The Melbourne Food & Drink Forecast Pt.2: The Trends
On trends, Josh Niland rip-offs, puffy pizza and regional Chinese food
“Trend” is a dirty word in the creative arts, of which I consider hospitality a member. When someone creates something singular and truly original, they are a visionary, a heroic genius capable of igniting unknown pleasures in the dining public. When someone copies that singular and truly original thing, they are beholden to at least try to adapt and interpret it, which if done respectfully and knowingly, can become an homage. The third and most fraught iteration of this process is the trend; where someone does something just because they’ve seen other people doing it, regardless of the provenance or ideology behind it.
This is where we enter murky territory, and start discussing concepts and notions that other writers have already touched on in much greater detail, but let this serve as my homage. In Jill Dupleix’s article in the Fin Review last year, Jill went a step further beyond the standard snark of pointing out that raw kingfish is on every menu; she looked at why, and tracked its history on our menus. These things are often organic, and whilst serving fish raw or semi-cured is a tradition as old as man itself, serving it with coconut cream, lemongrass and micro herbs as an entree in an outer suburban pub is not.
It is true that our eating habits change and adapt over time, previously singular dishes and styles going through gradual changes until they are commonplace. However there is something insidious about directly copying a chef’s dish, or a restaurateur’s style, and two recent examples come to mind. One would be hard pressed to find a more copied chef than Josh Niland, our own home-grown wonderboy and proponent of fish butchery. This, I would imagine, is by design; Niland’s impact is so momentous that he is not merely known as a chef who makes nice food, but as the leader in a philosophical and practical revolution in fish cookery. It is now very common to see chefs completely obsessed with Niland’s style and teachings, but I was still surprised to see how brazen and shameless some of the rip-offs have been.
Take noted UK chef Tom Brown, the strapping bad boy of British fish cookery. His credentials are undeniable, with stints under piscatorial prophets Nathan Outlaw and Rick Stein. Brown has gone on to win a Michelin star in his own right, and owns multiple restaurants. He has appeared on television and is, for all intents and purposes, a celebrity chef, which makes his decision to completely copy some of Niland’s dishes and plating styles without reference or homage completely baffling. Did he think we wouldn’t notice? In an industry obsessed with and beholden to Instagram, you simply cannot get away with it, and Brown has gone down in my estimation as a result. The second example is the Parisian restaurant completely ripping off Merivale’s Totti’s, which, candidly, is pretty funny.
There is nothing wrong with inspiration, and if you genuinely believe that serving lesser versions of popular Chin Chin dishes from 10 years ago at your pub in Ashburton is what your punters desire, then sobeit. That’s a trend, in the worst sense of the word; a delayed, vague and cynical attempt at acceptance. What Brown is doing is not that; he’s going straight to the source, and directly stealing ideas in real time. It’s important to know the difference.
In this article I’ll look at some of the movements I’ve noticed that I believe have the potential to become trends in the future, and try to explain why I think they’ll become part of our greater restaurant lexicon in the year ahead.
Pizza gets its Josh Niland moment
Pizza is a space that is seldom disrupted in the culinary world. Whilst modern interpretations are not uncommon, they rarely ascend to the realm of revered fine dining. When pizza is able to achieve those plaudits, it is almost always in the traditional Neapolitan style, a style fanatically protected by not only those that make it, but by the infamous AVPN. No, that’s not some sort of complex way of illegally streaming TV shows; AVPN stands for Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the devout defenders of the traditional methods who oversee verace pizza accreditation and award the world’s best pizza awards. My personal belief is that the AVPN is bullshit; people can do whatever they want with pizza, and while tradition is important, so too is innovation.
It’s not surprising that true innovation in the pizza space is coming from Japan. The Japanese have a knack of adapting traditional foods from other cultures and perfecting them, and pizza is no exception. The boom in Neapolitana style pizza in Japan has seen places like Savoy in Azabujuban and Monk in Kyoto become international foodie destinations, the innate attention to detail and perfectionism of the Japanese ethic elevating traditional pizza making methods to new heights. It was only a matter of time where this style of pizza, fusing tradition and innovation, made its way to Australia.
At Gigi’s Pizza in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, pizzaiolo Daniel Semrani is one of the first to bring this style of pizza to our shores. Semrani utilises hyper hydration to give his pizza an ethereal lightness, resulting in volcanic, giant air bubbles. The pizzas have a gnarled, unpredictable shape, and are almost 50% crust; toppings are minimal, putting all of the focus on the incredible airiness of the edges. Semrani isn’t a stickler for tradition, either; he’s even been known to use pineapple. The scientific approach Semrani takes, and the courage to serve a completely different looking pizza than what most are used to, makes him a trailblazer. Expect to see more of this style of pizza coming from ovens across Melbourne soon.
Regional cuisine
It’s long past time that Australians stopped referring to their favourite takeaway as “Chinese” or “Indian”; it’s akin to saying “fancy some European tonight?”. The change has been gradual, but we are starting to see a greater comprehension of the many and varied styles of cooking that fall under these very broad banners. In Chinese cuisine, Cantonese has long been the shorthand for the type of food most Australians have come to expect from their local, often with a sprinkling of the Anglo-Australian favourites (sweet and sour, dim sims, chow mein) that many expect. Increasingly, the food of the Sichuan region has burst onto the mainstream, championed largely by every chef you know who won’t shut up about how good Dainty Sichuan is. Shandong, or Lu cuisine, has also gained providence in our city, and there a few places serving Hunan-style food in the CBD, but there are many under-represented corners of the greater Chinese cookbook that need highlighting.
Take Dao Noodle, on Little Lonsdale. This is one of the few places Melbournians can get a taste of traditional Shanxi cuisine, and one of very fewer places where handmade dao xiao mian noodles are served. These hand cut, randomly shaped noodles and their springy texture have become a cult CBD favourite, but there is no reason a restaurant like this couldn’t function in a more suburban setting. Venues with a focus on more unique styles will be rewarded by curious punters looking for something different.
Korean food takes its place at the table
In almost every suburb in Melbourne, there is a Japanese restaurant. At the very least there is a proximity to a takeaway sushi place, even if it is one that serves Australian-style chicken schnitzel and avocado maki. We love Japanese food, and it’s become an important part of our national identity; 30 years ago, this was not necessarily the case. I believe Korean food is on the same trajectory to reach that level of broader culinary acceptance, and that we can expect in our lifetime to see a Korean restaurant in almost as many suburbs as we see Japanese ones. Partly, this is based on the extraordinary rise in Korean BBQ restaurants in the Melbourne CBD; these are now some of our buzziest and most patronised venues, particularly among young people and students. They are fun, mostly affordably, relaxed, and pleasingly conducive to consuming large amounts of cold beer and soju.
We have previously seen the rise in franchises like Gami fried chicken become commonplace in shopping centres and city streets, but keep your eye on the rise of gimbap. Not dissimilar to the versatile way in which Australians consume sushi, gimbap rolls and their clean, sesame-scented rice are a healthy and cost effective quick meal option ready to be capitalised on. Often served with fermented kimchi and pickles, these tick all the boxes for gut-health conscious diners, and if branded and marketed correctly, could quickly give your bog-standard tuna mayonnaise hadroll a run for its money in the office lunch sweepstakes.