Yes, the lamington, that coconut-iced sponge cake more commonly associated with Nana’s afternoon tea than world-leading gastronomy. It – or an approximation thereof – is on the menu at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, which opened Crown in Melbourne this week.
British chefs Down Under seem fatally attracted to the lamington. Gordon Ramsay also did a version at Maze, his short-lived Crown venture. But the Dinner lamington will be different for two reasons. First, says Dinner executive chef and long-time Blumenthal lieutenant Ashley Palmer-Watts, “it’s really more of a gateaux than a classic lamington’’. Second, unlike the Fat Duck’s wildly popular yet short seven-month season (the subject of an up-coming SBS documentary, ) and Maze’s premature demise, Dinner is – hopefully – here to stay.
Opened at London’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel four-and-a-half years ago, the original Dinner has eclipsed its older sibling, at least going by the S.Pellegrino World’s Best Restaurants hip-list, where Dinner currently sits at number seven ahead of the Fat Duck’s 73. It’s a simpler beast to the Fat Duck’s wacky gastronomic futurism, although “simpler’’ in Blumenthal parlance is a relative term. The Dinner brief will be familiar to any viewer of , in which the obsessive, self-taught chef delves through the history books to resurrect and reinvent historical British dishes dating from the 1300s through to the Victorian era.
Is that a lamington I see before me? Dinner By Heston Blumenthal's take on the Australian classic. Source: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
Dinner's new Southbank, Melbourne incarnation: 104 seats in the restaurant, a six-seat chef's table, a private dining room and, we imagine, one very busy phone line. Source: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
And herein lies the million-dollar question: Can a menu created from excursions in the British Library, aided and abetted by Blumethal’s own researcher and food historians, grab the attention of Australian diners?
In favour of the affirmative, the appeal of Dinner London proved more catholic than anticipated by jaded critics (“flavour-led cooking that showcases 600 years of British cuisine and provides diners with a world-class contemporary dining experience,’’ says its World’s Best citation). Palmer-Watts also points out that the dishes at Dinner were as unfamiliar to Britons as they will be to Australians: for example, roast scallop with cucumber sauce, drawn in part from the 1826 publication The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, or frumenty, a type of porridge popular in Medieval cuisine.
A larger Australian presence on the menu will develop once the hard work of opening is done (the attention to detail includes a custom-made scent of damp moss, wood smoke and leather guiding diners through the entrance tunnel).
Braised kangaroo tail will be replacing calf tail in a dish known as “rice and flesh’’ (c. 1300), but at this early stage the Dinner menu here could be considered the equivalent of a British backpacker arriving in Australia and donning board shorts and thongs but still drinking lager and eating chips. Certain iconic Australian dishes have been mentioned – lamington aside, Blumenthal and co. have been investigating uses of the Anzac biscuit – but Palmer-Watts says they’re yet to really go native.
“We’ve got some historical Australian cookbooks from around 1870 to 1900. It all refers back to England but cooking was pretty basic in many instances. [It was] very plain, very practical cookery rather than flamboyant technical dishes. From 1300 and 1400 in England when they were making meat look like fruit, we jump to 1900 where cooking in Australia was only just getting going. You can see how it’s translated over but in a simplified way. And really, the earlier back in time you go in Australia, the more it was about what you could get your hands on depending on your status.’’
Fly-in, fly out: Executive chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, who has been part of the Fat Duck group since 1999, will divide his time between Australia and the UK. Photograph Joe Sarah. Source: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
Blumenthal and Palmer-Watts have been reading historical Australian cookbooks but are keen to find a local food historian. “With the whole lamington thing, for example, there are three or four stories as to how it came about,’’ says Palmer-Watts. “We haven’t gotten to the bottom of that one and there’s got to be someone who can fill us in on the details. We’d love to strike something up with a couple of historians in Australia. They can feel free to make themselves known. Information in exchange for meat fruit.’’
Meat fruit? It's an iconic Dinner dish, a ball of chicken liver parfait dipped in mandarin jelly to resemble an intact piece of fruit and, by all accounts, delicious.
Indeed, for people who don’t particularly care that salmagundy was originally a kind of throw-it-all-in salad dish from early 17th century England, or that “umbles’’ means offal, they promise that Dinner can be just… well, dinner.
‘You can come in for a steak and triple-cooked chips, meat fruit and bottle of red wine,’ says Palmer-Watts, anxious to dispel any beliefs that Dinner will purely be an exercise in gastronomic academia. ‘Or you can come in for a ten-course tasting menu at the chef’s table.’
“You can come in for a steak and triple-cooked chips, meat fruit and bottle of red wine,’’ says Palmer-Watts, anxious to dispel any beliefs that Dinner will purely be an exercise in gastronomic academia. “Or you can come in for a ten-course tasting menu at the chef’s table. The guys [waiters] know pretty well how to judge if someone is into the historical stuff or if they just want to eat in peace. What we generally find is the first time people eat at Dinner they’re really into the history and then by visit three it’s all about the company they’re with, just like any regular restaurant.’’
The restaurant itself will be a surprise for anyone who dined at Melbourne’s Fat Duck. Designers Bates Smart have pulled another rabbit out of the hat with still-life photographs from photographer Romas Foord – albeit ones involving live snails – mounted on the walls behind chain mail, the autumnal colours echoed in the caramel-coloured leather banquettes and plush moss-green velour seats. The open kitchen, seen through a wall of glass, features a spit roast pulley system modeled on the one in the court of King Henry VIII, which rotates cuts of meat and even pineapple over an open fire.
The swift revamp of the space overlooking the Yarra - the team had just over two months after the closure of Fat Duck - was enabled by some clever forward planning, creating the Fat Duck inside the bigger footprint of what would become Dinner. The interior walls were removed, the carpet taken out and presto, hello Heston take two. It was a stage set, which in Blumenthal’s case seems fitting. “We’re thrilled with the way it turned out,’’ says Palmer-Watts, who along with Blumenthal plans to fly between the UK and Australia while leaving the day-to-day charge of the kitchen to Dinner alumnus, English chef Evan Moore. “Both restaurants were supposed to look completely different so one wasn’t a poor relation to the other. I really think we’ve done it.’’
Meat fruit - no, it's not fruit - is one of the most talked-about dishes on the menu at the original Dinner By Heston Blumenthal in London. Picture Ashley Palmer-Watts. Source: Ashley Palmer-Watts
The Bates Smart design includes features such as a mechanical moving artwork by the UK's Robert Higgs. Source: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
, a behind-the-scenes visit to one of the world's most unique restaurants and a look inside the mind of its creator, including his ambitious decision to move Fat Duck to Melbourne for seven months, starts at 8.30pm on Thursday 31 March, 2016 on SBS. For an episode guide, Fat Duck quiz and more, head .
Go at 8.30pm Thursdays on SBS. Catch up on the first episode .
The changeover from Fat Duck to Dinner took just two months - a quick move in restaurant terms. Source: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
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SBS News Bite:
Heston Blumenthal on the end of The Fat Duck's six-month stint in Australia
