well . . . me.
Of all the food-crazy countries in the English-speaking world, Australia is perhaps the most rabidly enthusiastic. It's the Gold Rush for chefs Down Under. In Melbourne, chefs like Paul Wilson of Radii, Raymond Capaldi of Fenix, and Donovan Cooke of Ondine walk down the street after work like frontier-era gunslingers. There are chef-friendly drinking establishments that cater to the needs (and the propensity for bad behavior) of
NAME DROPPING DOWN UNDER
the alcohol-starved late-night chef posse. And all anyone wants to talk about is food and restaurants. Restaurants open and close, chefs bounce from place to place like Manhattan at its most capricious. Both Melbourne and Sydney boast scores of terrific restaurants, and everyone knows the names of their chefs. Chefs are like sports stars here: Everyone knows their stats, the teams they played on in the past. Tetsuya Wakuda, whose cookbook has—along with the French Laundry Cookbook —been considered prime "chef porn," meaning books that we professional chefs take to bed with a flashlight in our lonelier moments, is generally considered to run the best restaurant in Australia. His kitchen cranks out an absolutely amazing, jewellike degustation menu that has to be experienced to be believed. Tetsuya, though shy and very serious, is more than ready for his media moment. It's only a matter of time before they get their hooks in him.
On the other hand, you've got Donovan Cooke, a chef from Hull, England, who can trace his culinary credentials back to early Marco Pierre White days. His Ondine in Melbourne is easily one of the best going; his tuna a la ficelle with horseradish cream, oxtail ravioli, fennel, and oxtail broth (a playful take on the beef classic) is one of the best goddamn things I've ever eaten in a restaurant. But it's very hard to picture Donovan with his own television show. While his contemporaries took elocution lessons and learned front-of-the-house survival skills, Donovan kept his thick accent, bounced around Michelin-starred restaurants in France (his French is an amazing thing to hear, believe me), and peppers his sentences with the real language of chefs and cooks. He cooks like a Michelin-starred Frenchman and looks like a football hooligan. When I dropped in on him unannounced, he was standing behind a busy stove, cranking out meals, personally working the saute station. He is absolutely obsessed with flavor—and sauce making in particular—and seems to want to talk about nothing more than the nuts and bolts of emulsion, reduction, fortification ... all in delightfully non-TV-friendly terms: "You reduce the fucking jus, right? And you don't bloody skim it. You emulsify the fucking fat right in— at the last second. If the sauce breaks? What do you mean if the sauce breaks? If the sauce breaks—you're a fucking cunt." That's a celebrity chef I want to see on TV.
MY MANHATTAN
i'm a new yorker , so it should come as no surprise that I think my city is the greatest city in the world. I like living in the city where so many of my favorite films take place, where nearly every street corner reminds me of some piece of lurid personal or criminal history. "Crazy Joe Gallo was shot here . . . Big Paul Castellano got whacked there . . . Used to score there . . . That place used to be a speakeasy . . . My old methadone clinic . . . That used to be an after-hours club . . ." It may not be the most beautiful city. It's not the nicest city (though it is, sadly, getting nicer). And it's certainly not the easiest city to live in. One minute you're on top of the world, and the next—like when you wish to light up a smoke at a bar and can't—you're wallowing in misery and self-pity, unable to decide between murder and suicide. But it is exactly those famously manic highs and lows that make New York, and Manhattan in particular, like nowhere else. I mean, you can talk London or Paris or Barcelona all you like, but we're open all night: I can pick
Of all the food-crazy countries in the English-speaking world, Australia is perhaps the most rabidly enthusiastic. It's the Gold Rush for chefs Down Under. In Melbourne, chefs like Paul Wilson of Radii, Raymond Capaldi of Fenix, and Donovan Cooke of Ondine walk down the street after work like frontier-era gunslingers. There are chef-friendly drinking establishments that cater to the needs (and the propensity for bad behavior) of
NAME DROPPING DOWN UNDER
the alcohol-starved late-night chef posse. And all anyone wants to talk about is food and restaurants. Restaurants open and close, chefs bounce from place to place like Manhattan at its most capricious. Both Melbourne and Sydney boast scores of terrific restaurants, and everyone knows the names of their chefs. Chefs are like sports stars here: Everyone knows their stats, the teams they played on in the past. Tetsuya Wakuda, whose cookbook has—along with the French Laundry Cookbook —been considered prime "chef porn," meaning books that we professional chefs take to bed with a flashlight in our lonelier moments, is generally considered to run the best restaurant in Australia. His kitchen cranks out an absolutely amazing, jewellike degustation menu that has to be experienced to be believed. Tetsuya, though shy and very serious, is more than ready for his media moment. It's only a matter of time before they get their hooks in him.
On the other hand, you've got Donovan Cooke, a chef from Hull, England, who can trace his culinary credentials back to early Marco Pierre White days. His Ondine in Melbourne is easily one of the best going; his tuna a la ficelle with horseradish cream, oxtail ravioli, fennel, and oxtail broth (a playful take on the beef classic) is one of the best goddamn things I've ever eaten in a restaurant. But it's very hard to picture Donovan with his own television show. While his contemporaries took elocution lessons and learned front-of-the-house survival skills, Donovan kept his thick accent, bounced around Michelin-starred restaurants in France (his French is an amazing thing to hear, believe me), and peppers his sentences with the real language of chefs and cooks. He cooks like a Michelin-starred Frenchman and looks like a football hooligan. When I dropped in on him unannounced, he was standing behind a busy stove, cranking out meals, personally working the saute station. He is absolutely obsessed with flavor—and sauce making in particular—and seems to want to talk about nothing more than the nuts and bolts of emulsion, reduction, fortification ... all in delightfully non-TV-friendly terms: "You reduce the fucking jus, right? And you don't bloody skim it. You emulsify the fucking fat right in— at the last second. If the sauce breaks? What do you mean if the sauce breaks? If the sauce breaks—you're a fucking cunt." That's a celebrity chef I want to see on TV.
MY MANHATTAN
i'm a new yorker , so it should come as no surprise that I think my city is the greatest city in the world. I like living in the city where so many of my favorite films take place, where nearly every street corner reminds me of some piece of lurid personal or criminal history. "Crazy Joe Gallo was shot here . . . Big Paul Castellano got whacked there . . . Used to score there . . . That place used to be a speakeasy . . . My old methadone clinic . . . That used to be an after-hours club . . ." It may not be the most beautiful city. It's not the nicest city (though it is, sadly, getting nicer). And it's certainly not the easiest city to live in. One minute you're on top of the world, and the next—like when you wish to light up a smoke at a bar and can't—you're wallowing in misery and self-pity, unable to decide between murder and suicide. But it is exactly those famously manic highs and lows that make New York, and Manhattan in particular, like nowhere else. I mean, you can talk London or Paris or Barcelona all you like, but we're open all night: I can pick
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