Sydney Chefs - Introduction

Introduction

For the February 1991 Mietta's newsletter Mietta interviewed and Tony photographed a number of the leading Sydney chefs.

David Thompson of Darley Street Thai appeared on the cover titled The Sydney Food Scene, Beyond Bangkok. In visiting David (then in Newtown) we were struck by the extent of the Thai invasion of Sydney. We were also impressed by the ease with which the exotic flavours in Christine Manfield's cooking had seduced CBD business lunchers and by the rising star of Rockpool and Neil Perry's Asian bias. The tide was very clearly turning then towards the mixed menu with Asian influences -- well before the Italian wave of 'balsamic' struck. Cherry Ripe had yet to strike dumb the world with her magnum opus, Good Bye Culinary Cringe.

In prose as exciting as the cooking the blurb for City Cuisine (Susan Feniger, Mary Sue Milliken, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1989) says it all:

"It's fried parsnip chips, tandoori steaks, club sandwiches, pork dumplings, collard greens. It's cool Thai salad, hot Chinese noodles, new-style grilled fish, old-style brisket. It's the perfect caramel ice cream, a great BLT, the quintessential egg cream, freshly baked Indian breads ... Only in a big city could you experience it all".

There it is in one paragraph -- Menu Malaprop -- the food of today.

I wonder how many different types of ingredients, different spices, different stocks, different cooking implements, different techniques, different styles of presentation, different philosophies and traditions -- are involved in that list? Is it truly practical for the one restaurant kitchen to have half a dozen separate spice shelves -- Indian, Chinese and Thai spices are not interchangeable -- let alone traditional English and Southern American. If those spices are not kept separate and are not freshly ground then the flavours are stale, if, on the other hand, they are ground with the same grinder then the tastes are transferred from one to another.

In terms of equipment; that kitchen would need a conventional oven, a tandoori oven, a range with space for big stock pots and for slow cooking as well as a wok blaster; a mesquite and a conventional grill as well as a brazier; an ice-cream churn and copper pots for the caramel; a deep fryer; a steamer. Last but not least on the list of requirements would be a few chefs -- let's say we classify them in sections -- there would be a Thai and an American larder chef, an Indian and an English chef in the meat section, a Chinese and a Southerner (American) on the veg., a grill cook of any nationality, an Indian baker and a "classic" patissier. The chef des cuisines would be all knowing -- one presumes.

If the dishes are to be done correctly -- using the correct ingredients and techniques then that's what the mixed modern menu requires.

Actually it had all been done before, by a Frenchman -- Alexis Soyer. For the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London he created a Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations to serve the food of all countries except New Zealand because he didn't wish to prepare "baked young woman for two, or boiled missionary" -- even for a chef of Soyer's stature some ingredients were not readily available.

It is fascinating today (December 1996) to look at what the best of Sydney's chefs said five years ago about this, staff shortages, food writers and the other problems that be-devil the restaurant industry. Despite changes in food fashions, most of what they said remains highly pertinent. There are eternal truths.

In 1996, I am hearing that a number of Sydney chefs are now saying that they want no more Asian influences, that mixed menus don't work and they will be doing the dishes that they know and understand and will not be playing around with what is believed to be fashionable.

To be continued ...