One he prepared earlier . . .
You’ll feel the heat when you walk into Nobu Lee’s kitchen in Clooney. The oven is blasting like a furnace, and an extraction fan’s noise pummels all who enter.
The benches are spotless, but there are things happening all over the place. Jars of things that have been dried or fermented line the shelves. Fresh fruit and vegetables keep landing from suppliers through the gaps in Clooney’s open kitchen. Then there’s the chillers, which are full of things labelled and dated, marinating and ageing, ready for use when Clooney opens later tonight.
Lee, from Christchurch, was wooed to Auckland from Australia and he’s been enjoying using New Zealand’s seasonal produce again — but it’s keeping him on his toes. He has to change the menu every couple of weeks. “The hard part is you need to be thinking constantly. What’s coming? What’s next?” he says.
What’s next is hapuku with winter radish and butter sauce, the dish Lee will showcase with his masterclass session. To him, this is a simple dish. When Weekend scoffs, he says: “When you see it, you’ll know why.”
But there’s nothing simple about anything that he’s doing. Lee has multiple pots on the stove, one
for the grape juice reduction that will be mixed with gelatine to create the dish’s sweet layer of jelly, and another for the daikon mash, simmering with giant chunks of butter.
Then there’s the hapuku. As Lee carefully slices into the belly, he tells Weekend he once thought his destiny was to become a sushi chef. He’s done some training, and it shows: every time he slices his fish, he pauses, lining up precise, deft cuts. Why? “It has to be straight,” he says. “Otherwise you ruin it.”
Thankfully, Lee is the kind of chef who loves to whip out something he prepared earlier. Which is just as well: he goes through so many stages to make his dish, Weekend’s notes quickly stop making sense.
He’s already got the jelly chilling in the fridge. He pulls his vacuum-packed serve of hapuku out of a sous vide spa bath of 60 degrees. He thinly slices radishes, then, with the mash, plates up his dish, which looks so futuristic I feel like I’m dining in a Blade Runner movie.
As head chef at Clooney’s, one of Auckland bestknown fine dining establishments, Lee cooks like this for 13 hours a day, up to six days a week. Cooking detailed food at this level of perfection is an addiction, he admits.
But when he’s at home, he does things simply. His go-to lunch is avocado mashed on to toast, with a squeeze of lemon and a shake of salt. “After that,” he says, pointing at Clooney’s kitchen, “I just want to close my eyes and not think about it.”
Chris Schulz