REVIEWS

	The Age Epicure PRETENSION on menus? Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Check out No 35’s contribution to the canon with this screed about its oysters: '‘Begins life as a wild caught, single oyster, handselected [sic] and subjected to choppy wind conditions and ocean swells, giving it a unique and briny flavour.’’ Phew. The bivalves in question — Clair de Lune, from Australia’s finest oysterage, Moonlight Flat — certainly deserve accolades but that little spiel is more likely to induce pity. The fun continues on the desserts list, which boasts a ‘‘pastry chef’s creation in progress’’. Crikey. Is it just me, or does anyone else have an image in their head of a pastry chef, toque askew, flouncing around the kitchen in a whirlwind of invention? It’s a pity that both times I’ve visited, over two months, it’s been the same dish. But more on that later. The crew at No35 are trying rather hard but, in the context of their mission, I’ll forgive them their crimes. The latter-day reputation of hotel dining is cemented in Swiss rent-a-chefs, fusty French food and crimes against the bain-marie. No35 has a second ghost lurking in the wings: Le Restaurant, the late three-hatted darling, in its time one of Melbourne’s finest fine-dining restaurants. Just to complete the circle, No35 is headed by Stuart McVeigh, who was lured to Melbourne from England to take the reins at Le Restaurant for two years until it closed its doors in 2005. Visitors looking to taste the terroir of the city would be wise to stay at ground level to explore the beating pulse of the smaller, ethnically based eateries that define Melbourne. This is highly evolved, ultra-modern — sometimes complicated — food that feels, at times, like a showcase for the well-worn techniques of modern gastronomy running headlong into the current obsession for rusticity. The good news is that in the hands of McVeigh — who, post-Le Restaurant, worked at Fenix and the Botanical — they’re not mutually exclusive impulses. His food is light and textural and shows plenty of technique, with all the squiggles and splotches and foams and soils the term seems to imply these days. Savoury ice-creams, too, although, with something of a contrarian’s approach, they’re on the desserts list. That aforementioned rusticity is evident in an entree of yellowfin tuna sashimi — a thick tranche of glistening, pale-pink flesh married with rough-hewn heirloom tomatoes, black olives (halved and in gel form) and a single large crouton ($25). You can see the modus operandi here: classic flavours and a touch of contemporary finesse. Disarmingly simple and thoroughly enjoyable. More contemporary, both in attitude and presentation, is another entree of quail ($22), almost a whole, dismembered and nicely cooked bird doing a rumba across the plate with a medley of nasturtium and intensely caramelised vegetables, some splotches of onion-flavoured gel and a rich duck-liver parfait. It’s a great mash-up of sympathetic flavours. McVeigh’s menu is free of the big, heavy sauces familiar to international travellers of the hotel-dining ilk, although — ironically — this reversal of expectation can backfire. A vegetarian dish of gnocchi with baby vegetables and oyster mushrooms was too austere for my taste but the corned beef ($39) — using David Blackmore’s wagyu girello — kept to the same songbook but delivered in spades. A high-concept version of comfort food, it featured a light, aromatic meat broth poured at the table, with an acid-bright salsa verde providing a lively counterpoint — among the most restorative highend food you’re likely to find. Some real winners also pop up in the sides — an heirloom carrot salad with a sweet, light dressing, fennel, plumped-up sultanas and oregano and mint ($10) is memorable in a way side-dishes rarely are. There’s also an amuse bouche of cauliflower foam and smoked eel that deserves to be promoted to entree status. Desserts, on the other hand, come from noted pastry chef Ian Burch and had me scratching my head more than once. That ‘‘pastry chef’s creation in progress’’ — which implies it’s made up on the fly, wouldn’t you think? — comprises little blobs of carrot cake with carrot puree and curry icecream ($22). Sensible readers won’t need my advice to avoid it. It’s perhaps the most extreme example of an envelope-pushing desserts list that plays on the outer edge of the fashionable sweet/savoury cross-over. Nor is the service really at the levels you’d expect when shelling out $40 for a main course (or for a wine list with mark-ups that might leave locals au fait with the prices at Dan Murphy’s wincing in pain). It’s fair but lacks that flair you’d expect at this level — pardon the pun — of dining. Water glasses go unfilled and side plates hang around long after they stop being useful but the biggest criticism is reserved for the unflinchingly phlegmatic service. I’m not expecting charm-school graduates but a bit of personality would go a long way towards banishing the prevailing coolness of the stereotypical hotel dining room. Which isn’t to say the room itself is without personality — far from it.Graced with the icy good looks of a Hitchcock blonde, it’s a study in white marble, with occasional flashes of red, some abstract artwork and a few statement light fittings to show it’s up with the trends. It’s just that, with that view, it’s all fairly redundant. Which isn’t the fate shared by McVeigh’s food. He’s doing a good job of competing with the Melbourne skyline for attention. With some work on the systems and some exuberance from the floor staff, the ghost of Le Restaurants past stand a good chance of being exorcised.
	Gourmet Traveller No 35, Melbourne restaurant review Something in the air The views at Melbourne’s Sofitel are legendary and now chef Stuart McVeigh is delivering food which gives the glittering vista the respect it deserves, writes Michael Harden. Melbourne has always been challenged in the spellbinding vistas department so it’s no surprise that diners who like a room with a view have long held a flame for the 35th floor of the Sofitel. But, aside from the thrilling experience of watching daylight fade and the city – suddenly (impossibly) glamorous – begin to sparkle in every direction, there haven’t been many reasons in recent years for food fans to brave the ear-popping lift ride. The 2005 closure of Le Restaurant, with its tinkling grand piano and meticulous old-school service, seemed to spook the hotel’s management, with the only real food and view option at the Sofitel after that being the decidedly average (and expensive) Café La. Last year saw Café La mercifully euthanised to make way for the hotel’s new dining flagship, No 35, and suddenly there’s a swag of good reasons to go and get a load of the view again. It’s interesting that a return to food form at the hotel coincides with the return of chef Stuart McVeigh, who came to Australia from England in 2003 to work at the Sofitel. After Le Restaurant closed, he worked at Fenix and Botanical, and his menu at No 35 seems informed by both places (and his stints at The Square and Pied à Terre in London), with a blend of complicated, sometimes experimental technique and a more rustic, big-flavoured approach where the ingredient is king. And so lamb rump is teamed with Soubise purée, or rabbit, broken down to a sum of its parts, shares a plate with artichoke, asparagus and vanilla foam. In some ways, it’s unmistakably five-star hotel food, particularly in terms of presentation and a penchant for keeping the flavours mild (though not bland), but there’s obvious enthusiasm and passion present that’s miles away from the often horrifying “international cuisine” dished up by many hotel restaurants. McVeigh’s food isn’t just for weary travellers seeking comfort, familiarity and sustenance but for diners who want to chew on more than just the scenery. No 35 has, of course, had a refit to complement the rebranding and its masters have wisely chosen to keep the décor neutral and secondary to what the floor-to-ceiling windows offer. The dining room is L-shaped, with a mix of timber, marble and carpeted floors, anonymous but comfortable upholstered chairs, linen-covered tables, a hefty marble-topped waiters’ station and a few bright spots given over to vibrantly coloured hanging twig sculptures by Mance Design and some busy abstract art on the walls. There’s a raised communal table near the room’s centre which adds a welcome element of relaxed and casual to the mix. If you come in daylight, No 35 still feels a little like a well-positioned hotel breakfast room (which it also is), but at night, with the lights dimmed to showcase the city splayed out all around, it becomes an event in itself. The service and the wine list are the points where No 35 most obviously belongs to the international hotel breed. The uniformed floor staff are unfailingly polite and mostly efficient but are a little starched in a traditional “sir and madame” kind of way that grates with the more relaxed approach the room is attempting to project. The wine list also plays it conservative with the mainly New World collection sticking to the tried and true (Katnook Estate, Cloudy Bay, Penfolds), with an occasional foray into something a little more boutique (Vanya Cullen’s brilliant biodynamic 2006 Kevin John Chardonnay). It’s a smart, cleverly focused list but also incredibly expensive, with some of the mark-ups verging on the gobsmacking. It’s the most obvious reminder that this is, after all, a restaurant in a hotel that’s part of an international chain. The expense of the wine list is probably thrown into even greater relief by the fact that the food, for this venue and setting, is reasonably priced and generously portioned. McVeigh immediately projects his generosity and his style with the intricate appetisers that get the ball rolling. A sparkling green, slightly vinegary cucumber gazpacho with “yoghurt mozzarella” (slow-cooked yoghurt thickened with kuzu and formed into tiny, slightly lemony balls of soft white cheese), fresh horseradish, crunchy rye breadcrumbs, baby basil and purple basil leaves and flecks of candied lemon. Or perhaps a superb, slightly creamy cauliflower soup poured over some salty sweet Japanese-style eel. They’re the kind of appetisers that should have a truth-in-naming award bestowed upon them. A hand-rolled macaroni dish isn’t just lovely to look at, with vibrant baby greens of broad beans, peas, zucchini and snow pea tendrils mixing it up with a bright yellow soft-poached egg and a pale green foam, but manages to meld crunch (vegetables), luxurious smoothness (a pea mousse) and slightly chewy (the lemon-scented pasta) qualities in a thoroughly inclusive way. Also good in the small-course list (or No 1 as the menu insists) is a warm quail salad that arrives tumbled diagonally across a square plate, a mix of boned juicy bird, baby vegetables, a quietly powerful “gel” made from thickened caramelised onion stock, and some duck liver parfait. Macleay Valley rabbit arrives as a large raviolo, filled with braised leg and shoulder meat mixed with chicken mousse, garlic and tarragon, and a boned-out saddle that is rolled in Alsace bacon. Baby artichokes and white asparagus also share the plate, the whole lot topped with a surprisingly successful vanilla foam, the vanilla being more of a hint or a scent than a flavour. A main course sibling of the vegetarian macaroni is the herb gnocchi, steamed then slightly browned in the pan before being tossed with golden oyster mushrooms and baby vegetables of the radish/carrot/pea ilk, and topped with nettles and chives. It’s a glistening, slippery winner of a dish. Another winner, and possibly the most robust dish on the menu, is the John Dory, its skin slightly caramelised, teamed with a superb sardine purée, all tomato and garlic and lemon zest, a rich squid-ink risotto and shreds of calamari dusted with tiny flecks of toasted garlic. Suckling pig, with meat from the belly, head and legs salted, brushed, steamed and pressed into various forms, is also good with its accompanying confit cabbage (cooked in duck fat) and a jam-like onion and sultana purée, though the sweet end of the meal can take the experimental side a little too far. Sometimes, as with a deconstructed raspberry trifle, complete with aerated white chocolate and dried berry meringue, things are slightly crazy though certainly functional, but the warm carrot cake with curry ice-cream should have been knocked on the head before it left the drawing board. It’s great to see the Sofitel dining room with its mojo back, feeling confident enough to employ a chef with the skill to take some of the attention away from the view. McVeigh’s food finally gives the glittering vista the respect it deserves.
	Sunday Magazine There's something very 'master of the universe' about dining on the 35th floor. Down at street level, I may be a mere cog in the machine, but after an ear-popping ride up to Melbourne's newest hotel fine diner and with the city laid out beneath my feet, I'm feeling omnipotent. The dining room itself has plenty of gloss to bolster delusions of grandeur: shiny tile floors, gleaming ice buckets and snowy tablecloths, but all eyes are on the floor-to-ceiling vistas of city lights shimmering to the horizon. Surveying my domain, I hardly flinch at the $17 tag on a glass of Italian pinot grigio. It's just the thing to accompany a suitably luxurious entree of Kumoto-style oyster beignet ($21); gently warmed molluscs cocooned in tempura-like batter and bathed in a seriously sexy pond of truffled oyster veloute. My friend's warm scallop salad ($22), with asparagus, buffalo yoghurt and ocean froth, may be a finely judged balance of exquisite produce and pure flavours, but it's obvious who has the real power entree. By the time our waiter arrives with my main course of Thirlmere duck ($42) and proceeds, with a flourish, to pour an intensely perfumed orange master stock over plump pink breast and sesame-crusted leg meat, I'm practically beating my chest, until I spy her 13-hour braised Angus short rib ($44). The almost ebony gloss on the thick puck of beef and its unctuous, fall-apart tenderness would make Gordon Gekko swoon. Lunch may be for wimps, but dinner at No 35 has us both feeling like big shots. I wonder if the illusion will survive the ride down to the basement car park.