John Lethlean’s top meals of 2015
A great meal not only satiates your hunger and feeds the senses, it also nourishes the soul.
Memories … light the corners of my credit card. Misty Instagrammed memories of the way we were …
Think back 12 months. Thinner, younger, wealthier, for sure. But then, we wouldn’t have those memories, would we? Memories of excellent meals, brilliant produce, clever combinations and timeless flavours are plentiful. But a great meal also nourishes the soul, feeds a need for occasions to be marked, brings people together to share and connect. These are the buoys on the course of our eating lives we must round to hoist the spinnaker of happiness.
And so it was the editor asked for my 10 most memorable meals of 2015. Just 10? Sorry ed, can’t count. So, in no particular order …
LUCIO’S, SYDNEY
Lunch. One luxurious, long, rainy Friday afternoon in Sydney I sheltered for what was one of the great lunches of the year. I’d go back for the superbly executed, Ligurian-influenced food alone. (For the record, the greatest pesto with house-made pasta of my life.) But Lucio’s is the sum of many, many parts, from the warmth of the host, the colourful, ad hoc arty decor of the dining rooms to the professionalism and Italian brio of the service guys. A reminder of what great restaurants are all about. Have always been about.
FLEET, BRUNSWICK HEADS
Dinner. Small and sweet, Fleet isn’t so much a restaurant as a case study in partnership. Out front, a natural host, smiling, pouring, delivering plates to diners at a kind of bench table thing behind which she works. Out back, a gifted and adventurous chef. Her man. Their program? Small and curious ways with hyper-local (northern NSW coast) produce that challenge yet satisfy profoundly. Intensely personal.
STEAK AT HOME
Dinner. It goes like this: I ask butcher Salvatore Fusca, in Ballan, Victoria, to cut a single 14cm-15cm T-bone from a carcass of aged beef he keeps in the cool room. He does this with pride. I take it home, get it up to room temperature, oil and salt it, then build a fire from dead gum branches in the firepit. When the fire dies to glowing coals, the meat goes on a grill suspended above it. It’s about patience, smoke, radiant heat and mustardy celeriac remoulade. Good meat cooked properly. Heaven.
NAHMYAA, PHUKET
Dinner. The only restaurant I ate at more than three times this year … In fact I did seven consecutive nights at this wonderful hotel restaurant. Thai food at a refined level — and by that I don’t mean tortured, but done to exacting standards with excellent produce — takes eating to another place. Nahmyaa, at Como in Phuket, could use a shot of personality but the food is consistently brilliant and I use the famous Nahm, at sister hotel the Metropolitan in Bangkok, as a benchmark.
FINO, SEPPELTSFIELD
Lunch. There are winery restaurants where you feel very little connection with the product. But at the other end of the scale is Fino, at Seppeltsfield, South Australia, the historic Barossa home of sherries and fortifieds. If there is any other restaurant that brings together that sense of place and history, with such appropriate local food and warm service, I’d like to know. David Swain’s honest, uncomplicated yet pure food and Sharon Romeo’s sparkling service make for a rare package.
DINNER BY HESTON BLUMENTHAL, MELBOURNE
Dinner. I know this restaurant works on a different, and quite probably subsidised, economic model from those in the real world, but does that matter? Not to me. Delicious food and the most customer-focused service team you could ever hope for. A real, grown-up, super-stylish hospitality experience.
AZIAMENDI, THAILAND
Dinner. Context is everything here: your feet are in the coastal sand of Phang Nga, Thailand, but your head is somewhere in Spain at Azurmendi, the mothership restaurant that inspired this little gastronomic gem. Amazingly executed contemporary food that works on all the senses .
BENNELONG, SYDNEY
Dinner. If you cannot muster a sense of occasion at Bennelong, beneath the sails of the Opera House with the harbour spread before you, you’re drugged. Go back to bed and leave the eating and drinking to those of us sufficiently wide awake to appreciate the space, the style, the professionalism and the food. Peter Gilmore’s “ballsier” Australian menu is a true statement of what a national cuisine might be, and the dishes from the Cured & Raw menu will help you truly understand the expression “it’s all about the produce”.
ATTICA, MELBOURNE
Dinner. Through the years Attica has always been … interesting. No doubt about that. This year was no different. Except that it was interesting and brilliant. Satisfying. Delicious. Fun. Ben Shewry — quite possibly Australia’s best-known chef in international circles — took more control of the dining experience this year. Attica became less gastro temple, less precious, and somehow this made the food taste better. It doesn’t hurt that Shewry is constantly developing new dishes and the growing maturity has made for finer, less esoteric food. Brilliant.
BENTLEY, SYDNEY
Lunch. When you have the time — the time to eat a long lunch, the flexibility to enjoy wine with it and the freedom not to go back to work — there are few places I’d rather be than CBD Sydney and a table at Bentley. As chef Brent Savage matures, so does his creativity. Put this in tandem with his business partner Nick Hildebrandt working the floor and the relationship between food and wine comes into rare focus. Rarely do the words “you choose” fall from the lips so readily. What a pleasure.
ESP, MELBOURNE
Dinner. Somewhere between contemporary adventure, with its emphasis on textures and theatrical props, and classical French cooking, with its backbone of technique and saucing, sits Scott Pickett’s food. I love it. It is at once familiar and far-reaching. And I love the sexy dining room he has created to showcase it.
MINAMISHIMA, MELBOURNE
Dinner. Minamishima is all about sushi. It’s really that simple. So I wouldn’t go here to sit at a table; that would be missing the point. You sit at the counter, the way you would in Japan, and let a highly skilled master of his craft prepare food for you omakase-style, or just-in-time, in manufacturing parlance. It is a very personal food experience in an increasingly processed food world. The sushi is outstanding.
MR WONG, SYDNEY
Lunch. Funny that the great Cantonese restaurant of Australia is part of a dining empire owned by a family of Dutch-Australian entrepreneurs, but there you have it. Eating at Mr Wong is a seriously exhilarating experience, from the magnificently restored sub-basement premises to the brilliance of the dumplings and duck. The food here is taken seriously by a very talented team. I’d go regularly if I could.
ANCHOVY, MELBOURNE
Dinner. It’s not surprising this small inner-Melbourne restaurant is difficult to get into. The food is packed with vibrant flavours and clever ideas, all underpinned by intuitive balance. Thi Le, the chef, is almost certainly at the top of our “one to watch” list. Some things say Vietnam (her blood pudding dish, for example). Some Thailand (chargrilled cuttlefish salad, say). But everything says Thi Le.
DU FERMIER, TRENTHAM
Lunch. The best little no-hat restaurant in Victoria. Annie Smithers’s little Trentham/French farmhouse kitchen is growing up, blossoming into an elegant, simple and deeply personal dining room. When my palate and enthusiasm wane and I find myself longing for a year in Provence, I book a table and let Smithers transport me there. First-class produce, faultless.
And finally … MY OWN WEDDING DINNER
What is a great meal if it’s not your friends and family joining together to feast? To celebrate, to share a moment in time that cannot be recaptured and no amount of money can buy. It’s the memory that leaves a wonderful taste in your mouth long after dessert has been digested. It’s morning-after deep belly laughing debriefs over coffee, wonky photos and food stains on your shirt. And maybe a glass of Averna. So my most memorable meal of 2015? Our wedding feast in country Victoria. A great big rustic joyous jumble of Italian lamb and polenta, friends, family, dancing and laughter by the lake on a perfect balmy April evening. Rough heads the next day, long disused muscles sore from extravagant ungainly dancing, smashed glasses and wilting flowers.
Here’s to 2016 and more great food memories. But I won’t be getting married again.