Hidden bars and pop-up restaurants, chefs with kitchen gardens, zero-mile farm-to-fork menus and, well, cafes with their own rooftop beehives (!) are some hot new trends in Melbourne this year; in a city that?s fast emerging as a global arbitrator of taste and trends in food, but also fashion, art, and design. With Europe- and America-centric world orders in decline, it is alternate melting pots such as this one that are driving trends. Unlike in the recession-hit world, F&B is buzzing here, riding on the back of a strong economy and strengthening Aussie dollar that has overtaken the US dollar. The alive, vibrant restaurantscape shows us a slice of life as it could be in our own cities, four to ten years from now, who is to say?
In Melbourne, the future is now. And it is easy to be seduced by its easy grace and informality. A long, leisurely, al fresco lunch on the banks of the Yarra, just across the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where a tattered Team India has been playing, kicks off a 20-day-long mega food and wine fest, this region in Australia is now famous for. It?s pitched as the world?s longest lunch?not just because of the hours spent bent over plates and drinking easy Pinot Noirs, but because this is a logistical triumph of 1,200 people sitting down to a three-course meal on a single 500 metre-long table.
Celeb chef George Biron?s free-range turkey and tomatoes with avocado and greens is the main. It?s a clean, simple dish, highlighting freshness and the quality of ingredients. But it is only when George speaks about the prep that its implications become clearer and dearer: It?s a new world dish, with all the ingredients coming out of the chef?s own kitchen garden; volunteers have been enlisted to pull out several kilos of veggies needed this afternoon. The ideology is clear: supermarket is out, as are carbon-mile guzzling heavy duty imports. No foie-gras, no California prunes; the local and the sustainable are chic…
More than half a dozen Michelin starred chefs are descending to showcase the latest and the cutting-edge. There is still a little bit of gastronomy going and a fair bit of fusion. Asian, Ethiopian, even Afghan and high-quality south American are buzzwords. But more than starry miracles, it?s the vibrancy of F&B in the city and in its grungy outskirts that lures you.
On the fringes are pop-ups and hidden restaurants. Broadsheet is a bar that has popped up literally in a quiet street. There?s been no advertising, the location is known only through word-of-mouth, the ambience is literally nothing with just sheets of broadsheet newspapers piled up in corners and at the entrance, yet with top (and different) mixologists coming here every evening, the USP is clear: Innovation and experimental drinks.
More visible but equally temporary is Greenhouse by Joost. The waterside restaurant will function for just a few weeks and explores the ideology of Joost Bakker, a Dutch-born designer, famous for his large-scale public works, vertical gardens and creative works using ?the stuff other people throw out?. The pop-up is Joost?s latest experiment. The attempt is obviously to use everything local?flour for bread is milled on the premises and there are sacks of wheat that double up as d?cor. Whole grain pasta, ancient grains like quinoa (tracing ancestry to the Middle-East), and everything from pickled lime to mustard greens, fennel, zucchini and pumpkin feature on the Med-inspired menu?besides the seafood and the Aussie lamb, of course.
But more than that, it is the entire restaurant done up with recycled strawboards (the biggest waste product in the world), chairs fashioned out of conveyor-belt pipes, one entire vertical wall of strawberries and basil pots, and crockery fashioned out of broken beer, jam jars and milk bottles that is spectacular. And, the toilets that recycle urine to fertilise canola and soyabean crop!
If gastronomic trends are being defined by such beliefs, city beehives fit right in. Melbourne is, in fact, part of a larger global focus on bringing traditional apiculture practices to big cities, including Berlin and New York. Trendy cafes and even food retail stores now boast of rooftop hives. You can calmly walk in, asking for a tasting of ?city? honey?as opposed to that from the country. The latter, as I tried, is light and floral; city honey is more flavourful. Who says that you only need green meadows for the best? A bustling city is just as good! Will Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore follow suit?
The writer is a food critic