7 October 2013
CULINARY TRAVELS
My palate has been truly seasoned over the past month. But not in Auckland. To celebrate a significant birthday that my husband marked up in early September, we have been gallivanting around the globe, tasting, sipping our way through a variety of restaurant experiences. And I am very excited and heartened about the major shift I encountered on menus.
The husband has always been in love with Brasserie Bofinger, the very first authentic Parisienne brasserie he ever visited. It’s a spectacular place with an art deco glass dome in the central dining room, and can be found in a little side road just a pebble’s throw from the madness that is the continual traffic circling around the Bastille monument. It was always going to be first choice to eat at for his birthday dinner.
A serious white burgundy was ordered to accompany a vast tray of freshly shucked oysters, and then we enjoyed various fresh fish dishes. I splurged on an order of sole for my main course and I can’t think of any waiter in Ponsonby who could deftly bone the cooked fish like mine was, leaving it pristine and as if no hand had ever touched it. With lashings of lemon butter it was utter perfection.
The grand thing about the historic brasseries of Paris, which all fall under the ownership of the Flo Group these days, is the menus offer very traditional French cooking. They may not have the touch of genius that smart young and upcoming chefs around the city show, but you can always rely on seriously good tucker. Fish, meat or chicken are the stars but if you want your greens, you must order side plates.
Happily most other meals we encountered showed new direction. Vegetables are finally having their day in the restaurants of London, Edinburgh, Paris and Tokyo. On previous travel adventures I have always craved more salads, more vegies and they have been so hard to find.
My initiation into this new wave began with our very first meal after we’d flown into London at a new restaurant, Grain Store, in the newly constructed Granary Square behind Kings Cross station. There, in a cavernous space where the kitchen was integrated into the dining area we were offered what was a revolutionary menu. I am so used to seeing protein being given star billing with vegetables mentioned as if they were the garnish. Grain Store’s menu read like a seed catalogue. Every item listed the vegetables and fruit of each dish and added the fish/chicken/meat as if it was an afterthought. Brilliant!
The food really delivered, too. I ordered three plates and each was fresh interesting and vegetable-driven. Salted watermelon, marinated fresh peach, microgreens and salmon confit; baby beets with onions, dill oil and fresh goat curd; and salty marinated grilled aubergines slices topped with a tangle of herbs and leaves. Move over meat, I was convinced by this fresh and exciting approach.
After this promising start, our fresh vegetable odyssey continued unabated. We spent time in Edinburgh and the wilds of Scotland, then moved on to anchor ourselves in Paris and Tokyo. Vegetarians we are not but we could well have been on this trip as there was surfeit of vegetable dishes on the menu to tempt us in almost all the restaurants and bistros we ate in.
We ate a stunning meal, straight from the garden at The Gardener’s Cottage in Edinburgh. There were seven courses for £30, including a fragrant tomato and fennel soup with cheddar breadstick, some tender green beans with Shetland Blue potatoes and a soft free range egg, and a most unusual gooseberry jelly with hyssop cream, tiny meringues and borage flowers. Like so many places we ate, the chefs were young people who had worked alongside starry chefs in grand places and then moved away to start their own places with brand new initiative. These chefs can always tell you who grew their food and of course they always emphasise the best of seasonal bounty.
In Paris we were wowed by the menus at some of the hottest tickets in town, Septime, Mon Viel Ami, Semilla and Parisien Terroir. Their menus were dictated by the kitchen (you have to trust these chefs!) and the courses were dominated by fresh vegetables. I was completely captivated by their freshness and innovation. In other bistros, the dishes of yester-year had disappeared and chefs were cooking up light fresh ingredients and seemed to have abandoned the heavy fare they were known for.
In Tokyo the revolution continued. We ate at Roppongi Nouen, feasting on a menu that was entirely sourced from small farmers. We ordered their ‘Farmers’ Welcome Vegetable Platter’. The freshest raw vegetables ever were served to us on in the base a bed of crisp miso flavoured crumbs (they even provided a miniature rake so we could ‘ do the gardening’) and accompanied by a dish of tasty pumpkin and ginger dipping sauce. And in our final meal at the very, very upmarket Takazawa, we encountered the ultimate vegetable dish. Simply entitled World Heritage, our plates were filled with more than thirty tiny vegetables, herbs and leaves each individually cooked, beautifully arranged and all sourced from small famers or from their own rooftop garden. Amazing.
Often I have spoken about my food adventures at events, and always pose this perennially constant question to the audience. Given the time spent selecting flights, hotels and travel arrangements, how many people carefully book their meals before they leave home? Very few, it would seem, and yet that is the thing that makes or breaks the success of any trip for travellers.
It may take a little time to do the research but anyone with computer skills can do it and it is well worth booking ahead at good restaurants. Most places around the world offer online bookings. For as sure as hell, popular places will be booked out by the time you find them on the road. You’ll be destined to eat with a bunch of other undiscerning tourists in random places where inferior ingredients are fashioned into smudgy food that will not make you feel great.
This was first published in Ponsonby News, October Issue.