enRoute


	ENROUTE TV ENROUTE FM MEDIA KIT AIR CANADA LINKS WRITERS' GUIDELINES

THE WIZARDS OF MOD OZ

Sydney chefs and Hunter Valley winemakers have cooked up a recipe for a global food capital.

Text: NATALIE MACLEAN

1 | 2 | 3 | FEB

Mod Oz (short for Modern Australian cuisine): a contemporary blend of traditional Aussie "bush tucker" and global food influences.

"Daaarling, come in, come in!" says Sophia Loren’s Australian twin, opening the door. Jennice Kersh – big hair, big makeup and cat’s-eye glasses dangling from 12 strands of metallic pearls around her neck – takes me by the arm into her restaurant. Edna’s Table is the Niagara Falls of Sydney dining: a landmark, a wonder and a little kitsch, but you must go. How else can you regale everyone back home with stories of eating kangaroo and crocodile?

"When I was growing up, only the poor people ate ’roo. The rich people gave it to their dogs," Jennice laughs. The restaurant is in the bustling heart of Sydney’s grey-flannel business district, its stark white walls warmed by enlarged black-and-white family Polaroids of Jennice and her brother Raymond (the chef) as children. For 23 years, they’ve run this restaurant named after their late mother, who used to feed them the "bush tucker" that Aboriginals had eaten for thousands of years before the white settlers arrived: kangaroo, emu, crocodile, native plants, herbs and fruit.

In the last few years, Raymond and other local chefs have been creating modern dishes using those traditional ingredients. Their flavour and texture is stunning, like taking a blindfolded walk through a rain forest with only your palate to guide you. My char-grilled fillet of kangaroo has a dark savoury taste, more robust than venison, and a perfect match for the bold shiraz I’m drinking. "There’s no cholesterol or fat in the ’roo. Have I ruined it for you, darling?" Jennice asks laughing. "It’s best served rare; otherwise, it gets very tough." She gives me a koala-bear hug as I leave. Her down-under, down-home hospitality and food are the perfect recipe for sophistication without pretension.

There’s a name for this distinctly uncolonial mentality, which is a long way from traditional British overcooked roast and two veg or even shrimp-on-the-barbie and Vegemite sandwiches. It’s called Mod Oz, short for Modern Australian cuisine. While foodies are still debating exactly what defines Mod Oz and whether it’s a truly national cuisine, no one denies that Sydney has joined the dining capitals of the world: It has a delicious blend of New York hustle, Parisian elegance, British manners, Californian cool and Asian exoticism. The Asian Wall Street Journal recently called Sydney "planet earth’s number one town for eating."

Stepping back into the inky drizzle of the night, I walk toward the illuminated Opera House and the twinkling lights of the Harbour Bridge. Laughter and light spill out of restaurants and bars. Sydney is a town that likes a drink. Just two hours north is the Hunter Valley, Australia’s oldest wine region. It produces vibrant, mouth-watering semillon and balanced, elegant shiraz, which I resolve to discover before I leave. Even Sydney’s name is a British contraction of Saint Denis, which, in turn, was a corruption of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. My kind of town. The Establishment, the boutique hotel where I’m staying, has just 33 rooms and 12 bars. My kind of hotel.

The true measure of Sydney’s culinary maturity is that good food isn’t limited to dinner at pricey fine dining establishments. Bill’s, an open-air café in fashionable Darlinghurst, made its reputation on breakfast. Inside, regulars chat over steaming coffee at worn leather banquettes and long communal wooden tables. (Legend has it that the communal dining concept was invented here.) As I take my first bite of a pillowy ricotta hotcake with fresh banana and honeycomb butter, I’m filled with a marvellous melancholy: I know that this dish will be added to my lifetime list of cravings.

Later I wander through the Royal Botanic Gardens in the heart of the city. The giant eucalyptus trees (some of them originally planted in 1816) are alive with what sounds like chattering birds. But when I look up, I see instead hundreds of grey bats, known as flying foxes, hanging off the branches like burnt out Christmas light bulbs. Clustered around the base of the trees are fireball garlands of fuchsia, orange and red flowers.

Since Sydney is surrounded by nature – not to mention 20 kilometres of beaches – it’s hard to believe that it’s a city of 4 million residents. Beachside dining, unsurprisingly, is a speciality. Icebergs restaurant, high up on the white cliffs of Bondi Beach, overlooks a kilometre-long surfer’s paradise. In the water, wetsuits flash like slippery black fish; on the beach, the bright yellow and red outfits of members of the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club look like tropical fish. My entree of Moreton Bay Bugs sounds a bit too beachy but turns out to be delicious: tiny, tender lobsters served warm over shaved artichoke, peas, potatoes and labneh. A glass of Clare Valley riesling offers the invigorating refreshment of a riptide without getting wet.

No Sydney chef is better known for exotic fresh seafood than Neil Perry, who opened his restaurant in 1989 in the historic Rocks district. British convicts landed here in 1788 after eight months at sea, and soon its narrow cobblestone streets were lined with bawdy bars and brothels. Today it’s filled with gentrified, convict-chic boutiques (some still have iron bars on the windows), galleries and restaurants like Rockpool, where Perry describes his approach as "ocean to plate." He minimizes stress to the fish, which are line-caught, brain-spiked (the kindest method, because it’s instant) and laid on ice to preserve their flavour and texture. Shellfish get the full spa treatment: They’re kept alive in uncrowded tanks with individual filtration systems.

The result is on my plate: stir-fried lobster with shiitake mushrooms, hand-cut noodles and red curry sauce that’s ultrafresh and deeply flavoured. Perry’s house riesling, full of lemon-lime intensity, pairs perfectly. Perry is one of a number of chefs influenced by the profusion of international cuisines brought to Australia by European and Asian immigrants. (Some 130 nationalities live in Australia today.) Unconstrained by any one tradition, chefs like Peter Doyle at est. and Dietmar Sawyere at Forty One create innovative combinations from a profusion of multicultural cooking methods and an abundance of fresh local produce.

1 | 2 | 3 | FEB