 |
The Age, Epicure 31.03.09
Inventive. Love it. Go
It used to be easy to dismiss all the fuss about chefs being the new rock stars as complete palaver, until recently I was privileged to witness the first recorded crossover between food-nerd and ghetto-fabulous movements. It happened at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, and a the centre of it all was the hero of this piece, Andrew McConnell, who found himself on the receiving end of a kind of Spinal tap homage when a youngish fellow in a blue T-shirt and jeans walked up, tapped two fingers to his heart, have a little salute and said “respect”. To his credit, McConnell had the good sense to look surprised and bemused and rather mortified. Anyway, he’s never been much of a rock star chef – his CV is blissfully free of TV appearances and book deals, bless ‘im – but ironically enought, his latest venture is a venue fit for rock stars and terribly fashionable types and, naturally enough, food types. It is of course, the relocation of Three, One, Two, which grew altogether too big in reputation for its Carlton digs and has taken over an old cutlery factory on the previously unfashionable bit of Gertrude Street that, courtesy of its new tenant, is now poised to become quite the opposite. It’s the bookend to a very busy year for McConnell and his architect wife, Pascale Gomes-McNabb, who less than nine months ago opened the doors to Cumulus Inc, their more informal, all-day city ‘eating house and bar’. Cutler & Co isn’t the yin to Cumulus’ yang. There are plenty of crossover elements, including another achingly expensive fit out from Gomes-McNabb that manages to turn what could have been a cold and echoing cavern into something altogether human and inviting. There’s a piece of pressed metal with filigree trees stamped into it arching over the bar, and envy inducing Thonet chairs, and several different types of lighting including smart pendants and big puffy lights made out of netting that look like glowing jellyfish (hard to describe; they were custom designed by Gomes-McNabb). There’s none of that open kitchen business here. The hard work is kept behind the scenes, with bright, clinical flashes of white and citrus yellow glimpsed through automatic glass doors from the dimly lit dining room. There is also, notably, no table linen, which is unique for a restaurant of this calibre. The waiters too, are just as likely to be type A personalities as your more traditional phlegmatic models. But it’s undeniably still fine dining, just a modern approach to the old warhorse.
The food won’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with the McConnell back catalogue, including not only Three, One, Two and Cumulus but Mrs Jones, Circa and Diningroom 211. By which I mean: we knew he could cook. This merely confirms it. He’s never been the kind of chef to go in for the more outré combinations. There’s something about his food that makes it just as suited to those people who tag themselves as foodies as ordinary punters to whom dining out is a special occasion and who lust, not unreasonably, after big flavours and something they can at least vaguely recognise as protein and veg. McConnell’s peculiar talent is that he can satisfy both. The appetisers list kicks off with freshly shucked oysters from Moonlight Flat, purveyors of fine molluscs. Or long chewy pastries wrapped around a single anchovy – Ortiz, naturally. Or pimentios de pardon, the usually mild but potentially fiery Galician green peppers. They anchor a noteworthy menu of small shareables in the bar as well, which is a perfectly good place to sit and spend some quality time exploring the punchy list of wines by the glass.
But you’d be missing out on some truly sensational dishes; like the hapuka fillet ($38). Along with practically everything else on Melbourne menus these days, it’s had the sous vide treatment, which really does work a treat with fish, and the almost translucent but firm flesh is brilliantly married to a velvety green sauce dotted with pipis in the shell and mussels. The requisite carb hit comes with a smear of bean puree with a hint of garlic and lemon. It’s a straightforward dish perfectly executed – transcendently clean and restorative. A starter of wood-grilled quail with foie gras parfait ($20) is equally memorable. It’s so simply, really: perfectly cooked quail that’s crisp on the outside, tender and pink inside. The really clever part is wrapping the foie gras in crunchy pastry so that it’s like a cigarette with molten deliciousness spilling from it; there are a couple of quartered segments of figs that have been caramelised on the wood grill. Again, nothing to scare the horses, but a perfectly elegant interplay of colour, flavour and texture. The salad Lyonnaise ($19) is more of a plate of charcuterie with the traditional frisee salad: cubes of smoked tongue, garlic sausage, some crispy pancetta, a long, thin strip of fried pig’s ear and a scattering of confit duck gizzards. The poached egg is a duck yolk that’s been lacquered with a thin, hard shell of bruleed sugar for additional wow factor. Suckling pig ($39) is also cooked sous vide, this time for 12 hours, cooled then cooked with a quick flash in the pan. The result is an unctuous rectangle of pin with a thin top hat of uniform crackle, finished with caramelised sherry vinegar. It’s pure porky heaven. The record should also note that the portion sizes are perfect. Not too small that you start guzzling the Baker D. Chirico bread; not too big that you have to pop the top button of your Comme de Garsons trousers.
The desserts, too, wear the stamp of well-judged modishness. A rich chocolate ice cream ‘sandwich’ ($16) sits in a puddle of salted caramel; a messily pretty jumble of meringue, batons of rhubarb, lemon curd and yoghurt sorbet ($16) looks like a landscape after a snowstorm. Fittingly, both are delicious.
It’s early days at Cutler and they’re pacing themselves. Judging by how difficult it is to snaffle a booking, the dining room could be filled several times each night, but they’re wisely limiting the numbers to avoid the Bombay nightclub scenario that engulfed Cumulus. This opening was always going to be a bit event; McConnell has enough runs on the board for punters to know it was a safe bet. And it is. Here he’s found the perfect canvas for his not inconsiderable ambition. It’s not a finished product by any means. But even from its inception, Cutler & Co is a triumph – a downright sexy one too. I’m looking forward to going back, when I can get a booking. Until then I’ll keep muttering the same words. Inventive. Confident. Energetic. Love it. Go.
Larissa Dubecki.
|
 |
Gourmet Traveller May 2009
Looking Sharp
Andrew McConnell shows he’s still plugged into the zeitgeist with the opening of his latest venture, Cutler & Co. It’s smart, sexy and seriously good, reports a smitten Michael Harden.
The dish that said it all came at the end of the meal. It landed in an elegant glass bowl, looking like a dainty pile of fresh snow – white, clean, refreshing. Apparently a simple, pale granita in charmingly rustic form, it quickly revealed a series of textures and flavours – smooth coconut sorbet, a chilly ginger granita crunch, slippery, subtly aromatic coconut and citrus tapioca pearls, fresh lychee wedges and slight floral hints from shreds of aloe vera – that deftly balanced pared-back simplicitywith touches of luxury and serious aesthetic intent. It perfectly summarised the experience of eating at Cutler & Co.
After all the cheers and accolades that swamped Cumulus Inc, Andrew McConnell’s city eating house, when it opened last year, it was difficult to see how this new venture, following hot on its heels, could rise above anticlimax status. Out of the CBD, at the badlands western end of Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street and housed in a large former industrial workshop, Cutler & Co seemed to be setting itself its own challenges. But McConnell and partner Pascale Gomes-McNabb have created a truly exciting restaurant in the old machine factory, a place where the food and the décor are edgy and glamorous but completely accessible. Everything comes with a welcome lack of pretension.
Gomes-McNabb has been responsible for the design of all McConnell’s restaurants – diningroom 211 in Fitzroy, Carlton’s Mrs Jones and Three, One, Two, as well as Cumulus Inc – and Cutler & Co is a great advertisement for the benefits of experience. Behind a ruthlessly plain mirrored-glass frontage, the rustic, peeling-paint walls of the structure have been left untouched, giving the large space a rough-hewn warmth that is balanced by clean-lined smoked-glass and mirror surfaces, the stark matte black metal of the large square bar, and the “toilet block” that juts out at the back of the restaurant.
Buttery soft pale-grey leather banquettes run along two sides of the parquetry-floored dining area. There’s a raised carpeted section at the back of the room, and a glassed wine storage area to one side. Bare timber tables that tone down the formality without robbing the room of any sophistication. The lighting is dim and moody, coming from black puffy “cloud” lights designed by Gomes-McNabb, and industrialesque clear glass pods with elongated elements that look like hanging candles. It’s an undeniably sexy space and it incorporates clever elements: over the bar, an angular metal canopy perforated with tree shapes casts intricate patterns on the ceiling, which reveal themselves the more you gaze around the room.
McConnell’s food comes from the same direction as the décor: his dishes slowly disclose intricate layers and pleasant surprises that may not be apparent at first glance. This is where Cutler & Co’s assured, personable and fairly mature service team are in their element. Enthused but not over-excited, they strike the right balance in introducing the dishes and avoiding the trap of explaining away the magic of every element. If they’re asked, though, the finer points and intricacies of each dish are at their fingertips.
Cutler & Co’s kitchen, designed from the ground up by McConnell, has a mallee root-fired charcoal grill that is put to good use. Its primary purpose seems to be servicing the shared 1.2kg dry-aged Angus beef rib eye (imported from Sydney’s Vic’s Meat), but it also proves its worth with an entrée of Yarra Valley quail.
There’s something initially straightforward and barbecue-friendly about the quail, slightly smoky from being cooked over coals, but as you fossick through the pretty dish there are other discoveries to be made. Caramelised figs with a thin sugar coating (crunchy from an encounter with a blowtorch). A parsley root purée. Pomegranate seeds and barberries tossed with shredded radicchio and chervil. A pastry “cigar” filled with foie gras parfait. It is a busy dish but never seems crowded because all the ingredients seem so happy sharing a plate.
McConnell’s version of salade Lyonnaise is a must. The traditional foundation of bacon and poached egg tossed with frisée lettuce is still recognisable, but it has been studded with all sorts of other morsels that make picking through it a treasure hunt. Fried pancetta and a slow-cooked egg yolk check tradition, but there are also shavings of smoked waygu tongue, a gorgeously rich house-made garlic pork sausage, confit gizzards and thin shreds of crisp potatoes. (The only downside of the dish is that it comes in one of those wide, deep-sided bowls that encourages cutlery to slip down into your food, handles and all.)
Grilled leatherjacket (or rock flathead, depending on availability) arrives looking like an abstract landscape. The fish, finished with lemon, is scattered across a plate strewn with flash-fried school prawns tossed in a salad of shredded fennel and cabbage and dressed with wonderfully smooth chardonnay vinegar, honey and pounded thyme leaves. Small dabs of a powerful condiment of shallots stewed in crustacean-infused oil complete the picture, melding superbly with the delicate fish flavour.
The single vegetarian main course is a ripper, a truffled pecorino and whipped ricotta tart encased in the shortest of pastries lined with sweet confit onion drizzled with truffled honey. It shares plate with sautéed Jerusalem artichokes and fried zucchini flowers.
Those looking for something sweeter than the charms of the snow-like granita will be well pleased with the chocolate ice-cream sandwich. The rich whiskey-tinted ice-cream, more like a frozen chocolate mousse, sits alongside a vanilla parfait sandwiched between chocolate sponge, its edges coated with sweet crumbs made from dehydrated almond and chocolate cake and honeycomb.
The Cutler & Co wine list sits comfortably alongside the spotlight-hogging food. A clever and democratic mix of Old and New World labels, it complements rather than competes with the food, favouring small and boutique wines over name and benchmark bottles. It is another instance of the restaurant showing a remarkably high level of balance and maturity behind its fresh face.
Far from being an anticlimax after the tsunami of Cumulus-love, Cutler & Co has actually upped McConnell’s own ante. Dazzling with a monochrome pile of ice is just the tip of the creative iceberg. This uniquely handsome room and its talented chef have plenty more excitement in store.
|