Beef cheeks in baharat spice with roasted brussels sprouts and soft polenta

Despite two enormously successful restaurants creating a buzz throughout LA, Curtis Stone isn’t sitting still. Shonagh Walker toured California’s Central Coast with the celebrity chef, to uncover exactly what’s in store for his diners for the remainder of 2018. Curtis Stone is standing waist deep in the freezing seawater of Morro Bay, CA, shucking a Pacific Gold Oyster that he’s just plucked from the farm’s submerged harvest. He hands it to me, beaming his signature smile. Exhaustion is tugging at the corners of his sparkling blue eyes, but enthusiasm for the deep-cupped mollusc quickly turns them upwards again. We are at the tail end of a hectic 18 hours a day, five-day immersive tour of California’s Central Coast, a region famed for its local produce, stellar seafood and mind-blowing wines (divine Burgundian varietals: Pinot Noir to die for and an incredible array of Chardonnay). The aim is to seek inspiration for the upcoming menu of his Beverly Hills fine dining restaurant, Maude. While the seafood and seasonal offerings of this region are truly unsurpassed, if I’m being honest, we are really here for the wines. You see, Curtis has yet again disrupted the concept of conventional fine dining and, as with everything he does, he’s done so with gusto. Where traditional menus decree full control to the chef, demanding wine pairings are made to meld with cuisine creativity, Curtis abdicated to Head Sommelier, Andrey Tolmachyov. The 26 year old now has the enviable task of travelling to the world’s best wine regions to curate a list based around the finest on offer. First, it was Rioja, Spain. Then came Burgundy, France and this quarter (July to September) it’s the sun-spoiled Central Coast of California. After each meticulous research trip, Tolmachyov curates the wines he is to feature for the three months. From there, Curtis and executive chef, Justin Hilbert devise a menu using ingredients from the same region to enhance the drops. It’s a change of tack for Maude, which for the past four years has focused on one ingredient per month and created a degustation experience around it, with wines stepping up only to match the food. Curtis explains: “After doing 48 menus with no dish repeated, we wanted something completely new. The wine program had really blossomed, with such amazing and talented sommeliers, but the pairings were always done last. We decided work backwards; go to a wine region, be inspired by the wine and the local regionality and dishes, then talk to the wine team about what they wanted and what would pair well with that wine and create a menu from that.” And here we are, soaking up the afternoon sun, eating freshly shucked oysters and sipping some incredible local drops from nearby family run estate, Demetria in the picturesque town of Los Olivos. The frutti del mar is a massive hit, as is the wine. While Andrey remains tight lipped on the 2017 Rose, I get a good vibe from Curtis that the oysters will make an appearance on the menu. Thus far, the trip has taken us through what is undoubtedly some of America’s finest coastline and we have indulged in all manner of delicacy and drinks. In Santa Barbara, we’ve sampled sea urchin caught by Stephanie Mutz, a rare fishing scientist and the only female sea urchin diver in the state. In Cambria, we’ve indulged in the finest goat milk cheeses from Stepladder Creamery and we’ve sampled more exquisite wines than is fair in one lifetime, from an array of award-winning estates peppered throughout this jewel of a coastline. We’ve also scoured local farmers markets in San Luis Obispo and eaten at some of the state’s most celebrated restaurants (think: Santa Barbara’s Lark, Paso Robles’ Fish Gaucho and San Simeon’s Ragged Point Restaurant). It sounds glamorous but it’s actually arduous, demanding and wearying. Pre-dawn starts fused into day-long driving, foraging and physical work. But such is Curtis’ way. He quite simply never stops. There’s no rest for the innovator, as it would be. The resulting debut Cali Coast dinner at Maude’s a few days later is a true feast of flavours – oyster bread (made using the aforementioned Morro Bay oysters), abalone, rock crab with summer truffles, served with grilled crab mayonnaise and spot prawn with peach fermented in beeswax and, of course, all matched with those delicious wines. So, if you’re in LA make sure you stop by Maude’s to taste Curtis’ innovative wine-focused menu. Get there now for the Tastes of California, or book in for the next quarter’s food & wine adventure – Italy’s delectable Piedmont province. Maude is located at: 212S Beverly Drive Beverly Hills, CA. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 5.30PM- 9.30PM Tel: + 1 310 859 3418 mauderestaurant.com

Chef Jerry Mai’s start in hospitality was less than auspicious. She was fired from her first job washing dishes because she broke too many bowls. The thing was, though, being just six, she could only get them into the sink by throwing them. Thankfully, given it was her parents’ restaurant, they let her stay on as chief napkin folder, at which she excelled. This was the 1980s and Jerry’s parents had arrived in Brisbane with their young family from Vietnam via a Thai refugee camp. Like many an immigrant before them, they opened a restaurant serving the food of their homeland. But given Australians had only just got used to the offerings of their local Chinese take-away, Vietnamese restaurateurs played it safe. As Jerry describes, “A lot of the Vietnamese restaurants were just doing stir-fries, you know, ‘here’s 20 sauces and five meats, what would you like with it?’ and the garnish was always broccoli, carrots and capsicum.” Today’s take It’s a very different scene today, Jerry explains, “Fast forward 20, 30 years and nearly everybody has been to Vietnam for a holiday and Australians are eating more Vietnamese food – banh mi, pho, rice paper rolls.” That’s the sort of street fare you’ll find at Jerry’s two Pho Nom eateries in Melbourne. But, she says, just because you have pho every other weekend and banh mi on your lunch break, doesn’t mean you know Vietnamese food. “That’s like saying French food is just escargot and butter”, Jerry explains, “It’s just scraping the surface.” The full repertoire of Vietnamese flavours takes in the influences of its history and surrounds, Jerry relates. “There was a thousand years of Chinese rule, from which comes all the heady spices, beautiful braises and masterstocks. Then the French were there for a hundred years, so you’ve got the baguettes, pate, butter, terrines. And from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia come the headier chillies and lemongrass.” It’s all these influences that Jerry has taken to create the menu for her Melbourne restaurant, Annam. With its funky fitout on Little Collins Street, Annam has a massive open kitchen at its heart, where, Jerry says, “You can come up and chat to us.” You can also watch the team cooking with fire, another aspect of Vietnamese cooking that gets overlooked, she explains. “If you’ve travelled to Vietnam, there’s not a lot of gas cooking, the streets are full of barbeques, little stoves where they grill chicken or pork and have it with some rice or pickles.” So when you have the lemongrass chicken that’s featured here at Annam, they hang it over ironbark in the fire so it becomes, Jerry says, “Nice and smoky.” Jerry talks recipes Grilled lemongrass chicken This is a take on chicken lemongrass, which is normally a little stir-fry, and the paste we use to marinate the chicken is my mum’s recipe that she uses over summer to grill chicken on one of her three different barbeques!  Grilled pork belly, lychee, chilli jam This has a bit of Thai influence with the chilli jam. The marinated pork belly is put over the grill to crisp up the skin and render out the fat. So it’s just this really rich and salty piece of pork through a really smoky jam dressing with refreshing herbs and cucumber, and sweetness from the lychees. Young coconut sorbet I had a trip to Vietnam with my parents about five years ago and my mum wanted to find this stall selling coconuts that people kept telling her about. We found it and the woman just scraped out the flesh of a young coconut, put some corn in it – in Vietnam, corn is a sweet rather than savoury ingredient – and added coconut ice-cream with heaps of crushed peanuts. I found the way it uses every part of the coconut brilliant and I thought, “I just need to have a venue to serve it in.” And now I do!

If there was one restaurant whose identity is quintessentially Australian, Quay would have to be it. Perched over Sydney Harbour, you look across to the iconic Sydney Opera House while dining on the acclaimed contemporary cuisine of Peter Gilmore.  For almost two decades, Peter has been in the upper echelon of the world’s best chefs, so he’s perfectly placed to define Australia’s food identity. He’s narrowed it down to one word: freedom. “Apart from our Indigenous history, Australia doesn’t have a long standing food history compared to countries like France or Japan,” says Peter.  “If I was a chef in France, I would have been born with a really strong French identity, but being an Australian chef, I have been exposed to so many different cuisines. So our identity is that sense of freedom and our willingness to open our palates to all different types of cuisines from around the world. “The other thing is, we can grow all the ingredients for all those cuisines somewhere in our country from the tropics right down to the cool climate areas of Victoria and Tasmania, so we have access to incredible fresh produce, so I think that has a huge influence.” From the earth Diverse produce is a certainly a key component of Peter’s cuisine and a topic he explores in his recently released book, From the Earth. Throughout its beautifully photographed pages, Peter catalogues an extensive list of rare vegetables, detailing their history and flavour profiles as well as showcasing the boutique farmers who grow them for him at Quay. “When I started growing vegetables in my own backyard 11 years ago, I realised how many unusual fruits and vegetables there are that are not in the mainstream market,” says Peter.  “Their difference is their thing. They have different profiles, looks, colours, flavours. As a chef, that is really interesting. It gives me a bigger palette to work from.” Key to a new Quay These heirloom vegetables play a key role in the new identity at Quay. For the first time in 16 years, the restaurant recently underwent a multi-million dollar face lift. The kitchen is bigger, the dining spaces more intimate. Gone too is the old menu, including the dish most people identify with Peter, his snow egg dessert.  “When we decided to renovate Quay,  I knew I had to let go of some of the signature dishes and the snow egg was one of those,” says Peter.  “I am very proud that I created an iconic dish that people love. But you have to let go of things if you want to be creative and renew. So it wasn’t that hard for me to say goodbye.” Of course, there is a new dessert, white coral – chocolate ganache that is aerated, put in liquid nitrogen and served on ice-cream. And while Peter admits it will probably be referred to as the new snow egg, he’s confident it will impress. “It is very fragile and brittle and we ask the guests to tap it with a spoon and it just breaks apart. So there is a little bit of theatre, a bit of fun and that emphasises our new approach to the food at Quay. “We are only doing a tasting menu now, so it’s allowed me a new structure – to take the diner on a holistic journey throughout the meal. It is about interaction without being too kitschy, but still maintaining the integrity of the dishes and ingredients.”