COCKTAILS FOR DINNER.
Events are back, but they’re different: more purposeful, targeted and celebratory. Here’s to World Class Cocktail Festival, Sydney Design Week, and a Culinary Cruise on the Queen Elizabeth, woohoo.
First up, cheers to Australia for winning the right to host the World Class Global Bartender of the Year competition for the first time. The event will bring over 50 of the world’s best bartenders to the harbour city (if you run into one, buy him/her a drink!) and be a massive celebration of our own unique cocktail culture.
It’s the industry highlight in a sparkling consumer-facing festival of brilliant booze, the World Class Cocktail Festival, running from 9 to 18 September. There are some great events on the calendar at all levels, from a whisky bar at Quay to tequila-fuelled food trucks, so check it out.
And good luck to Nick Tesar of Melbourne’s Bar Liberty, representing Australia in the competition. No pressure, Nick, but we expect you to bring it home.
MEET THE SHAKERS
How’s this for a gig? I’m hosting the martini master from the world’s best bar (officially), London’s The Connaught, as he long-pours his famous dry martini on stage at a very special one-off dinner at the Sydney Opera House – while staring down the world’s best view.
Putting Ago Perrone (seen above) and chef Peter Gilmore together is akin to the moment Gin first met Vermouth. Historic. Sparks will fly, olives will get dirty, glasses will sparkle, and we’ll all learn heaps as we talk to two masters of their own games, to see just how and why they created this night of nights.
It’s dinner, it’s a show, it’s cocktails. It’s Tanqueray No. TEN, and it’s on Friday 16 September at 7.30pm and costs $375pp for a three-course meal from Peter Gilmore and Rob Cockerill with arrival and dessert canapes, and paired cocktails by Ago Perrone. To book, click here and scroll down to An Evening With Ago at Bennelong.
MEET THE MAKERS
The Powerhouse Sydney Design Week is always inspiring – like our bartenders, Australia’s architects and interior designers and colourists and artisans are world class - and with Stephen Todd as Creative Director, it’s thoughtful as well.
With an underlying theme of ‘Making Now’, SDW2022 explores collaboration and cross-pollination between creatives and across disciplines, in the hope, says Stephen, “of opening up design to myriad inputs and unexpected outcomes”. Nice.
He and the team from our Museum of Arts and Applied Sciences (MAAS) have engineered a series of talks at the fabulous ACE hotel in Surry Hills on Friday September 16, and I’m hosting the final panel of the day at 4pm, called Tastemakers, to talk about how Sydney’s dining spaces are evolving, and how cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels shape the city we live in.
I’m calling it “Move Fast And Make Things” because the panelists are all people who create the sort of environments in which we want to get together, commune, talk, eat things. They’re makers, not breakers.
How’s this for a line-up?
Fiona Lynch, award-winning multidisciplinary interior design
George Livissianis, interior architect
Mitch Orr, chef of Kiln, ACE Hotel
Stuart Couzens, Alfred experiential design practice
Alex Kelly, restaurateur, co-owner, Baba’s Place, Marrickville
On the agenda:
How do we design hospitality for a post-covid world?
How dining is moving to a more immersive experience: dine out less often, stay longer, spend more, have a real experience.
The rise of private dining, in people’s homes – just like a dinner party but you get a bill at the end.
The switch to celebrating the suburban, the backyard, the migrant story - hospitality environments that evoke Chullora, not Ibiza.
Revenge dining, with its caviar bumps and truffle dinners.
The new world of residential hospitality. If people are cooking restaurant food at home from Providoor and the Fink Group’s new Fix Dining, they’ll want the rest of the accoutrements of a restaurant at home as well.
If you’re in Sydney, come along! It should be a lively, informative and inspiring conversation that gives us all plenty to think about. And it costs $10! This session runs from 4pm to 4.45pm, a nice way to wind down on a Friday. Hope to see you there. Actually, you have to book a ticket, not just turn up. Do it here: #SDW2022
FIRST THE SHAKERS, THEN THE MAKERS. NOW MEET THE BAKERS
(There Will Be Scones. And Finger Sandwiches.)
The mighty Queen Elizabeth sails into Sydney Harbour in January for Cunard’s inaugural Great Australian Culinary Journey, and Terry and I are pretty excited about getting on board.
We depart Sydney (this is not Sydney, above, this is Alaska) on 28 January with a hectic program of events, dinners, demonstrations and interviews squeezed in between breakfast, lunch and dinner on board - not to mention the renowned daily afternoon tea, an absolute treat of silver teapots, white-gloved waiters and finger sandwiches.
It’s a five-night cruise from Sydney to Melbourne to Burnie and back to Sydney, but actually all the fun will be on board, as ARIA chef Matt Moran takes over the bridge and plots a course to dinner. (Okay, not really, there’s a Captain for that sort of thing).
Matt will be orchestrating two stunning takeovers of Cunard’s fine dining restaurant The Verandah (which will star his famous glazed Maremma duck with chicory leaf, salsify root and pickled nectarines), and Mark Olive, star of TV’s The Outback Café, will deliver a menu of compelling Australian indigenous botanicals that will change the way you cook at home (like his lemon myrtle barramundi in paper bark).
Melbourne’s star pastry chef Darren Purchese will add his twist to afternoon tea with his Explosive Raspberry Cake and these gin and tonic scones, made with Four Pillars gin and tonic jelly, juniper cream, white chocolate and lime curd. Oh goody, more scones.
Winemeister Huon Hooke will be there to open a bottle or two and pairing wines to dinners by both Matt Moran and Mark Olive. He’s a lovely chap, so save up all your winey questions.
Terry Durack will entertain you with tall tales of the good and the bad side of being a restaurant reviewer, and I’ll be the Hostess with the Mostess, floating here, there and everywhere. Especially at afternoon tea, if only to ensure that you place the jam first, and then the cream, on your freshly baked scone. This is not negotiable.
Yes, it’s a serious celebration of our food and drink culture, with all sorts of things to do, learn, eat and drink, but it’s going to feel more like a fabulous five-day foodie house party with a bunch of chefs.
And don’t forget, if you’re considering running away to sea and joining us (there are very few cabins left) , that it’s also on a most magnificent vessel; one with spacious decks, art deco restaurants, vast swimming pools, spas, cafes, a croquet pitch, and wonderful little spots in which to sit in the sun and stare out to sea. I’m hoping this is the first of many Great Australian Culinary Voyages for Cunard, and for Australia.
There are so many good things happening, big and small, at sea and on land, fueled by the need to get together, to make things, to build the world we live in and find our own path.
These are just three of the forthcoming events on my plate, but what strikes me is they all hero Australia, and explore or celebrate an Australian way of doing things, without the rules or cultural cringes of the past.
Preferred major event partner of the future: our own country.
Thanks to photographers Leonardo Filippini for Ago Perrone, and Ari Hatzis for the gin and tonic scones. And special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for being my own personal World Class Bartender. That first tinkle of ice into the glass at 6.30pm or so (okay, at precisely 6.30pm and not a minute later) is music to my ears.
I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.