s the kind of friend who, if we lived closer to each other, I’d imagine myself seeing fairly regularly. And of course, it helps that she loves to eat (and cook)!

I love having a friend down here I can meet up with that is separate from Chris’s people. I also love that I’ve made a couple friends through Instagram over the years. I have another Instagram “friend” who is based in Sydney. She doesn’t get out of Sydney much, but she told me that if I’m ever up there for a side trip that she’d love to have a meal with me. If we go back to Sydney, I’d definitely want to take her up on her offer because she does all the “project” cooking that I wish I had more time to do!