We’ve all got to eat so it might as well be good! I’ve been a restaurant critic for almost 20 years, and have been writing a weekly restaurant column in Melbourne’s Sunday Age since 2006.
My approach is to always take a restaurant on its own terms: there’s no point slamming a burger joint because it doesn’t have white tablecloths. I try to be constructive in my criticism and I’ve always got the diner in mind: there are many places you could choose to go. Why should it be here?
Sometimes a restaurant’s trappings are so many layers of distraction. At ESP, they serve to shine an ever more focused light on the food. Yes, there’s crisp service and excellent, interesting wines. Yes, you’ll be cosseted in a gleaming, comfortable dining room replete with gorgeous furniture and tableware. And yes, these accoutrements are all profoundly enjoyable. What you don’t get is smoke and mirrors. This is a chef’s restaurant and the trappings are there to support the sublime efforts of the kitchen.
When Han Kim was a boy in south Korea, his father insisted he get up at 5am to come to the fish market. There Han had his first lesson for the day, choosing seafood for the family’s Japanese restaurant before heading to school. By the time he was 16, Han was working alongside his father, on track to take over the family business.
It’s 2009. You’re a young chef working at a hot restaurant in London. You’re charged with a serious duty – making the bread sauce that’s served with partridge. Overtasked and distracted, you make a terrible mistake: you leave the sauce too long and instead of being smooth and silky it becomes sad and sludgy. The bollocking rings in your ears for days.
I love dropping into ABC Radio Melbourne to chat about food with Clare Bowditch and her lovely talkback audience. This time we discussed the importance of vessels, cutlery and the devilishness of forks. Do you have a favourite spoon or teacup? Do you think it matters? Listen in.
I’m eating compost for dessert and I couldn’t be happier. Shiraz lees (a yeasty debris of the wine-making process) have been repurposed as a heady purplish granita. Grapefruit peel is blitzed into a powerful citrus paste. Coriander stems and roots are the flavour base for an insistently herbaceous ice cream, and egg whites are whipped and baked into crisp shards of meringue. It’s a curious, pretty, highwire balance of sweet, tart and fragrant. I’d love it even if it wasn’t an environmental statement.
I’m eating duck waffles for brunch and I’m thwacked over the scone by a thought: geez, Melbourne is good. I’m in a well-loved four-year-old Brunswick cafe and the food is so plainly at the standard of a very good restaurant that I blink a few times, take a bite break, and look around.
I love dropping into ABC Radio Melbourne to chat about food with Clare Bowditch and her lovely talkback audience. This time we discussed soup, a very important topic as winter starts to grip. As part of my diligent research I even got a terrible cold just to check if soup really does cure winter’s ills. And guess what – it does!
I walked into Pigro on a Friday night and instantly knew I was in a good neighbourhood restaurant, the kind of place real estate agents might reference at local auctions. The place was busy but a waiter saw us straight away, smilingly acknowledged us even though she was busy, and arranged a table with swift cheer. It set the right tone.
There aren’t many generalities you can throw at vast and varied India but there is one sight that is ubiquitous from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east, from the northern Himalaya to the southern tip of Kerala. It’s the Tata truck, produced by India’s largest auto company.
I love dropping into ABC Radio Melbourne to chat to Clare Bowditch about food. But Clare was on holidays so this time, I chatted to David Astle ...
