How decadent is this? It’s 9 pm on Monday night and we put ourselves in the hands of chef Mark Best at Marque for the 14 course degustation plus matching wines. It ends at Midnight with plate licking, my plate licking, leaving me some $250 lighter for what was a sensational evening.
I was egged on by Mel and Reem. But also I was trying to outdo somebody I’d met earlier that evening, Chocolatesuze, who has become a hero simply because she eats Adriano Zumbo for breakfast.
Really the only way I’m going to be more outrageous is to install chocolate fountains in our bedroom. I’ve ordered a white chocolate fountain for my twitter widow’s (twidow’s) bed side table and a dark one for mine. A milk chocolate fountain is to be installed at my desk, from where I have been conducting my Twitter conversation with @markbest.
And that is how come I came to his fine dining room of starched white linen. Meanwhile, Reem was keen having bumped into Best while he was standing outside the restaurant, tweeting in the street.
What we have is the nexus of modern food, ideas, technology and it turns out reality TV - he was featured on Masterchef tonight - all in one place. Our adventure into whimsy, art, flavour, texture and temperature kicks off with champagne and fairy light beetroot-pink macarons sandwiched together with a pate of foie gras. And with the fortunate juxtaposition of cleavage and meringue (above), it gives the impression of deconstructed nipples, which I believe is a world first.
Coffin Bay virgin Pacific oyster with grilled sea foam
It’s no surprise to see the famous chaud-froid (hot-cold) free range egg first put on the menu by Alain Passard in 1998, to whom Best gives credit on the menu. But the interpretation of foam, usually wispy bubbles that the faintest breeze would pop, is replaced by one as thick as shaving foam - the Noxzema brand to be precise. The idea is to eat the whole, the caramelized layer on top and the meaty oyster below, a dish - as are most here - with enough dimensions to confound Stephen Hawking.
Slow cooked pork jowl with spinach and Pacific oyster. Matched with 2007 Pierre-Marie Chermete “Les Griottes” Beaujolais, Burgundy
Next is a lesson in design minimalism, slices of scallop as thin as a banknote surrounding a scampi anglaise - scampi custard - scattered with fish floss and offset both visually, texturally and in taste by the unlikely but surprisingly good contrast of small bitter cubes of Campari introduced to the scallop/custard/floss continuum.
I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves on my Flickr set. The ocean trout dish a play on deconstructing gravadlax and a counterpoint to what has come before and what comes next; a dish that I think is one of the highlights of the night in the mouth rather than in the eye - warm crab custard & frozen foie gras.
I’m anti foie gras in Australia, not for ethical reasons, but because the imported pasteurized or tinned stuff isn’t as good as the fresh. But this freeze dried dish won me over with its texture, that of melting chocolate.
The meat courses that follow are equally delicate and artistically seductive: duck, pork and wagyu. Each is satisfyingly, again in their multi dimensional way keeping my bouche, eyes and mind engaged.
So I’m at the end, the time the Tokay Martini arrived. You already known about the collision of my tongue with plate. And it’s a very a good thing.
Rutherglen “espresso”: Rutherglen Tokay, splash of Kahlua Especial 70 proof
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Creamy porridge 1 measure of cheap rolled oats
1 measure milk
1 measure and a bit more water
A substantial pinch of salt
Cook slowly, for an hour or so. Serve with drizzled honey and milk
There is one secret I want to share with you. It’s the reason I’m not the size of Falstaff - or if you are into serial TV rather than theatre in the round - Hurley from Lost.
It’s the reason, aside from years of hard-core military style yoga, impersonal training and even a long weekend spent with the SAS, that I have buttocks tight enough to crack a walnut, ankles shapely enough to sport Manolo Blahnicks and a potted belly that only measures 38 inches in circumference.
It’s the reason that despite having spent nearly 20 years at restaurant tables accumulating unfortunate stains on my trousers, and ruining enough Hermès ties to pay for Matt Preston’s entire dressing-up box ensemble of cravats, that I can survive a surfeit of lampreys and have not suffered cardiac arrest.
Here it is: I do not eat modern, healthy slimming breakfast cereals. I would rather shred the box of a modern cereal and eat that that its contents, which I can only assume have been swept from the bottom of a hamster cage, dyed pink and encrusted with sugar.
My secret is porridge. It is my winter alternative to my summer diet of various permutations of fruit, plain yoghurt, honey and nuts.
Don’t waste your money on easy or quick oats that take only 150 seconds to cook. The same goes for brands, such as Uncle Tobys’ where you will be paying for the sponsorship of some gorgeous, broad-shouldered Aryan who has Olympian ambitions (and would rather be eating that most nationalistic of snacks, the ANZAC biscuit).
I buy the cheapest home brand rolled oats. And I cook them slowly, which is the key.
Get up early and get them going - boiling - on the stove top. Then place in a preheated oven at 90C or so.
Feed the dog. Try to avoid leaving the house in track suit pants or bright white trainers. Walk the aforementioned dog for an hour or so enjoying the morning light playing on Port Phillip Bay (or Sydney Harbour).
Return home, and serve with more milk and brown sugar - palm sugar or honey if it pleases you - and watch the inches fall away.
Neil Perry (left), Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal (bald). Courtesy of the Melbourne Wine and Food Festival.
On the SBS Food site you can see my story on meeting Thomas Keller at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival earlier this year. Like most chefs of his calibre, he is charming and practiced and I got a lot out of him in some 20 minutes, more than there was space for in my profile on him.
I’ve included some raw quotes from him below. And if you follow the link below you can hear the the entire 23 minutes I spent talking with him (minus my dumb intro of myself).
“Pure creativity doesn’t really exist. Everything is here. The world’s here. It was given to us by whatever means. Everything around you is here to use. And I think the biggest thing for anybody is to have a sense of awareness of where they are, where they are in the world, where they are in place and if you are aware of what’s around you in a constant way then you open up to inspiration. Inspiration is the key, it’s not creativity, it’s inspiration. So being being aware of what’s around you so that you can be open to inspiration and once you recognise that inspiration to be able to interpret it as something that’s meaningful for you. You can be inspired by anything. It doesn’t have to be something I see in the kitchen or something I read in a book, it could be anything. I could be walking down the street and see something and all of a sudden it’s a flash of inspiration and then it’s interpreted to something that is meaningful for me. In many cases it’s about food and it’s evolution. I think awareness, inspiration, interpretation and evolution are key components to what we as human beings call creativity.”
On the kitchen environment:
“Historically kitchens have been somewhat of an aggressive environment if you will and I certainly was raised in that kind of a kitchen. Many times things were very aggressive whether it was a chef or cook. And something I wanted to change in my kitchen was just that. We want to maintain a sense of respect, a sense of comradery, a sense of team. And I think that’s really the most important thing. Not to say that things don’t get emotional or things don’t get heated once in a while. We are in a kitchen and the chef is trying to give something to his guests and god forbid anything come between him and that guest whether a chef de partie, or a waiter or a captain or anything like that. It really is about getting everybody on the same page in the entire restaurant. The guest is our goal and we are trying to not only give our guests a great experience but give us a great experience. Us in the kitchen, us in the dining room, us in the entire restaurant. I think if we can treat each other respectfully and have a really good working relationship with everybody in all parts of the restaurant and its one that we feel comfortable in, one that we feel successful in. And ultimately one that we like to participate in. And if we are enjoying that partipation in our workplace, then we are going to do a better job.”
Even before all my dirty pork talk on Twitter I was typecast as the salami guy. During the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival I hosted a discussion on salami with the big sausages from Don. It got messy with a late night on the town with a few of us and a couple of wide-girth extra spicy salami.
Then I’m invited to the salami making day at De Bortoli in the Yarra valley with guest, fellow twitterer and blogger Tammi as it happens who got her hands dirty with pig.
Ribs, simply seasoned with salt and pepper, aren’t much more memorable than when they come straight from the slaughtered pig to the BBQ to the mouth, gnawed at and torn at cave man - or woman - style. Hot chestnuts burnt our fingers and mouths. Last year’s Salami filled our bellies.
What astonished me is the interest in making salami and the slaughtering of pigs, in this case three porkers, fattened on acorns, called brick, stick and straw. I guess there is a movement back towards the origins of what we eat among genuine enthusiasts. Then there are the ones who just want to turn up for the ride or the booze.
I kept myself respectable, being paid to write a thing or two about the day despite a couple of pre-9am grappas, later a young sangiovase straight from the barrel, and strips cut from whole BBQ’d pig as well as last years salami.
Or should that be knobs off?
On the surface Miele is the brand to buy. It’s solid, doesn’t discount and sponsors most of the important food events. It is the backbone of the mobile kitchens at Prahran Market.
Then why am I left so angry by my stove top? Because it is really badly designed, has plastic knobs which broke off within a few months and because it costs about twice as much as, for instance, Smeg.
Miele also invoices direct so retailers can’t discount. But because I packaged it with a shitload of stuff, the retailer applied a discount to everything else. That means I didn’t pay full price for Miele (Yah boo sucks to you) anyway. This included my Qasair extraction system which is custom installed semi-industrial and which is probably the best you can buy. And I don’t say that lightly.
I’m not saying I expect the hob to be durable enough to survive cooking for several brigades of storm troopers invading Poland. But I do expect it to be robust enough to survive the vigourous shuffling of pans and the odd -okay, quite frequent - pot boiling over in the hands of a brigade of onefood wanker cooking for two.
On the plus side the hob has nice heavy trivetts and I’m sure if I was igeneous enough I could disable a modern day T-90 Russian tank with them.
There are several problems with my Miele hob. On the design the raised panel with the knobs raises the knobs too high, above the hight of a pan on the trivetts so when you pull the pan towards you it hits the knob knocking it off. Remember these are cheap plastic knobs and after several months of being knocked off plastic bits broke off so it is difficult to operate the knobs now.
The burners although seemingly robust are not. The rivets on one have corroded and the whole unit has fallen apart. What I’m cooking here is stocks and soups, not concentrated sulphuric acid or making home made explosives.
I regret leaving my Ilve in Sydney. But them Stephen Downes had problems with Ilve and on his comparatively low profile blog attracted some 27 comments from people griping about their stoves.
It’s a sad time that it is so difficult to find, outside Choice, any independent advice. Food glossies certainly don’t give this advice and that’s perhaps why they lost their way, because they have been led astray by big spending advertisers like Miele. Or Ilve for that matter.
There’s a lot to be said for ethnic restaurants. They usually offer big, cheap hearty meals often cooked from the heart.
They also often offer the chance to reacquaint oneself with monosodium glutamate, fluorescent strip lighting, surly service and dodgy lino.
Then there’s The Abyssinian (277 Racecourse Road Kensington, Victoria 3031, 03 9376 8754), run by two Eritreans, which has taken the genre to another level and avoided all the crap which is why it was packed out the night we were there.
First there’s the look. The bar could be from an exotic resort anywhere on the African continent. The wooden tables and chairs are simple and solid and look great. Meanwhile, the walls are backed with African paraphernalia. It really works.
I’m not the only one who thinks this. I was eating with my favourite viking, photographer and Photoshop guru from the land of ice who together with her fiance - an up-and-coming architect - who have an eye for such things.
The service is run by Vittorio Silvestro, who is an Italian Eritrean and brings great service to the restaurant floor and really cares whether or not we are enjoying ourselves.
Then there is the kitchen run by Rahel Ogbaghiorghi, a former freedom fighter who has made her home in Melbourne. What a story (I need to interview her).
The food centres around large dustbin lid-sized shared plates of either vegetable, meat or fish served either with flat or rolled Injera, a sort of giant savoury scotch pancake. It’s made by mixing a special flour with water and letting it ferment.
The idea is to rip of some bread and pinch up some food to eat. Not only does it save washin-up but I’m guessing some small corner of the environment.
Our starter for $6 was a huge portion of Melanzany, garlicky grilled cubes of marinated eggplant that come with chilli and rolled injera.
We followed with Hoswa, mixed vegetables with Injera ($17), slowly cooked cubes of lamb called Zighini ($18) and Goat on Kemmam Sauce ($20), slowly cooked with cloves and cinnamon with the outstanding spice cardamom.
The wine list fits with the vibe and the price of $117 for four bellyfuls and more than we could eat. Let me say that again, $117 for food and wine for four. A litre carafe or red costs $20 or $6 a glass and goes well with the dishes that we requested to be authentically spicy.
This is the kind of place that is really for this credit crunchy moment. It’s delicious and hearty, comes in huge portions and won’t break the bank - you could easily eat for about $20 a head which means I’m nominating The Abyssinian for Very Cheap Eats.
On the bombshell that the Herald Sun is dropping the Gordon Ramsay cookery column on Tuesdays, the craggy-faced man arrives in town and we are invited to see him pre Tracey Grimshaw.
I reckon he’s wearing heel lifts in his trainers and looking a bit taller than when he was last in town, has a better hairdresser and highlights and has had a bollock-load of botox.
He forehead is more wrinkled than my scrotum and frozen solid. I didn’t see it move either in the exclusive LG enclosure or on stage.
The thing about Ramsay is that despite Channel 9 overcooking him three nights a week, he’s bloody funny in that cheeky naughty “sorry vicar” English Carry On movie way.
For the media he’d been prepped with what was basically a statement (see video) about the poor state of his company’s health, a clever move. Almost as clever as not answering questions, just circulating around the room and having his picture taken with a mainly female crew of journalists.
On stage he is a better stand-up comedian than either Steve Coogan or Dylan Moran. Coogan just isn’t made for the stage; Moran has sunk into child-bearing smugness, vomit.
Gordon tells the audience about his new show “Gordon Ramsay’s bedroom nightmares”. He jokes that his son should eat his carrots so his knob will grow big. And his daughters are told to eat their spuds so their tits would grow. Oh, and then he talks about the dog getting it’s lipstick out…I won’t say anymore as social workers could be reading. But I did get in trouble when I tried the same gags on some friends kids over the weekend.
And he can cook, and cook well and engage the audience.
The big surprise was that the audience was a bit less than half full for his opening gig. The crowd sort of roared. As far as I can tell nobody wet themselves and all knickers were kept strictly in their correct place. Later that evening I heard via twitter, they were giving away tickets.
Last time Ramsay was in town he did a secret gig at his mate Michael Lambie’s pub Lamaro’s. He was a lot of fun and I’m told when he arrived back at the Como hotel a gaggle of girls was waiting in reception.
This time I didn’t get a chance to ask cheeky questions. I didn’t get a chance to ask him about this hairdresser, the gay rumours or the rumoured Brazilian Transvestite deal with the News or the World.
But I had a lot of fun, more fun than Gordon will be having now his wife Tana has him on a tight leash.
Coming soon: Gary and George on video hint that Masterchef goes abroad to cook with truffles.
The other week Christian Lander the author of the blog and now best selling bookStuff White People Like was in town.
Basically Stuff White People Like is a bit like Top Trumps for White People. I’ll trump you some Murray River Salt and an Ortiz anchovy over your iodised salt and a pilchard. The same goes for my imported Arneis ($75) over yours from the King Valley ($20).
Typical. Just as the world peaked Paul Levi, the man who had no small part in bringing us the slightly dubious word “Foodie”, launches the Gastrosexual, a man with more dazzling kitchen tools than penile length.
I’ve never had much truck for foodies (although a few of you are okay). I’ve met too many who know nothing whatsoever about food. If you would like to see this variety you only have to watch Masterchef which is packed full of wannabes who mostly have no idea how to shop (cottage cheese with sun dried tomatoes) or cook (raw chicken, insipid tarte tatin) for that matter.
The Gastrosexual is pretty scary too although now thanks to the global financial crisis is an endangered species. I think I’ve seen a few at the Farmers’ market on a Saturday morning with the trendy haircut and sunglasses, the designer kid and a yummy mummy pushing a SUV-sized pram with sharp knives attached to the wheels.
The problem is that nowadays there is as much food wankerdom and wine wankerdom and both of the above contribute to these pandemics. And it needs to be stopped.
Here are the surefire signs that you have become a food wanker:
1 Only ever eat single origin chicken.
Yes, you insist on knowing the origins of everything you eat. “Oh is this Bangalow Pork/free range Barramundi,” you ask. Well, yes those vegetables are straight from the Werribee sewage treatment plant. “Oh, that’s okay then.” Can we all afford the $20 Louise Vuitton chicken nowadays? Perhaps it’s time to switch to the perfectly good $6.95 one at Coles.
2 Order only Spanish Jamon
What? “Is Don. Is no good?” You have to have Jamón Ibérico de Bellota made from the famous black Iberican pig which is fed (free range of course) only on fallen acorns in an ancient forest. But you lost your job in investment banking/advertising/property development. So you buy some of the cheaper Spanish stuff ‘cos Spanish is best. Sorry pal, but most of that ham is made from Canadian pig carcasses imported into Spain, cured and exported to gullible Australians. There is, if you look hard enough, plenty of good Australian small goods being made. But we are obsessed with everything European. The only thing worse than eating this ham at home is paying five times the price in a restaurant,usually somewhere around $1 a gram.
3 Shop at Farmers’ Markets
First there are the people (see above) and then there is the produce. Gnawed on apples, bullet hard peaches, some sort of Jam and/or chutney containing inappropriate ingredients, oversmoked bacon and weepy looking cheeses. And it costs more than the supermarket, where I have never yet trodden on dog shit.
4 Always drink unpasteurized milk.
Nuff said.
5 Only ever cook in expensive copper pots.
All the better if you’ve bought your a complete set of second hand copper pots from “a nice little man” in Provence, shipped them back to Australia at huge expense. All that to burn them making a truffle oil (a sure wankerdom sign) risotto in them.
6 You experiment with Ferran Adria style cooking and spherification.
The trouble is everybody who came round for supper went home with diarrhoea because you didn’t wash your hands or equipment properly. Here’s some news: Ferran Adria has moved on from spherification and foam. He is also a genius. You are more like Aaron from Masterchef who destroyed some peas only to reform them with added chemicals.
7 You have a set of Japanese chef’s knives with a “Damascus” blade.
Your knife skills are lacking though and you can’t even cut an onion properly. Then you sliced an apple which took on the onion flavour. Oh, and the first time you washed them they went rusty. That’s a bit embarrassing.
8 You own a $5,000 Pacojet.
This is a new-fangled machine that freezes and then finely shaves your “frozen matter” into the the occasional sorbet (unless you are a working chef). If it is so good then why do you have a 5 gallon tub of Blue Ribbon in the freezer?
9 You spent over $3,000 on a coffee machine.
Fair enough if you are into coffee. But this particular model is grey and plastic, a Saeco Primea Touch ($3,399), and looks like the dashboard of a cheap Mercedes. Couldn’t you at least buy something big and shiny with steam engine like controls for the same price? Opps, sorry your friend did. He can’t make decent coffee either?
10 Offal, offal and bones everywhere.
Who’d have though offal would have become so pretentious? Nobody really wants to gnaw on a discarded section of pigs anus. The same goes for fish or any animal bones or the hairy bits. Chicken breast or sausages please.
11 Take photo’s of your food
This is the most highly suspect practice of all. But at least you’ve learnt enough the switch the flash off and open the aperture for guerilla restaurant photography. The fact is that your friends are all feeling a bit embarrased about it and would love it if you would just put it away…I’ve been told.
It was an epic journey from St Kilda up to Gertrude St and then down to Gigibaba at Smith St followed by an epic meal. We left at 5.30 in the evening to ensure we would find two seats in this hot Turkish joint, arriving at the working class tea time of 6.15pm. Along the way we bumped into various well known food characters on Gertrude St. I even considered moving nearby.
My paternal grandfather made a similar epic journey to Turkey in 1915. On the way he met and helped bury on Skyros the poet Rupert Brooke.
Edward Charles finally made it to Turkey. But as is often the case when our family go abroad he quickly returned home with a tummy bug, to be precise dysentery.
My last trip to Istanbul was enjoyable but not for the food, despite the Lonely Planet Guide declaring:
“It is well worth travelling to Turkey just to eat. Turkish cuisine is thought by many to rank with French and Chinese as one of the world’s great basic cuisines.”
Luckily nothing awful happened with the preparation or as a consequence of the food at Gigibaba (102 Smith Street, Collingwood
+61 9486 0345) . But we left waddling and with sore tummies.
I may have lost count but for $55 each we were served 22 savoury courses, three sweet and a coffee - to top off our liquid refreshment, selected from a compact list of Australian and European wines.
At several points I began panicking. First because I was faced with about a dozen small plates on the table and I was overwhelmed by the onslaught as more arrived. Then it was because I’d reached the Mr Creosote point. If one more small second-hand plate of food was sent out I was very likely to explode and leave a nasty mess on the oriental carpet that is cut to fit the far wall of the room.
That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the food. It is good and most savoury courses are one of those Mediterranean variations of olive oil, tomato, peppers, oily fish, lamb, olive, eggplant and so on.
If anything we ordered wisely choosing the $55 degustation. On the journey up on the 96 Tram I twittered my intentions, and later that there were some spaces available, with the following responses:
“Good Luck!!! Always difficult, even for us locals. Enjoy the worlds most expensive hommos.”
“Watch your jacket, I had mine stolen from the coat rack by the front door.”
“Maybe all the orange-t-shirts who used to go there were scared off when Larissa Dubecki muscled them out of the queue…”
“Perhaps they’re scared off by the prices.”
The food we were sent could have fed three or four instead of two which makes it great value.
The wine is too and I especially like their attitude to it. Everything is available by the glass up through various carafe sizes to a whole bottle. This means to my twitter widow’s surprise - and mine - I drank less than usual.
And so it was time to return to St Kilda. After the first short leg of the journey home I laid the twidow in the recovery position in the courtyard of the Gertrude St Enoteca smoking a whole pack of Matt Prestons aka Peter Stuyvesant. My own resuscitation was attempted with the good part of a case of Averna.
Still early, we trekked on across the city and eventually down Hosier Lane beneath the foul smelling extractor fan from Movida Next Door.
And as in the custom in these situations, we bumped into Dani Valent plus one, fresh from her own epic with the altogether much more expensive Greg Malouf at Momo.
DoI wish I’d been there? Yes. But Gigibaba is less than half the price.
Outside at the Langham I finally managed to catch Sat Bains, an English chef with Indian heritage who has one Michelin star for his Nottingham restaurant and hotel.
He’s big,black bald and ballsy. Plus he also swears a lot. He was one of the highlights of the many Michelin starred chefs attending the 09 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
“Marco (Pierre White) made a big impression on us because White Heat was out when I was 18/19 and it blew me away. I thought who was this guy. Within three hours I had read his book. I had read it ten times within a week. Blown away. Saw a guy crazy, didn’t know his name. Half French, half Italian. Didn’t know who he was. Crazy hair. Rock ‘n’ Roll lifestyle. Smoking. It was everything. It was like ‘Oh shit’ I want to be a chef.
“He put British cooking on the map. He was the first British chef to get three stars. Blown us away. He was a great kickstart to the state Britain is now. Marco helped kickstart that loyalty to British chefs.
“It is a bit of a gastronomic desert (in Nottingham). So we just do what we do. I’ll be honest it doesn’t matter where I am. Surely a gastronmic restaurant or a Michelin star restaurant shouldn’t have to be someone to make it good. It is about the food that you get when you are there.
“So these snobbish fucking journos that are too lazy to get off their fucking arse in London because itis inconvenient. Fuck em I don’t want em.”
Here he gives some great insight into his philosophy for using only local produce while he smokes an imported cigarette. Listen to the full 10 minutes below:
So the other Saturday the Melbourne Wine Room at The George had the boot boys in. Liquor Licensing Victoria sent in its storm troopers to shut the place down mid-service on a Saturday night.
The only way they could have been anymore heavy handed would have been to raid the kitchen and Tazer Karen Martini before bundling her off in a sack in the back of a dark-windowed SUV.
When I saw the sign on the door I was put into a mild panic. The George is a home from home for snacks, booze, long lunches, rows with my twitter widow (twidow) and more booze - all consumed responsibly, of course.
The details in this story are petty and dull, full of red tape. It was about the wrong name - a partner in the business who’d left a year earlier - being on a license. It was an oversight but it meant the business was closed for almost a whole week.
It was therefore time to return and eat Sunday lunch (incidentally there is a set meal cooked by a distinctly unTazered Martini most Sundays nowadays and next on June 5).
The wine list is brilliant here and if you know what you are doing you’ll start with a Trumer, a glass of white or a champagne - perhaps all three - and put yourself in their hands.
Then it is to the food. We didn’t go for Martini’s set menu but it looked brilliant and we will when we return for Sunday lunch. Instead we went for a mix of old favourites and some of the new.
The twidow has a starter-sized smoked trout salad. I know this sounds boring but Karen Martini is the master at composing salads, possibly the best in Australia. Twidow then follows it with a large starter of room temperature vitello tonato, a simple and desirable classic topped with plenty of sliced eggy goodness.
I deviated from my norm and went for a sardine tarte, good but very vinegary - perhaps too much for me. I followed by Cotechino sausage on a bed of lentils served with sliced mustard fruits and a deep fried artichoke heart. What I love about this dish is the rich flavours and contrasting textures. As long as it is on the lunch menu a Tazer will be required to stop me ordering it.
Then comes the quince tarte tatin, taken daringly close to the the dark caramelised edge. The problem with most of these upside down caramelised tarts is that they don’t take the caramelisation far enough and serve insipid light brow affairs.
This was dark, very dark with crispy and chewy bits. I was a ballsy move. I scoffed it down with a Richard Wilkins-coloured Beaune de Venise.
And the flavors lingered nearly as long as the recent liquor licensing problem. And now a Tazer will be required to keep me away from that too.
My mission is to find inner-Melbourne’s best high-end burger and the Botanical was at the top of my list.
Last year, invited by erstwhile executive chef Paul Wilson, I spent a pleasant lunch stuffing myself with oysters from the size of a fingernail to a fist. We tasted various breeds and cuts of grass and grain fed beef. And we drank. And laughed.
But the real discovery was what I dubbed the best chips in Melbourne, constructed to the Heston Blumenthal thrice cooked formula (few dishes are genuine originals in Australia) without the peanut oil and served in a plain milk-shake container.
What arrived on Saturday last week one of my biggest eating disappointments (besides Brown & Do) this year. The wagyu beef was dry; the brioche at odds with the meat. The best thing about the dish was a perfectly fried duck egg and perhaps the pancetta. The worst the $29.50 price.
The chips weren’t crisp and on reflection should have been returned. I’m not taking the piss, but McDonald’s serves better fries.
My Twidow (twitter widow) ordered a club sandwich with poached chicken, tarragon aioli, roasted tomatoes, bacon & avocado that cost a whopping $25. It was good but not astonishing.
What we are talking about here is a restaurant with two hats. It is meant to be at the top of its game in Melbourne.
But we are also talking about a restaurant and pub that was mopped up by Cornerstone Hotels in 2007 in one of the most stupid investments since tulipomania. At what was plainly at the peak of the market Cornerstone paid $65 million for a portfolio of pubs and soon found it couldn’t make its interest payments.
Paul Wilson was out, the company in administration. Some of the properties sold off with Luke Mangan picking-up up The Palace in Port Melbourne, presumably to cater to the breakfast TV crowd.
What I read into my $140 Botanical snack lunch (with a beer and three glasses of wine) is a once great restaurant in decline.
Neil Perry’s minimalist Wagyu burger at The Rockpool Bar and Grill is still at the top of the league and is where I’ll next be spending $140 on a snack lunch.
Victorian local produce is really buzzing right now. There are plenty of local chefs promoting it but a special mention has to go to Royal Mail Head Chef Dan Hunter who this week was awarded “Outstanding Use of Regional Produce by a Chef” at the 2009 Vogue Entertaining + Travel Produce Awards.
But there is much more happening out there. The issue is being pushed partly because of government support of the regions post bushfires and because of the drought. And there are passionate people who believe in it such as Frank Burger, food and beverage manager at the gigantic hi-tech and eco friendly Melbourne Convention Centre which opens in July.
At a state government level this is manifest by funding a fantastic new retail project at Prahran Market. The plan is for a stall where small regional producers can sell their goods for a few dollars a day. It sounds like an excellent initiative. And if you are passionate about local produce and want to be involved in this project Prahran Market is advertising the $50,000+ job at I Eat I Drink I Work.
What Frank Burger and executive chef Shaun Bowles have done at the new Melbourne Convention Centre is create the biggest showcase for local produce quite possibly in the southern hemisphere. Typically, these sorts of places have bulk deals for food and drink, with Fosters and Coca Cola being at the top of the list for drink. Burger has pretty much torn these bulk supply contracts up and decided to make life difficult for himself by sourcing everything direct from local producers.
To start with Sauvignon Blanc is pretty much banned. You certainly won’t find any of that nasty NZ melted sweet/acid drop variety there. Instead, he would serve you one of the new wave of extremely pleasing unoaked new wave of Victorian Chardonnays. You’ll find the latest de Bortoli sparkling, Crawford River and other great value wines he has has dug out by actually visiting vineyards in the regions.
The proscuitto-style ham you see being carved above is picked-up direct from Daylesford. Producers sourced include Red Hill Cheese, Bill’s Farm
at Victoria Market, Sher Wagyu at Ballan, Salute Olive Oil, Green Eggs and Yarra Valley Salmon. He has snuffled out an old Chinese men in Box Hill to exclusively make dumplings, Italians to supply pasta and so on.
Executive Chef, Shaun Bowles said (and you’ve caught me quoting from a press release here): “We prefer to use small, artisan suppliers to ensure the best possible quality and, in many cases, flexibility to produce to specific requirements. For large scale events, we give our suppliers plenty of notice so they can deliver the quantities required. We also go right back to the raw ingredient wherever possible and then utilise the equipment, skills and experience of our kitchen teams to do things like smoke and cure salmon and prepare bread and pastries on site.”
This is in a giant convention centre which contains 7,800 designer chairs than retail at $1,200 each. It’s a place with the kind of presentation technology that if you are called Dr Evil, Blofeld or Obama and are demanding a huge amount of money to save the world (thanks Sun subs) you would want to be.
The point I’m making is, even at that the scale of fine dining in Dan Hunter’s kitchen, it takes a real effort to source local produce. And he does from the likes of Mount Zero olives and lentils, Grampians Pure Sheep milk, yoghurt and cheeses, Hopkins River Beef, Glenloth Game birds and Warrnambool butter.
Imagine what it’s like if you are feeding some 7,000 people a day. That’s commitment.
was in town.
