Top table: Attica
Is dinner at Australia’s most hyped restaurant worth the three-month wait? Pat Nourse weighs in.
Where are we? In suburban Melbourne, in the realm of truly exceptional and thoughtful dining. Attica (attica.com.au) has been named restaurant of the year by Australia’s leading guides several times over and currently holds all of their top rankings of hats and stars. It earned a place on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for years, from number 21 in 2013 to its peak at number 20 in 2018, while chef Ben Shewry scored a coveted spot on Netflix’s Chef’s Table in the show’s first season. In recent years Indigenous food has become one of the restaurant’s central concerns, giving it new verve. Will I have to eat ants and
crocodile? You don’t have to eat anything you don’t want to eat but if you passed on the honey ants (sweet and delectable) or the saltwater croc ribs (inspired broadly
by the cooking of the American south and finger-lickin’ good), you’d be missing out. The kitchen likes to be adventurous but not to the detriment of deliciousness. What
about the chef’s secret? That he’s originally from the North Island of New Zealand? That’s hardly a – Aha! What kind of standardbearer for Australian cuisine comes from
overseas? Quite a few of them: the chef at Orana in Adelaide is from Glasgow and the bloke from Momofuku Seiōbo in Sydney is from Barbados. Perhaps a bit of perspective is a good thing. For Shewry it’s all about sense of place. What does that mean when it comes to dinner? No dish on the current menu tells that story better than an imperfect history of Ripponlea in three tarts – a trio of airy tart shells presenting a timeline of the restaurant’s neighbourhood.
The tart of lilly pillies and blood lime on pepperberry cream references the original Indigenous landowners; another topped with a tea cream, pear and black pudding speaks to the English heritage of the founders of Rippon Lea Estate (where Shewry grows much of the produce used at Attica); and the third, filled with a chicken-soup jelly flecked with dill, is a nod to the Jewish community that calls Ripponlea home today. Wow. Entertaining
and informative. Exactly. To the credit of Attica’s staff, this all comes off in a manner that’s playful rather than didactic. How
much? The tasting menu lands at $310 a person. Whoa! But don’t worry. It’s booked out three months in advance so you have plenty of time to reorganise your finances. It’s well worth it.