THRILL SEEKERS
From dining 3,500 metres above sea level in the Andes to being immersed in an art installation pre-entrée, MICHAEL HARDEN counts down the 10 most exciting new restaurants in the world.
From the Andes to LA, Michael Harden counts down the 10 most exciting new restaurants in the world.
Balagan, Paris
Near the top of the discerning Parisian’s wish list right now is Balagan, a beautifully designed restaurant and bar on the ground floor of The Renaissance Paris-Vendôme Hotel. Assaf Granit and Uri Navon, two Israeli chefs formerly of Jerusalem’s Machne-Yehuda and London’s Palomar and The Barbary dish up a fusion of Israeli, Moroccan and French cuisine. It’s a great perch to observe yet another example of the city of light’s newfound love of cuisines other than French. It’s also a whole lot of fun. Moroccan oysters are served with chermoula and radish, beef tartare is spiked with tahini and peppers, the veal sweetbreads are grilled and cocktails from the pretty bar might mix beet syrup, mezcal, coriander and sherry vinegar. They sync perfectly with Balagan’s loud, energetic, crazy Israeli-party vibe.
9 Rue d’Alger, Paris, balagan-paris.com
Bar Crenn, San Francisco
A new wine bar by chef Dominique Crenn that’s “an homage to the classics of French gastronomy” with a menu that includes classic dishes from Alain Ducasse, Pierre Koffmann, Guy Savoy and Crenn herself? Sign us up. The homage doesn’t stop with the food though. The space, linked to the two-starred Atelier Crenn by a central courtyard, is a take on the great salons of 1920s and ’30s Paris. Think velvet curtains, animal-print fabric, chandeliers, timber, marble and leather galore, plus couches and rugs strewn across polished floors and a cocktail list rich in old-school French apéritifs. Crenn, named best Female Chef in the World in 2016 (she used the platform to call out the hospitality trade – and the award – for sexism), crams her short, ever-changing menu with the kind of dishes that French dreams are made of. There’s soupe aux truffes, tarte flambé and a pâté en croûte that has San Francisco critics frothing adjectives. The wine list is a cracker too, mainly biodynamic from France and California. It’s small and popular: plan well ahead. 3131 Fillmore St, San Francisco, barcrenn.com
Majordomo, LA
As if David Chang, the glorious leader of the increasingly global Momofuku empire, hadn’t already attracted a bonfire of anticipation opening his first West Coast restaurant, he fanned it by launching a new Netflix show ( Ugly Delicious) and working as a correspondent for NBC during the 2018 Winter Olympics at the same time. Cue queues. Majordomo occupies a former industrial site in downtown Los Angeles that’s now all designer concrete, steel, timber and rippled glass. The décor includes art by Taiwanese-American painter James Jean and onggis, the traditional Korean ceramic fermenting pots; Majordomo will be self-sufficient in fermented goods any day now. In typical Chang style there’s a heap of influences at play in the food – Korean, Chinese, Japanese, South American, French – and a dedication to West Coast produce. But mostly it’s just chock full of stuff you want to eat right now – bings, the Chinese flatbread, are chucked on the grill then served with tinned sardines or cave-aged butter and white sturgeon roe or soft-boiled eggs, smoked trout roe and onion soubise. There’s a $190 rack of ribs carved at the table and flavoured with “domojang”, a take on doenjang. There’s spicy bo ssäm, noodles soused in pork fat and tossed with fermented krill, and kakigori with citrus and meringue. There will be a wait, online or on the street (bar seating is unreserved). 1725 Naud St, Los Angeles, majordomo.la
Faro Tapas, Hobart
You may not hit Faro just for the food but, being a restaurant in the new Pharos wing of Mona that’s designed to mess with your mind, eating is only partly the point. At its heart is the enormous white sphere that you see through the bank of windows when approaching the museum from the Derwent River. It’s a sensory installation from American artist James Turrell, and as part of the dining experience here – the one where you not only look at the art but become part of it – you get to step inside the sphere, lay down and get pummelled by a 15 minute ride of sound and colour. This can be before or after the signature black Margarita containing a pig’s eyeball encased in ice, not to mention the relatively straight Spanish menu of good jamón, empanadas and more complex snacks such as confit abalone, raw scallop and miso on a linseed cracker, as well as main courses such as the slowcooked lamb shoulder with mixed-grain risotto, nori, turnip and spinach. There’s a sensory deprivation installation as part of the experience too and who hasn’t wanted one of those on hand from time to time at dinner? It’s provocative and strange and quite a lot of fun. Mona honcho David Walsh calls it “barely controlled chaos” and, after a Turrell or two, it’s hard to disagree. Faro Tapas, Mona, 655 Main Rd, Berriedale, Tas, mona.net.au/eat-drink/faro
Mil, Moray, Peru
The latest entrant in the dining-as-extremesport stakes, Mil is a 20-seat restaurant and laboratory, 3500 metres above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. It overlooks a gobsmackingly gorgeous landscape that includes an Inca ruin, and is as much about researching and cataloguing native Andean ingredients as it is feeding people. Mil’s team of anthropologists, biologists and nanotechnologists (no, really) has archived 55 varieties of potato already. Leading the charge is chef Virgilio Martínez from Lima’s Central restaurant (fifth on last year’s World’s 50 Best), a champion of Peruvian biodiversity via a menu that’s beholden to altitudes rather than seasons. At Mil it’s all the one altitude and Martínez is talking to the locals to investigate ancient Incan cooking techniques. One dish, tarwi ceviche combines tarwi (a local bean) with passionfruit, avocado and marinated guinea pig. Other dishes make use of a huatia, a traditional Incan stone oven. It’s not an easy place to get to – a 45-minute winding drive from the nearest town, Cusco, which is also high in the Andes, about 1000km from Lima. But it’s all about the quiet, the meditation and a menu focused on vegetables, tubers and grains. And a little llama and alpaca meat for good measure. Get trekking.
500 metres above the Archaeological Complex of Moray, milcentro.pe
The Petersham & La Goccia, London
The Boglione family’s Petersham Nurseries, the chic garden centre with a reputation for great food in Richmond, makes its Covent Garden début with two new restaurants, both with Italian accents and a focus on ethical, seasonal ingredients. With an à la carte menu, contemporary art, Murano glass work and a restrained sense of pomp, The Petersham is the more upmarket of the two. It’s also tying itself to the Slow Food philosophy, sourcing organic meat from the family farm on the border of Devon and Dorset (run by the Bogliores’ son, Harry) and vegetables and leaves from the family gardens in Richmond. La Goccia is more freewheeling, an all-day restaurant built around a wood-fired oven and grill and a dining bar. It’s all about pizzette and panzanella, Tuscanstyle sausages and grilled vegetables, and a list of cicchetti. Aperitivi will also feature. This new food push is being run by eldest Boglione daughter, Lara, working with chef-director Damian Clisby, a member of the team at Petersham for the last four years. The “lifestyle destination” also features a deli, kitchenware shop and florist. Floral Court, London, petershamnurseries.com/dine
Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura, Florence
Exciting news for fashionable food fans with Gucci joining Prada and LVMH in dipping its toes into the culinary pool. Being a Gucci restaurant, Gucci Osteria doesn’t do things by half. It’s part of the Gucci Garden, a museum-retail concept inside a 14th-century palazzo overlooking Piazza della Signoria in the centre of Florence. And as if that’s not enough for you to get your skates on, the chef is Massimo Bottura, the force behind the three-starred Modena restaurant Osteria Francescana. Bottura’s menu has a Gucci mishmash craziness to it. Sure there’s a strong Italian carb-emphasis – tortellini, cacio e pepe, mushroom risotto – but the menu also includes tostadas, steamed
pork buns, burgers and hotdogs. The 50-seat dining room looks the part, low-key dramatic, its apple green walls lined with antiquities. And after lunch there’s a whole garden of shopping to work off the pasta. Piazza della Signoria 10, Florence, gucci.com
Noma 2.0, Copenhagen
There was never any doubt that René Redzepi’s reboot of his zeitgeist-shifting restaurant was going to attract attention and a feral scrambling for tables. After popping up around the world (Tokyo, Sydney, Tulum), then shuttering the original site, the anticipation was feverish. How do you successfully reinvent the World’s Best Restaurant? Apparently, by shifting only a short distance from the old joint into Copenhagen’s former counterculture commune Christianshavn. Then you spend vast sums on an abandoned, graffiti-strewn stretch of buildings bringing fermentation labs, four kitchens, glass ceilings as well as souvenirs, ideas and memories from Japan, Australia and Mexico. Then you make your obsession with the local and the seasonal even more
forensic so that the first menu, “Seafood Season” reflecting the local season, is seafood only – think Danish squid, Faroe Island sea snails and sea urchin, wild trout roe and sea cucumbers. It’s Redzepi, so the combinations are loopy, counterintuitive and artful. Early reports indicate swooning. Refshalevej 96, 1432 Copenhagen K, noma.dk
RyuGin, Tokyo
Pulses became discreetly elevated when word came last year that chef Seiji Yamamoto was closing down his three-star kaiseki restaurant in Roppongi. Relief all-round then that it was only because he was moving after 15 years in the one hilariously nondescript location. The new RyuGin is on the seventh floor of a building in midtown Hibiya, close to the Imperial Palace. Chef Yamamoto explains the move as an appropriate one for a restaurant like his, that aims to “raise the national flag” by exploring the richness and authenticity of Japanese food. The new location will provide more space and comfort with an emphasis on traditional craftsmanship and artisan ceramic tableware. Yamamoto initially made his name with his modern approach to kaiseki, but he’s now known more for the authenticity of his cooking and an unflagging dedication to the best seafood and vegetables. Add anticipation to his bag of Michelin stars and consistently high ranking on the Asia’s 50 Best list and it’s probable that a seat at his new table will be harder to get than ever.
7-17-24 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, nihonryori-ryugin.com/en
Pt Leo Estate, Mornington Peninsula
Phil Wood has been dishing up superbly balanced food at Pt Leo Estate’s semiformal bistro since the $50 million sculpture park, winery and restaurant opened late last year. Wood, whose last gig was at Eleven
Bridge in Sydney, uses as much Mornington Peninsula produce as he can get his hands on, but given the small scale of most farmers in the region he has had to be pragmatic. Stage two in his culinary master plan has now commenced at Laura, the 45-seat restaurant named for one of Pt Leo’s most spectacular artworks, a colossal eight-metre sculpture of a woman’s head by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa. The set menu at Laura changes daily, and its four to six courses are all about Mornington Peninsula produce. That means locally caught fish and locally farmed mussels, but it’s also about seaweed, vegetables, vine leaves and, eventually, beef from the herd of cattle that can be seen grazing between the sculptures in a distant paddock. Wood doesn’t use the term fine dining but his food is finely crafted, balanced and a prime example of what’s happening right now in what may be Australia’s hottest dining region. 3649 Frankston-Flinders Rd, Merricks, Vic, ptleoestate.com.au
Mil overlooks a gobsmackingly gorgeous landscape that includes an Inca ruin, and is engaged in cataloguing native Andean ingredients.