From chicken sambos to goat’s milk, our team of intrepid taste testers and critics brings you the year’s hottest (and most delicious) food trends from around the globe.
This article is presented by Alessi.
Best hot sauce for your bag
Best hot sauce for your bag
Not content with bringing Long Chim to Australia, David Thompson also has plans to open Thai grocery stores nationally by year’s end. As well as stocking the same top-shelf palm sugar and tamarind Thompson uses in his restaurants, the shops will be the only places to buy the addictive Got Loi sriracha. Thinner in body, but sharper in fermented tang than the ubiquitous Californian-made version, this sriracha deserves a place in any condiment collection.
What a cracker
What a cracker
Who would have thought a dimpled, buttery and golden Arnott’s Jatz original could be so damn cool. Mitch Orr, chef at Sydney’s Acme, serves the crackers with a square of cheese, mustard butter and a ring of pickled onion, while you can get a bowl – replete with house-made French-onion dip – for $7 down the road at The Unicorn. For a fancier take, Igni in Victoria’s Geelong does a crisp chicken skin cracker topped with cod roe and dill.
Acme, 60 Bayswater Rd, Rushcutters Bay, NSW weareacme.com.au; The Unicorn, 106 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW; Igni, Ryan Pl, Geelong, VIC restaurantigni.com
bird is the word
bird is the word
Older, truly free-range, well-fed birds roasted by talented chefs – Josh Fry at Marion in Fitzroy, Dave Verheul at Embla in Melbourne and David Moyle at Franklin in Hobart among them – are doing much to rehabilitate the humble chicken, a reminder that it truly rewards when it’s respected and not just expected.
Pictured: Embla’s roast chicken.
Getting the Hump
Getting the Hump
We’re calling it: camel milk could soon be on our cereal. Sunshine Coast-based QCamels sells pasteurised camel’s milk at 62 retailers across the country, while Piercefield Pastures in Muswellbrook, NSW, ships to stockists from Manly to Blacktown. There’s plain milk by the litre or, in the case of the latter, the option of flavoured milk (chocolate, caramel or strawberry, even) in 300ml bottles.
premier pastry
premier pastry
Long, long before the cronut made aggressive moves on the world’s pastry cases, the cooks of Brittany layered sugar, butter and bread dough, and caramelised them in the oven to create the kouign amann. Now it’s popping up in good restaurants and patisseries, and we can’t get enough of it. Pronounced “queen ahmann”, find them in the likes of Sonoma bakeries in Sydney, and Melbourne’s famed Lune Croissanterie.
Lord of the manor
Lord of the manor
Dublin-born Robin Gill used to work as a chef at Raymond Blanc’s two-starred country getaway, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. Then he moved to south London, opened a wine bar in Clapham called The Dairy, and turned his craft to British tapas. The results are sensational; so were the reviews. He followed this with a smarter fine-dining restaurant called The Manor just a few streets away. For both, he’s been rightly named Chef of the Year in 2016 by the UK’s Good Food Guide. The Manor’s tasting menu is obsessively seasonal, but might include pine-smoked wood pigeon with cavolo nero and sloe berries or a dessert of miso with medlar and boozy prunes.
Reverse-searing
Reverse-searing
This technique is common in restaurants already, but it’s perfect for home cooks, too. Start by slowly rare-roasting your steak or joint of lamb, or – gasp – cook it sous-vide before giving it a final burst of heat on the grill to caramelise the surface. The result? A killer crust and a warm pink centre.
Gold dust
Gold dust
London’s must-try dish of the moment is the French toast with soft-serve green-tea ice-cream on the menu at Soho hipster hangout Shackfuyu. The toast is dusted with kinako – roasted soybean flour, which has been used in Japanese rice-flour sweets for centuries. Kinako translates as “yellow flour”; in Tokyo, it’s associated with old-fashioned desserts, but it’s also going through a retro revival in trendy shaved-ice (aka kakigori) dessert shops such as Kakigori Kobo Sekka. You’ll even find it in upmarket sake bars such as Toriryori Soregashi, where a sand of kinako is used to cover warabimochi, a jellied confection made with bracken starch.
Taking the dulse
Taking the dulse
Kelp? Old hat. Wakame? Whatever. The sea vegetable of the moment (and let’s just pause to savour the magic of sea vegetables being modish enough to have individual moments) might just be dulse. Smoky and packed with protein, you’ll find it at Aria or LuMi in Sydney, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in Melbourne, or GoMA in Brisbane.
Brickfields by night
Brickfields by night
Come spring, Sydney bakery Brickfields will turn its hand to another incarnation of flour and water: pasta. The Chippendale cafe plans to expand to a wine and pasta bar with a licence for gluten-loving good times until 10pm. “We want to get away from the cured-meat-board thing,” says Brickfields owner and baker Simon Cancio. Instead, you can expect three or four semolina pasta dishes (such as cacio e pepe) and a schnitzel made with leftover breadcrumbs from the bakery.
Brickfields, 206 Cleveland St, Chippendale, NSW, (02) 9698 7880, brickfields.com.au
eco warriors
eco warriors
“Progressive agrarian cuisine” is the ethos underpinning The Perennial, a recent arrival on the San Francisco dining scene and arguably one of the world’s most eco-conscious restaurants. Beyond conventional organic farming, The Perennial’s vegetables, herbs and microgreens are grown in aquaponic greenhouses, kitchen scraps are composted for animal feed and the whole operation is based on carbon farming. Everything, from the building materials to the kitchen appliances, has been thoughtfully selected by owners Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz.
59 9th St, San Francisco, +1 415 500 7788, theperennialsf.com
sandwich magnifique
sandwich magnifique
Katsuaki Okiyama is a rising star in Paris, part of a generation of Japanese-born cooks who have mastered French cuisine. Dinner at Abri, his tiny restaurant in the 10th arrondissement, books up weeks in advance, but the kitchen shifts gear for lunch on Mondays and Saturdays, serving the pork tonkatsu sandwich of your dreams: an expertly fried cutlet layered between toasted slices of pain de mie with sliced cabbage, tamagoyaki, grainy mustard, and a thin slice of mimolette. It isn’t fusion as much as it is perfectly bilingual, a dish that could exist only in Paris.
92 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, +33 183 970 000
Photo by:@honeysunnyside
rare form
rare form
Chef Simon Rogan loves reviving little-known – sometimes downright eccentric – British ingredients, often with puckish delight, at L’Enclume in Cumbria and Fera at Claridge’s in Mayfair, London. There, he recently added Aulis, a six-seat research lab, serving a tasting menu based on whatever whimsy they invent in the chef’s study directly upstairs. Intriguing recent dishes include raw scallop, cauliflower, bergamot and radish; roasted black salsify, trumpet mushrooms and elderflowers; and stout ice-cream with fermented buckwheat and melilot, an invasive plant once favoured as a cure for apoplexy.
laid-back chez achatz
laid-back chez achatz
Chicago chef Grant Achatz has had a lot on his plate this northern winter: revamping his fine-dining restaurant Alinea and simultaneously opening a new casual diner. While dinner at Alinea can cost $800 for two and span 22 courses, Roister will be a far more affordable affair. Expect dinner for two for $70. Chicagoans are atwitter at the prospect.
being SHELLFISH
being SHELLFISH
“It sounds horrible,” says chef Clayton Wells. “But it works.” Mixing shellfish with cheese is often considered a bad idea, but this burrata injected with shellfish oil, plated with a purée of salted konbu and served at the bar at Automata was an instant hit with Sydney diners. “How we got here, I have no idea,” Wells says, “but it probably won’t leave the menu.”
5 Kensington St, Chippendale, NSW, (02) 8277 8555, automata.com.au
The choux fits
The choux fits
Is it the dipping bowl of savoury-salty reduced chicken stock and its confit egg yolk that makes the savoury éclairs at Brisbane’s The Apo so addictive? It certainly doesn’t hurt. Chef Braden White’s choux pastry cases come topped with a sprinkle of charcoal salt, the feather-light puffs flecked with black pepper and stuffed with a light, creamy chicken liver mousseline. Just dunk and go.
Cult veg burgers
Cult veg burgers
Few dishes in the United States are as sanctified as the hamburger, so it’s remarkable to watch the stratospheric rise of the vegetarian burger, now appearing on menus across the nation. Championed by former Del Posto pastry chef Brooks Headley at Superiority Burger in New York, the trend has some clever incarnations, including the Tex Mex-inspired La Bandita burger at Hopdoddy bars in Texas, Arizona, Colorado and California, the beetroot, wakame and hazelnut burger at the White Owl Social Club in Portland, Oregon, and the newly minted Salvation Burger in New York’s Midtown hotel Pod 51, where star chef April Bloomfield is flipping a deliciously hearty version made with beetroot and lentils.
Pictured: White Owl Social Club’s beetroot, wakame and hazelnut burger.
reap reward
reap reward
High-profile Cambodian chef Luu Meng has opened an outpost of his celebrated Phnom Penh restaurant, Malis, in Siem Reap. After several years looking for the best location, it’s no modest affair. A grand Angkor-inspired edifice decorated with statues and ponds, it houses an elegant restaurant and state-ofthe- art cooking school, with a menu of authentic dishes based on Cambodia’s rich regional gastronomy.
Malis Siem Reap, Pokambor Ave, Siem Reap Riverside, Siem Reap,+855 015 824 888, malis-restaurant.com
hot hoppers
hot hoppers
The shift from fine dining to casual by top-level chefs can be seen in every city, and in London for every cuisine as well. Siblings Karam, Jyotin and Sunaina Sethi earned their stripes by founding Trishna, an Indian restaurant in Marylebone that was awarded a Michelin star in 2012. The trio followed this with Gymkhana in Mayfair, which gained a star in 2015. They also found time to invest in Bao, a Taiwanese street-snack diner, and Lyle’s, an all-day modern British restaurant that gained a star in 2015. But for 2016 they’ve invested their time in a new pet project – a no-reservations Sri Lankan restaurant called Hoppers, after the bowlshaped, crisp rice pancake. It’s one of the hottest venues in Soho right now.
sporting chance
sporting chance
For Brisbane’s Chiu brothers it’s as much about creating community as it is about the food. The follow-up to their first culinary foray – the cool, minimalist Ben’s Burgers – is West End’s The Bleachers. Here, they’ve joined forces with Paper Daisy chef Ben Devlin as co-owner and consultant chef. They call the clean-lined, modest digs with its sporty backyard beer garden a “neighbourhood hang”, somewhere that like-minded folk who value the elements that drive them – quality, good design, creativity, great food – can congregate.
Nice ice, baby
Nice ice, baby
The Madagascan vanilla ice-cream at Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream is a masterclass in flavour, an object lesson of what ice-cream can be. There are no bells or whistles, just a base (milk, cream and salt – no eggs), sugar and vanilla. But the vanilla is layered: seeds are scraped into the base, which is steeped with the pods; the pods are removed and dried, then packed with sugar and pulsed in a food processor, and then soaked in Bourbon to make an extract. It’s vanilla flavoured with vanilla, vanilla and vanilla, a subtle composition that will dazzle you as it unfurls on the palate.
East village comes to Bangalore
East village comes to Bangalore
One of India’s hottest young chefs, Manu Chandra, is pushing traditional Indian ingredients and techniques in thoughtful new directions – and at bar prices – at Toast and Tonic, a new East Villageinspired eatery in Bangalore. Expect the likes of tuna poke with seaweed, sticky gobindobhog rice and mustard greens, smoked Cochin mackerel on toast and new ways with jaggery.
14/1, Wood St, Bangalore, +91 80 4111 6878, toastandtonic.com
In cod we trust
In cod we trust
Chef Eneko Atxa has arrived in London. Once known for stunt cooking – he used an ultrasound to alter the texture of dishes – the Basque provocateur now advocates zero-waste and sustainable agriculture at Azurmendi in his homeland. At Eneko in One Aldwych in Covent Garden, meanwhile, he serves a more rustic but still refined menu of erroak (roots) dishes such as cod tripe a la vizcaina (red pepper sauce) and stewed wheat thickened with idiazabal, an unpasteurised sheep’s milk cheese. The bar features house wines from his own vineyard near Bilbao.
One Aldwych, 1 Aldwych, London, +44 20 7300 1000, onealdwych.com
Koji
Koji
Koji has been used by Japanese cooks for centuries to make everything from soy sauce and sake to miso and mirin. It’s a living food made from steamed rice treated with a mould called Aspergillus oryzae, and if you love umami it’s about to become your favourite seasoning. In Sydney, at Momofuku Seiobo, koji butter brings out the sweet brininess of marron. At Yellow it amps up snake beans and black rice. Tomoko Onuki, co-founder of Rice Culture, has been making organic dry koji and miso by hand in Nerang on Queensland’s Gold Coast since 2012, supplying locals such as Halcyon House’s Paper Daisy restaurant in Cabarita. This year Onuki and partner Yukiyo Copley began production of shio koji, a fermented sauce of koji, rice, salt and water that not only seasons but also draws out natural flavours and tenderises meat. “It has 30 per cent salt to koji, but it’s so much healthier [than salt], and you use less because of the umami,” says Onuki.
hancock takes the cake
hancock takes the cake
Take a buttery sponge layered with tart lemon curd and cream. Add some seasonal fresh-fruit friands, a cacao pastry-lined banoffee tart and a brace of rose and cardamom meringues, and you won’t have even begun to scratch the icing sugar-dusted surface of the butter-eggs-and sugar-fuelled awesomeness arrayed on the shelves of Jocelyn Hancock’s new Cake & Bake store. Did we mention the raspberry pâte de fruit, compotes made with fruit from Hancock’s Scenic Rim farm and the honey from her hives? Brisbane’s first lady of baking is back.
Cake & Bake, 296 Montague Rd, West End, Qld, (07) 3844 1088, cakeandbake.co
Smyth goes solo
Smyth goes solo
With several TV series and a score of restaurants on three continents, Gordon Ramsay is not often seen in the three-starred restaurant in London’s Chelsea that bears his name. Since 2007, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay has been run by Irish-born Clare Smyth, who kept a remarkably low profile until 2015, when she announced she would open her own restaurant this year, with Ramsay’s blessing. Smyth is London’s highest-rated female chef, so it’s certain to attract a lot of interest – and with Ramsay’s financial backing it will be a slick operation.
Tetsuya’s class of 2005
Tetsuya’s class of 2005
In 2003, Daniel Pepperell cut out a newspaper advertisement for a first-year apprentice job at Tetsuya’s restaurant in Sydney. “Must be committed,” it read. No kidding. While many notable Australian chefs have done time in the Tetsuya’s kitchen since it opened in 1989, Pepperell was one of the talented and committed crew cooking at the Kent Street restaurant in 2005. He was joined by a who’s who of Australian chefs circa now: Phil Wood (Rockpool), Dan Hong (Mr Wong), Luke Powell (LP’s Quality Meats), Takashi Sano (Sokyo) and Darren Robertson (Three Blue Ducks) all did time in the kitchen that year under head chef at the time, Martin Benn, now chef and co-owner of Sydney three-star Sepia. What was special about that particular year? “We were all really young but very driven,” says Wood. “We had a real support network from the beginning because we all got on so well. I think that helped a lot.” The 2005 alumni credit their time at Tetsuya’s for instilling in them many skills they’ve carried into their own kitchens in 2016. Impeccable high standards, discipline, drive and “a constant desire to make something better”, says Wood, were paramount at Tetsuya’s. “That and always remembering to taste,” adds Hong. But being a mentor, Tetsuya Wakuda says, was never the goal. “I never thought about what they were all going to do or what they were going to be after. I give everyone a chance,” he says. “It’s not what I teach. Cooking is about spirit. Each of these chefs has their own talent, passion and belief. That’s what success is. That’s why they’re successful.”
mission accomplished
mission accomplished
The dim sum service at Mission Chinese in Manhattan started off on Christmas morning 2015 as a thought experiment, a what-if with pushcarts and steam baskets; now it’s offered every Saturday and Sunday. The small plates cost $5 to $10, and include some of the dishes that made Mission Chinese’s reputation: kung pao pastrami, mapo tofu, thrice-cooked bacon. And there are some of the newer, more refined dishes culled from the dinner tasting menu, such as beef tartare lettuce cups, tea-smoked eel rolls and scallop sashimi. Add some beef dumplings in broth, lumpia spring rolls, and a cocktail appropriate for daytime drinking and you’ll never want the morning to end.
Western flashback
Western flashback
Remember the ma hor that David Coomer used to serve at Star Anise? Those addictive balls of candied duck and pineapple are back and they’re just one of many reasons to put Fuyu on your Perth eating agenda. The new identity of Coomer’s bustling tapas bar Pata Negra, Fuyu offers assured, elegant takes on Asian cooking, from crisp roasted quail to golden, flaky pumpkin and lentil curry puffs.
Fuyu, 28 Stirling Hwy, Nedlands, WA, fuyu.com.au
buy and shell
buy and shell
Superb abalone is fished from our waters, but the price it fetches means it’s seldom seen in local eateries, which is why it’s cheering to see it appearing at the likes of both Brae and Acme, where it’s paired with fettuccine and XO.
Pictured: Acme’s strozzapretti, abalone, wood ear and water spinach
roosters rule
roosters rule
Poor old roosters have traditionally been given the chop because they’re less valuable on a farm than laying hens. Now chefs are listing them on menus, singling them out for their particular eating quality. “It’s morelike a game meat,” says chef and farmer Hugh Wennerbom. Stewing or braising is the best way to tenderise roosters’ firm flesh, and it’s a winner when teamed with a glug of red wine, fresh herbs and pasta. Coq au vin ahoy.
Pictured: our coq au vin.
cracking eggs
cracking eggs
The humble scram has jumped the fence from the breakfast plate and into fine dining, if the spanner crab scramble with crisp parmesan toast at Rockpool is any guide. At Momofuku Seiobo, meanwhile, chef Paul Carmichael takes his to the next level with caviar, chives and crisp chicken skin. For the perfect creamy texture, Carmichael suggests cracking your eggs into a cold pan, adding melted cultured butter, then stirring them over medium heat until they’re just set, before finishing them with a mere suggestion of crème fraîche.
Pictured: Rockpool’s Spanner crab scramble with crisp parmesan toast
Perfect fitz
Perfect fitz
How to make dense and creamy small-batch, handmade ice-cream better? Add house-baked cookies, buttery coconut or chocolate-chip biscuits, say, to with your serve of No Diggety Nutella or Def Jam Penut Butter & Jelly. Then bring on the sprinkles. Damian Griffiths’ pink and blue retro-styled Mr Fitz has a hip-hop soundtrack loud enough to shatter waffle cones, and a conga line of sweet-tooths out the door every night. This fox is fly.
Meyer takes Manhattan
Meyer takes Manhattan
Danish food celebrity Claus Meyer has so much riding on his Great Northern Food Hall in Grand Central Terminal, he decamped from Copenhagen to New York City with his wife, three daughters and two Jack Russell terriers. With 250 employees, the 460-square-metre Nordic food hall, set to open this month, and its adjacent upscale restaurant Agern, is a risky play for the entrepreneurial Meyer, a Noma co-founder, and his backers. He aims to sell the Big Apple’s best wholegrain rye bread and initiate New Yorkers into the delights of kanelsnurrer (cinnamon swirl), grød (porridge) and smørrebrød (Danish open-faced sandwiches), which he has already made for commuters as a prelude to opening.
siren call
siren call
Chef Mario Batali has opened his first freestanding Manhattan restaurant in more than a decade. La Sirena, in the Maritime Hotel in Chelsea, is a sophisticated trattoria seating more than 200 and – a first for Batali – it serves both breakfast and dinner. Morning highlights include fried eggs with bottarga and ricotta, semolina fritters with pecorino, and amaretti mascarpone pancakes. It’s ideally located for a visit to the nearby Whitney Museum.
La Sirena, 88 Ninth Ave, New York City, +1 212 977 6096, lasirena-nyc.com
ginned up
ginned up
The kilos of oranges that flavoured each batch of Four Pillars Gin used to be discarded. Until Caroline Gray from A Bit of Jam and Pickle suggested using them in marmalade. The result is complex, slightly spicy and not too sweet. For those who like it more bittersweet still, the Negroni Marmalade (with a dash of Campari) is made for you.
Get your goat
Get your goat
“Goat’s milk is nothing new, but increasing demand means it’s more readily available in shops,” says Dan Hughes of Sydney’s cult goat’s milk gelato company Mr Goaty. Could the popularity of products made from goat and sheep’s milk challenge the supremacy of the cow in the dairy aisle? Or is the rise of camel milk the one to really watch?
Grain reaction
Grain reaction
Quit now, quinoa – sorghum is gunning for you, and Australia’s got plenty of it. The cereal grain is already Queensland’s most valuable crop. Gluten-free and said to be high in nutrients, the bulk of the Australian harvest is currently either used to feed livestock or exported to China where it’s fermented and distilled to make the highly alcoholic beverage baijiu. Fairmount Whole Grains & Food’s Dan Quigley is keen to see some of Australia’s output stay put. He’s milling it into flour and working with chefs keen to include it on menus. Sorghum has already become the beermaker’s first choice alongside millet for brewing gluten-free ales.
Playing chicken
Playing chicken
Just don’t call them burgers. Chicken is having a moment all over the place, whether it’s the classic roast or clever uses of crisped-up chicken skin. But it’s when it’s fried and stuck between two buns (preferably with something spicy in the mix) that Australia is finding it hardest to say no. In Sydney alone, four new offerings of note are capturing hands and mouths. First there was the habanero-spiced number on the bar menu at Momofuku Seiobo. Then the Pinbone crew introduced The Special to their tenure at 10 William St, and almost simultaneously, Surry Hills became home to both the Korean-accented Lil Kim at Juicy Lucy (from the Sugarcane team) and the aptly buttery signature sandwich at Butter (from team Thievery). But why aren’t they chicken burgers? If the filling isn’t minced, argues Momofuku chef Paul Carmichael, it isn’t really a burger. A rose by any other name indeed.
Pictured clockwise from left : Juicy Lucy’s Lil’ Kim, 10 William St’s The Special, Butter’s The Chicken Sandwich, Momofuku Seiobo’s Chicken Katsu Sandwich
