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Fine Dining and Other Melbourne Things
Apr. 20th, 2023 02:36 pmFrom a strong sense of personal frugality and an abiding love of home cooking, I have not had opportunities for seriously fine dining. The closest is when I worked in the kitchen of Nine Darling Street some twenty-five years ago, once among Melbourne's best reception centres for many decades before recently being turned into apartments. But this pales into insignificance to the quality of places visited by my dear friend from the Territory, Lara D. An apparent objective in life is to try out every Chef-hat restaurant in the country, and whilst the warmth of Darwin offers little, her old home of Melbourne (despite the cold, which she loathes) offers a few. It's been almost a year since we've caught up in person and I am deeply honoured that she made time to spend an evening and a day in my company and introduce me to this world, identifying my appreciation of good food and my deep love of artistic excellence.
This became manifest as an evening at the chef's counter at Amaru that provided a nine-course "sensory" degustation menu, with each item paired with a "nonconformist" drink, both dutifully explained in glorious detail by the responsible chef (providing me with the opportunity to stumble through some French and German). It was an innovative menu and pairings but had evidently been carefully tested. Obviously, the selection of food and beverage products was of the finest quality, but the real art was in the cooking, the presentation, the attention to detail, and the service. This was truly food presentation and consumption as an artistic endeavour which is deeply appreciated, even if my preferences are more toward the production.
The following day I'd taken leave and so we took the opportunity to do some more "Melbourne things". This included a trip to ACMI for their screen goddesses exhibition, which spanned many decades and included footage, costumes, interview, and the like. This was followed by a trip next door to the Ian Potter Centre of the NGV at Federation Square, a late lunch at Mr Ramen Sam in Chinatown and finally, the Melbourne Museum which I hadn't been to for quite a while. As the sun set, we made our goodbyes as Lara was bundled into a car for her next culinary adventure with promises to meet up again soon. Every moment with this stylish woman is always insightful and joyous.
This became manifest as an evening at the chef's counter at Amaru that provided a nine-course "sensory" degustation menu, with each item paired with a "nonconformist" drink, both dutifully explained in glorious detail by the responsible chef (providing me with the opportunity to stumble through some French and German). It was an innovative menu and pairings but had evidently been carefully tested. Obviously, the selection of food and beverage products was of the finest quality, but the real art was in the cooking, the presentation, the attention to detail, and the service. This was truly food presentation and consumption as an artistic endeavour which is deeply appreciated, even if my preferences are more toward the production.
The following day I'd taken leave and so we took the opportunity to do some more "Melbourne things". This included a trip to ACMI for their screen goddesses exhibition, which spanned many decades and included footage, costumes, interview, and the like. This was followed by a trip next door to the Ian Potter Centre of the NGV at Federation Square, a late lunch at Mr Ramen Sam in Chinatown and finally, the Melbourne Museum which I hadn't been to for quite a while. As the sun set, we made our goodbyes as Lara was bundled into a car for her next culinary adventure with promises to meet up again soon. Every moment with this stylish woman is always insightful and joyous.
