Floating Islands of smoked milk with sweetcorn soup at Fenix
Was it the public or the critics? Or perhaps the public led by the critics.
With news that Fenix is closing its restaurant to concentrate on conferences it is a question to be asked.
Molecular cuisine never made it big in Australia. Perhaps this is because of the lack of local molecular gastronomists (the scientists behind the art of the cuisine) to work with local chefs in developing ideas.
Nevertheless more than a few chefs locally have tried to emulate the likes of Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal, none more so that Ray Capaldi at Fenix.
Tomatoes! Tomatoes! with basil dust and sorrell sorbet.
Fenix in turn spawned George Calombaris who made it as young chef of the year in 2004 for his molecular whimsy at Reserve just before the restaurant closed.
Now the last surviving overt practitioner is Robin Wickens at Interlude, itself a restaurant that had a bumpy financial ride until it found wealthy Hong Kong-based backers last year.
People simply don’t pop out for a foam and some synthesized caviar of undetermined flavour. They reserve that for the very occasional special occasion.
Cooking in liquid nitrogen
The good news is that the pure ideas of molecular gastronomy do live on in the techniques used by many chefs. You’ll find low temperature cooking – mostly sous vide – dehydrating and many other techniques alive and well. It’s there in a low key form in restaurants such as The Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld, Attica, Circa The Prince, Vue de Monde and Nobu.
I was lucky enough to review Fenix for The Age Good Food Guide last year, a year that Ray Capaldi had hoped to make two hats. I scored it higher than the 15.5 points that it got in print.
With my guest, who likes to hold her liqueur by the tongue and her drug dealer to ransom, I spent a pleasant evening on the terrace listening to the bellbirds’ whoops. She, rocking in dark jeans and a plunging neckline, felt underdressed for the venue. Everybody else was very smart and conservative. Think tweed jackets.
We couldn’t believe that this crowd had come all this way to have their tongues cleansed with a mousse (I nearly said mouse) “cooked” in liquid nitrogen.
Eventually, the bellbirds gave way to neighbouring chat of self managed super and opulent holidays in Paris.
Both of us near death from extremely rich deconstructed chocolate, it was time for hard liquor. But that adventure had nothing to do with molecular cuisine.
Chocolate: enough to fell a restaurant critic
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
And about bloody time, too.
I am all for innovation and pushing boundaries, but the MG movement, to me at least, always smacked of pretension and gastro-wank.
Let’s hope the NBT is something more accessible.
Look I love the ideas, respect the technique & wow at the results. However this isn’t food to nourish the soul, quell an appetite or reflect the nature of the produce. I understand that all food dosn’t have to fit in the aforemntioned categories, but I cant help but think of this as a fad.
A fad that has influenced & perhaps shaped the way we look at food forever but it is too far removed from what food means to me, to be seen as anything else.
It is less about hunger & eating & more about theatre. It is a high wire act. A curiously male take on controlling the elements, are there many woman practitioners of this virtuoso wizardry for instance?
Of course we have been transforming foodstuffs with chemical reactions for centuries & this is another, if extreme leap in this direction. Just because one can cook with liquid nitrogen dosn’t mean its gonna appeal.
Kitchens everywhere have started using these techniques & they are becoming more mainstream & eventually they’ll filter down to Woolies.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, a new fad will emerge in our insatiable quest for the new. (I hope its small regional restaurants in Southern Tasmania!)
It would be very difficult to really quantify why Fenix & Reserve faltered here. There are too many factors that have contributed, however, I would suggest that most people just want to eat something recognizable & this type of food experience perhaps challenges punters on too many levels to make it a regular dining choice.
So I wasn’t ignorantly scoffing at Interlude, I was merely *ahead of my time*. Excellent.
I tend to think that what kills molecular cuisine in Australia is just the small size of the Australian restaurant market and (for the people who are shelling out substantial amounts to eat) their inherent conservatism. My guess is that the most popular item on the menu of the more expensive restaurants in Australia are the ones that most closely align with chunk of meat plus starch.
I do hate the “foam-for-foam’s-sake” approach to molecular cuisine – as with any cooking technique, new techniques need to be used judiciously.
One of the strange things that I find with the techniques associated with molecular cuisine is that the techniques often appeared as part of the mainstream before they became popular in haute cuisine. Sous vide certainly filtered down to Woolies before it hit restaurants: has anyone eaten Lean Cuisine? It’s utter shite. Come to think of it, many of the techniques of molecular chefs are more popular in processed, industrial foods (e.g. meat glue/Activa; sous vide; foam as Cheez Wiz or cream in an aerosol can; the Pacojet; weirdo emulsifications). This doesn’t necessarily make them bad techniques but they need to be used while respecting the ingredients: witness Aki and Alex over at Ideas in Food .
Few artists and innovators have ever been appreciated in their life times. Later when we have had sufficent time to assess and understand those once outlandish concepts, the mainstream of society adapts the innovation as if it were ordinary.
When most Aussies hate tall poppies and find comfort in the simple or familiar whilst ridiculing those who swim against the tide, it must be hard for the most forward thinkers to hold to their ideals. For commercial success here it would appear necessary to water down and sugar coat the innovation until such a time as it becomes generally acceptable. ‘Slightly clever’ is always feted over genius here.
As for who can afford to eat at Fenix’s prices, most would be tweedy and conservative, for them Shannon Bennett’s offering would be considered more palatable.
Probably no more intellectual than the passing of yet another fad caught up by white collar dining Joneses. Just as jus gave way to sweet chilli jam/sauce, foam and sand will fade to be taken up by …?
Have to agree with you on the standard patronage at Fenix, it always puzzled me too. The same sort of crowd was quite common at Reserve as well, although there I always wrote it off as being a wine list thing.
It’s strange because both times I’ve been to Vue the crowd has seemed to be younger (or at least a little more mixed) and a fair bit “hipper” – the sort of crowd I would have expected at Reserve but they never seemed to go.
As for MG being dead, or being “wank”, I think the jury’s still out but the verdict doesn’t look good. Now that we can jump on to the web and order up our own Ferran chemistry kits and knock out coca-cola caviar, goats cheese foam or pistachio smoke I do think it’s jumped the shark (or it will have when I can pop down the newsagents and buy my Women’s Weekly Molecular cookbook).
Gregg
PG, I know what you mean. I wonder if people used to think a pizza was an over styled fad a few hundred years ago.
Gobbler, recognisable food, the trend towards small dishes, affordable dishes and also being in a desirable location rather than Sandwiched between Ikea and the river in the Richmond nomansland probably all contributed. Hope a regional cuisine trend arrives in souther Tassie but I guess like Molecular cuisine in Melbourne good food is a function of population density.
Phil, too right that lots of these chemical processes are available in Woolies. I’m horrified to se chefs using the same technology that brought us crab sticks. I hold Movida up as an interesting example of innovation and a restaurant that gets away with foam.
Sticky, you may be right about Australians who led for ten years by Howards head for the middle ground. I wonder if with a new PM comes a new fresh cuisine.
Towser, already sand has given way to retro crumbs. can anybody tell me the difference between sand and crumbs. Is one perhaps more like gravel than the other?
Gregg, interesting about who goes to Vue. I’ve never ben, put off by the fact I have to book months ahead and pay a deposit. Also, from what I’ve seen of the food on blogs it seems that Shannon has embraced many of the molecular techniques. Could it be that the wise chef indulges in molecular cuisine by stealth, embracing the techniques but, for christ’s sake, not mentioning the M-word.
Hi Ed
Regardless of the problems of small serves, tweedy customers and higher than average prices I for one am really sorry to see Fenix go.
Ray Capaldi was gutsy, adventurous, imaginative and sadly underrated by the press.
You can get a pretty decent pizza at dozens of places and there are uncountable restaurants that can produce a reasonably wholesoe, satisfying dinner – meat and two veg, chicken a la so and so or fish and whatever BUT most of them are pretty dull. Fenix was an exciting place to go to and a sad loss to the Melbourne restaurant scene
Capaldi deserves a eulogy and I think your article was a compliment to him
I hope he opens at the Mercy in December and I’ll certainly be there as soon as I can
Good luck to him
Elliott, I hardly said anything. I think you and many bloggers are far more daring and committed diners than many. Here’s to the Mercy if it follows that line and i shall certainly take my daring guest…
I was sorry to hear about Fenix closing. I saw Ray speak at Restaurant 07 in Sydney last year and he was incredibly passionate and savvy about the whole restaurant ‘game’, it is really that, and he has lost for this round. I reckon he will be back.
I’m interested in the comments about the style of diners at Fenix and Reserve, I think the same people were also dining at Jacques Reymond late last year, when I was there. He is dabbling with foams as well (unsucessfully, to my palate)and the food is as man-handled as the rest yet it did not have the lightness of touch that the others can be proud of.
Unfortunately, I think the tweed bridgade can afford this level of attention to detail yet, do they want it… I guess they have voted with their feet. When I dined at Mugaritz last year the diningroom was only a third full, if this level is finding it tough in a larger market then how can something similar and less recognised, in a smaller market hope to have a chance?
I’m concerned for The Royal Mail, I hope they are ready to pump some serious money into getting it rolling well.
Jack
‘I was lucky enough to review Fenix for The Age Good Food Guide last year, a year that Ray Capaldi had hoped to make two hats. I scored it higher than the 15.5 points that it got in print’, ha thats funny i distinctly remember you having plenty to say about your meal reviewing Fenix especialy the tomato dish, so much so that it sparked a mini confrontation with Ray himself. How short your memory is!!
This Tweed brigade that has been spoken about intrigues me. If I were to be very general & make a big call I would have to say that the current crop of eateries that are fiscally liquid are defined by this group of eaters. They are the ones predominatly with the moola & their haunts reflect this, from the appeal of the menus to the fixtures. Yes there are some exceptions but the restaurateurs & syndicates who have latched onto this aging baby boomer choo choo are reaping the rewards. Unfortunately though its not doing much for the (our) dining future in terms of pushing the envelope. But is this a bad thing?
The molecular mob have their patrons & to them we must be grateful as it is they who bankroll these leaps but I would guess most of them are still conservative in their tastes, despite flirtations with the alluring nature of this that appears to be challenging & exciting. How many of them end the night with the Emperors new clothes syndrome though, scared to admit they didn’t get it, didn’t find the corn-husk air, tasty or hot?
People like Paul Mathis, that ‘Cookie’ bloke & Con Christopoulous have been weaving their appeal from these baby boomers into the next generation of diners & have managed to do this in a deceptively easy way. They seem to have an idea of what the next gen of diners are looking for.
I wonder though if there will come a time when their formiddable handle on the scene will in turn be seen as old hat?
I dont think that molecular cuisine was the baton change that I think will have the most profound effect on the future of cooking in restaurants. If I can make a comparison I’d say M.C.is like the worldwide automotive industry having a last ditch stab at total ostentation, ridiculous power & sheer unpractibility of their cars before the big oil runs out & they have to come to their senses. It would have been a wild ride to a dead end.
Jack, luckily the man behind the Royal Mail has serious money but true I’ve often wondered about the viability.
Bob, Your memory serves you well. I think I’ve said before that I’m a tactile deviant which is partly why it offended me and I was making a point about overelaborate preparation of ingredients vs letting them shine on their quality alone as at Tempura Hajime. The quality of ingredients/cooking/experience was top notch at Fenix just that dish wasn’t my thing.
Gobbler, you’ve just reminded me to trade in a mini for a V8. Interestingly there is a totally different crowd at Interlude, they are a bit more funky. You’ve hit the nail on people who are creating experiences attracting the new generation of diners.
I definitely agree about the new style of dining.
I dined at Gills Diner on Tuesday (post to come) and loved it for all the reasons that I found Jacques hard to get my head around, and there wasn’t a tweed coat in sight, just a lots of funky arts-y crowd that like a casual but smart meal and interesting produce and wine.
Jack
Ed – Don’t knock the crabstick – the technology used to make those has been around for hundreds of years. The Japanese were making kamaboko/surimi for at least at a millenium, and I’m guessing that parts of Southern China can lay claim to the fish ball possibly earlier. The myosin that naturally occurs in the fish binds it all together rather than anything stranger (at least in the surimi version).
Jack, I realy want to try Gills but am waiting until I’m back on wine by which time I may have slimed down enough to fit into my tweed jacket. Casual is the future.
Phil, not knocking what’s done with it in Asia but what I see on rare visits to Woolies and Coles.
Gills is god.
I must say that I was quite sad when I received an email stating that Fenix will be closing. I only ate their once late last year and it was an incredible meal and dining experience. I can appreciate MG when it is done well and the food tastes good. Fenix did this well ans was definitely underrated in the press. Having a look at various internet blogs you will be able to appreciate the magic of Fenix.
A sad loss to the Melbourne dining scene, and I believe that unless you have eaten there and have something to base your criticism on its best not to write them off as pretentious or wanky.
I hope to see some serious sous-vide exponents at the Fine Food show in Mebourne this month. Check out stand U1 for the latest in Clifton Foodrange water baths.
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