Glutton`s PARADISE - Monteverdi Tuscany

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LEFT, CRADLE
MOUNTAIN IN
TASMANIA.
ABOVE &
RIGHT, THE
APPLE SHED
MUSEUM,
CIDER HOUSE
& CAFE
Glutton’s
PARADISE
Be a greedy devil in Tasmania, where they eat wallabies
for breakfast, says David J Constable
I
TOP, INSIDE THE APPLE
SHED. ABOVE, A SIGN FOR
A LOCAL DELICACY AT
HOBART’S FARM GATE
MARKET. BELOW, THE
HENRY JONES ART HOTEL
was determined not to like Australia, least of all
Tasmania, the arse-end dangly bit hanging off
the southern tip. I’ve always seen the country as
that place squeezed onto the bottom-right
corner of the map, filled with things that want
to kill you. It’s why we dispatched criminals
there. And what was once where convicts were sent to
be forgotten is now all sexy blondes with better tans
than us, people who surf and drink chardonnay and
fight crocodiles.
But then I went there, and I started eating. I had one
week in Tasmania – plenty of time to discover the
historic ports, the national parks and gardens, and to
conquer Mount Wellington. But all I did was fill my pie
hole. If it wasn’t for a pre-booked flight to the mainland,
I would still be there, on an endless gluttonous jaunt
around the Apple Isle.
Australia is confused about its food. They have
no national cuisine, nothing to call their own.
What you define as Aussie tucker depends on
whether you consider Down Under to be a
country that’s 200 or 70,000 years old. What
they’re crystal-clear on, though, is that
everything served is from within a boomerang
swing of its origins. Food planted, grown, picked,
plucked, caught, foraged and uprooted from the sea and
soil – then whacked on a plate. And it’s all at its very
best and most fruitful in Tassie.
Heavens, they can eat. I had everything except koala.
Kangaroo, possum, oxtail, crayfish, oysters from Bruny
Island, Tasmanian lobster and abalone, roast wallabytail broth, even a wallaby breakfast burrito from the
Hobart Farm Gate Market – a hangover cure to rival
the British fry-up.
Tassies rarely talk about anything other than food.
When they do, it’s wine, whisky or coffee. They’re
constantly sloshed, punching above their weight
in the liquor stakes with smashing wine to rival that
of Barossa, and a café society nipping at the heels of
Melbourne’s. Moorilla Estate and Josef Chromy Wines
have cellars considered to be among the best in the
southern hemisphere, and Stefano Lubiana is regarded
as the premier producer of fizz. There’s Moo Brew and
Apple Shed cider, and Bill Lark’s, the first licensed
distillery on the island since 1839 – and the best single
malt east of the Isle of Skye.
At the Huon Agricultural Show, I met the farming
children who’ve replaced teddy bears with living,
breathing (shitting) llamas, and watched a woodchopping competition between hurly-burly men with
Kevin Keegan haircuts. There’s culture too, and it’s
more than just Paul Hogan in a cork hat. The Hobart
highlight is MONA, David Walsh’s absurd and brilliant
museum of sex, death and rat’s-nest installations.
It’s like a junkie’s stream of consciousness. The Saatchi
Gallery on smack.
At Villa Howden I slept on the shores of North West
Bay, and at the Henry Jones Art Hotel I stared out over
views across Hobart harbour. When the hotel opened in
2004, there were complaints of bleeding from the walls.
It turned out to be seeping jam from its past as a
conserves factory. In Tasmania, food is everywhere.
BOOK IT Etihad Airways (etihad.com/en) flies daily to Sydney from London Heathrow, via Abu Dhabi, from £755.
Onward connections to Hobart are available via Virgin Australia (virginaustralia.com/uk/en), from £55. Double at Villa
Howden (villahowden.com.au), from £205; and at the Henry Jones Art Hotel (thehenryjones.com), from £175.
00 T A T L E R M A Y 2 0 1 5
BOR DE AUX ’S
GRANDE BOUFFE
PHOTOGRAPHS: ALAMY, JONATHAN WHERRETT,
SHUTTERSTOCK, JODY TODD, GETTY IMAGES
There is a new contender for the gastronomic
capital of France, finds Alexander Lobrano
N
ot since 2001 – when
Jonathan Meades, then
restaurant critic for The
Times, made a rustic bistro
called La Tupina an
international superstar by
naming it his favourite table – has Bordeaux
generated so much sybaritic buzz. It is, all of a
sudden, France’s most delectable new gastrodestination. The reason? Joël Robuchon,
the most Michelin-starred chef in the world,
has opened a proper restaurant here (as
opposed to the upmarket counter-service
places he’s done everywhere from New York
to Hong Kong) at La Grande Maison, a
gorgeous new hotel opened by Bordeaux wine
magnate Bernard Magrez. Overnight, it’s
become the toughest reservation in town.
‘The restaurant scene in Bordeaux used
to be so boring it drove you to drink,’ confides
an expat Brit – one of the city’s top wine
merchants – over lunch at Chez Dupont,
a stylish bistro in the city’s Chartrons
quartier. ‘As far as we were concerned, of
course, that was a good thing.’
‘Bordeaux’s changed,’ agrees hotelier
Jérôme Tourbier, who runs the charming
Les Sources de Caudalie spa hotel with his
wife, Alice, on the Château Smith Haut
Lafitte wine estate just outside town. ‘The
wine merchants used to prefer to entertain
privately, and Bordeaux was a city where
T O P TA B L E S
LA GRANDE MAISON
lagrandemaison-bordeaux.
com; 00 33 5 35 38 16 16
DUBERN-LE D
dubern.fr;
00 33 5 56 79 07 70
CHEZ DUPONT
chez-dupont.com;
00 33 5 56 81 49 59
GRAVELIER
gravelier.fr;
00 33 5 56 48 17 15
MILES
restaurantmiles.com;
00 33 5 56 81 18 24
LE PETIT COMMERCE
no website;
00 33 5 56 79 76 58
La Grande
Maison
LA GRANDE MAISON,
FROM TOP: CHEF
TOMONORI DANZAKI &
JOEL ROBUCHON; ITS
ROAST-LAMB DISH; ONE
OF ITS HOTEL ROOMS
The foyer at La
Grande Maison
what you drank always mattered much more than what
you ate. Now people want to go out.’ Top of their list is
Robuchon’s elegant new place. Although he signed off as
a working chef in 2005 to become a culinary-consulting
globetrotter, his touch is everywhere. He has staffed
it with what he describes as ‘the best of my team’,
notably Japanese chef Tomonori Danzaki, and he
wanted it to be ‘warm and convivial’. So instead of a
pompous maître d’ lording it over the place, there’s the
gallant Jean-Paul Unzueta, who previously ran the
dining room at La Metropole in Monte Carlo, meting
out major charm as he carves the restaurant’s exquisite
signature dishes at table: guinea hen with foie gras,
salmon roasted with sarments (vine trimmings), a big
veal chop.
Meanwhile, Paris’s capital-centric food geeks got a
wake-up call last year when the hip if hideously named
French food website Le Fooding tagged Miles, a bobo
(‘bourgeois-bohème’) Bordeaux bistro, as one of the best
new restaurants in France. Here, a cosmopolitan quartet
of chefs – Israeli, Japanese, New Caledonian and
Franco-Vietnamese – do intriguing dishes like swordfish
with Madras curry jelly. The others not to miss? Le Petit
Commerce for its simple but brilliant local seafood;
Gravelier, for chef Yves Gravelier’s inventive Modern
French cooking – trout with polenta in langoustine
sauce, or crêpe soufflé with raspberries; and DubernLe D, a stylish new townhouse restaurant, for Scottish
chef Daniel Gallacher’s sublime creations, such as
Wagyu beef-and-oyster tartare. ]
Caviar at La
Grande Maison
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FEELING CHILE
Is it an art gallery? Is is a meteorite? Is it a vineyard? Yes,
Viña Vik is all of these and more, says Gabriel O’Rorke
R
umour on the Chilean grapevine
whispers of a goldmine hidden
in the Millahue Valley. They say just
one man knew of its whereabouts.
But the old sod went and died
without telling anyone where it was.
‘Millahue means “place of gold” in the Mapuche
language,’ confides Don Nano, a dapper huaso (a
horseman from central Chile) decked out in the
typical attire of broad-brimmed hat, tooled belt and
long chaps. The leathery lines on his
face bunch up as he smiles. ‘So it
must be here somewhere.’
As we ride between electric-green
vines sewn across the perky hills of
Viña Vik, it seems pretty obvious
where this ‘place of gold’ is lurking.
Blinding in the bright summer sun, a
gold ring shimmers on a hilltop
ahead. This gleaming disc and the
vines below belong to Alexander Vik,
a Norwegian entrepreneur cum
hotelier. Viña is his first Chilean
hotel, but it joins three stonkingly
chic big sisters over in Uruguay:
Playa, Bahía and Estancia Vik. His
newest place and its golden roof is just the
(exceptionally shiny) cherry atop a cake with
aspirations to be the tastiest in Chile. In winespeak, this means he’s gunning to bottle the
country’s first 100-point wine – which in layman’s
terms means the tippity-top, good-as-it-gets,
knock-your-socks-off blend.
The Millahue
Valley, Chile
00 T A T L E R M A Y 2 0 1 5
ABOVE, VINES
AT VINA VIK.
BELOW, THE
HOTEL, WITH
ITS ‘GOLDEN’
ROOF
Chaps discarded, I reemploy my own two legs to
trot towards the winery, the handiwork of Chilean
er s
architect Smiljan Radic (the guy behind last summer’s
Serpentine Pavilion). Its entrance is flooded like a
lake and scattered with boulders – terribly pretty, but
w.
practical too; the water helps cool the barrels below.
uces
The vineyard is big – like, airport big – but produces
ional
just one blend: a happy concoction of Chile’s national
n,
grape, carmenère, along with cabernet sauvignon,
cabernet franc, merlot and syrah.
ry of a
The hotel itself is a meteorite-meets-art-gallery
building where each room is designed by a different
artist. Mine is like a Japanese boudoir, with paper blinds
and straw mats. Others have hessian walls and cactuswood furniture, or hyperrealistic paintings of Sophia
Loren and Brigitte Bardot. Out by the pool, the staff
look as though they’re about to canter off to play a few
chukkas – dressed in head-to-toe white, they bounce
between the terrifically smart Chilean guests, topping
up glasses here, shaking up sundowners there. The view
is stop-in-your-tracks stunning – the pool stretches
straight out into nothingness, letting the eye drop down
to a lagoon below, which lights up oily blue as the sun
slinks away behind the hills.
Supper summons and chef Rodrigo Acuña himself
delivers mushroom soup with blue cheese, and Wagyu
steak with risotto, courgettes and bacon. Then it’s
scrumptious red berries drowning in crema inglesa,
all washed down with that glorious Vik wine.
As I wind my way back down the track between
the vines, saying goodbye to the hotel, to the
magical Millahue mountains, to the wine, I
remember about the hidden gold. Next time,
I must try and look for that mine, and not get so
distracted by the art or the views. Or the wine.
BOOK IT Rainbow Tours (rainbowtours.co.uk) offers
two nights at Viña Vik from £980 a person, full
board, including activities and transfers from Santiago.
Air France/KLM flies daily to Santiago from 18 UK
airports, via Paris or Amsterdam, from £592.
A hack through Viña Vik’s vineyard.
Left, Gabriel O’Rorke
PHOTOGRAPHS: GABRIEL O’RORKE, ISTOCK,
EXPOSURE, GETTY IMAGES, VIK RETREATS, DANIEL KRIEGER,
SYLVIA PARET, NOAH FECKS, SHUTTERSTOCK
FO
The entrance to
Viña Vik’s winery
L I T T L E PA R K
Andrew Carmellini (Locanda Verde, the Dutch) gets the balance between
style and comfort perfectly. Cherry-wood booths, taupe-upholstered
banquettes and pale marble make for a very sexy space, above left, and
the New American cooking sings. Zesty bigeye tuna with white-beech
mushrooms and chillies is a winner; ditto beetroot tartare with smoked
trout roe. With Hall and Oates on the turntable and a mellow vibe,
this is a very chilled addition to Tribeca’s sometimes neurotic scene.
85 West Broadway, Tribeca (littlepark.com; 001 212 220 4110).
T H E P O L O BA R
Beside Ralph Lauren’s flagship
store on Fifth Avenue is the
new Polo Bar, his first fully
fledged Manhattan restaurant
(he already has ones in
Chicago and Paris). With
acres of wood panelling,
handsome parquet floors
and floor-to-ceiling equestrian
art, this place takes clubbiness
to a whole new level.
Expect shrimp cocktail,
steaks and the boss
himself, right, doingg
the rounds.
1 East 55th Street,
Midtown
(ralphlauren.com;
001 212 207 8562))
D I RT Y F R E N C H
Art’s on the menu too at Dirty
French, left, the newest opening
from the can-do-no-wrong
triumvirate of Rich Torrisi, Mario
Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick, where
a Julian Schnabel tricolour hangs
above the bar and the walls are so
crammed with pictures you wonder
how the cleaners get between them
to dust. The menu includes a £45
poultry feast – roast chicken in two
servings – and a masterful 30-day
dry-aged duck à l’orange. Heaving
with Lower East Side hipsters, DF is
loud, expensive and kind of fabulous.
180 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side
(dirtyfrench.com; 00 1 212 254 3000).
HIGH FIVE
Take a bite out of the Big Apple’s new hotspots.
By Jeremy Wayne
M A RTA
Despite its setting in a rather spartan
hotel lobby, this is one of New York’s
hottest cheap-eats tickets. Burgers
already under his belt with his Shake
Shack empire, Danny Meyer has
turned to Roman-style pizza. Baked in
a wood oven over embers, which gives
aan incredible, almost cracker-like
ccrispness, these pizzas are ace.
M
Martha Washington Hotel, 29 East
229th Street, Flatiron (marta
manhattan.com; 001 212 651 3800).
MOR ANDI
This Italian newbie, above, may look simple and
rustic, but it rocks. Owner Keith McNally, of
Balthazar and Minetta Tavern fame, gets the food
exactly right – hand-rolled spaghetti with lemon
and parmesan; meatballs with pine nuts and raisins
– and the crowd is white-hot. The Clooneys have
put their heads round the door and Cameron
Diaz, above right, practically lives here.
211 Waverly Place, West Village (morandiny.com;
001 212 627 7575). ]
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RECIPE FOR PLEASURE
Whisk yourself off to a ravishing hotel, learn how to become a chef extraordinaire,
return, throw a dinner party, become the most popular person you know. It’s that easy
Berkshire, home to the
Woodspeen, bottom right
Tagliatelle and porcini
at Villa Casagrande
S T I R R E D, I TA LY
If you’re going to sharpen up your cooking skills, you
might as well do it in a ravishing 15th-century palazzo.
And if that palazzo happens to be owned by a charming
Italian count and countess – the Conte and Contessa
Brandolini d’Adda – then so much the better. This is
Villa Casagrande in rural Veneto, the setting of Stirred, a
new culinary course that focuses on traditional Venetian
cooking with a modern spin – and all so relaxed and
enjoyable it feels like a week-long house party with people
you want to talk to and food you really want to eat.
Daily classes are all about local and seasonal, so it’s
artichokes in April, cherries in May, mushrooms and
truffles in the autumn. We were given rubber gloves to
extract ink sacs from cuttlefish to make a black risotto.
We stuffed our ravioli with hand-minced beef cheeks
and cut the heads and feet off still-warm guinea fowl to
make faraona con salsa peverada. Not for the squeamish.
Each morning session led to long alfresco feasts in the
courtyard among old olive-oil barrels; afternoons were
free for snoozing under giant oaks, strolling around the
countryside or dipping in the pool. Between lessons,
we were whisked off for tasting trips: cheese infused
with raisin wine; champagne-quality Bisol prosecco.
One morning we cruised down Venice’s Grand Canal by
vaporetto to buy the day’s ingredients from the fabulous
Rialto open-air market. Cook
like a count; eat like a king.
What could be better?
Chris Caldicott
BOOK IT Six nights, full board,
including activities, £2,495
a person (stirredtravel.com).
The foothills of the
Dolomites, the
setting of Stirred at
Villa Casagrande
00 T A T L E R M A Y 2 0 1 5
T H E WO O D S P E E N , B E R K S H I R E
It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now
you’ve got six people to feed (read ‘impress’) at the
weekend. Blind panic. You want the sort of elegant yet
unfussy food you imagine Sam Cam might whip up for
a kitchen supper, and a frozen lamb tagine from Cook
really won’t cut it. Stave off the panic by getting yourself
to the Woodspeen cookery school, near Newbury. In a
restored 19th-century farm building with state-of-theart gear and views of deer-dotted Berkshire countryside,
chef John Campbell shows you how to sprinkle a little
stardust over your efforts. He’s been anointed by
Michelin more than once (most recently at Coworth
Park), but he’s changed gear at his new restaurant and
cookery school. Yes, he’s mates with Heston and you’ll
pick up zillions of fascinating gastro-science facts (such
as cook a casserole at 90°C tops – the collagen in the
meat turns to gelatin, so you get a tender stew with
wrinkle-reducing powers), but he’s also planted a
kitchen garden, shoots his own game and will teach you
how to skin a fish like a pro. So he’ll share the secrets of
cheffy swirls if you want, but you’re not here to produce
fiddly ‘Argh! I wish I hadn’t started this!’ primped plates.
Simply turn up, make three utterly delicious and
impressive yet easy-peasy courses (smoked
haddock risotto, perhaps, or buttermilk
panna cotta), feast on the fruits of your labour
and leave with a foolproof plan. Kate Lauer
BOOK IT Seasonal dinner-party course, £165
(thewoodspeen.com or visitengland.com).
PHOTOGRAPHS: ALAMY, SHUTTERSTOCK, CHRIS CALDICOTT
ABOVE, RURAL VENETO.
BELOW & BOTTOM,
INSIDE & OUTSIDE VILLA
CASAGRANDE
Belmond Le Manoir
aux Quat’Saisons
Monteverdi,
Tuscany
SOMETHING’S COOKING IN LA CUCINA
Three more Italian cooking courses to get excited about
this year. First up, the Michelin-starred Quattro Passi
restaurant in Nerano, on the Amalfi Coast, is launching a
school presided over by Antonio Mellino. Expect traditional
yumminess from the Campania region. Overnight-cooking
package, from £280 per person (ristorantequattropassi.com).
Up in Tuscany, breezy-chic Monteverdi is launching
five-day cooking academies. The next one, in November,
is led by Giancarla Bodoni, a whizz at the whole
organic, farm-to-table thing, and will focus on rustic Tuscan
cooking – local pici pasta, say, or wild boar. From £6,500
per couple (monteverdituscany.com). Also in Tuscany is
a new wine and spa weekend at the wine-estate hotel
Poggio Al Casone, including biking through the vineyards,
drinking lots of lovely wine and learning to cook
Tuscan-style for half a day (so not too taxing).
Four-day break, from £470 per person (winerist.com).
B E L M O N D L E M A N O I R AU X Q U AT ’ S A I S O N S , OX F O R D S H I R E
ABOVE, BOUILLABAISSE
&, BELOW, SHORTBREAD
& COOKIES AT
BELMOND LE MANOIR
AUX QUAT’SAISONS.
BELOW RIGHT,
FRANCISCA KELLETT &
RAYMOND BLANC
Raymond Blanc talks a lot. And waves his hands. And
tells stories, endlessly. His newest cookery course,
Maman Blanc, is all about what he learned from his
own maman – rustic, regional-French home cooking –
and he is full of stories.
The course starts with a walk (more of a jog –
Raymond doesn’t so much walk as spring about, like a
talkative terrier) through the extraordinary kitchen
gardens of his flagship, Le Manoir. ‘Be loving with your
potatoes!’ he shouts while rooting around in the earth.
Evil rabbits are after his veg, he assures us darkly, as he
plucks up muddy spuds and flings them in baskets
before hurrying over to his kitchens.
Here begins the lesson. He demonstrates a cheese
soufflé, all the while talking, talking, talking: about
where he comes from
(Comté, which has ‘the
best milk and sausages
in the WORLD’), how his mother cooked (‘with a
pressure cooker, ALWAYS’), about the importance of
eating locally (‘I did not try a peach until I was
TWELVE’). Watching him is like watching a magician
– but then he has trained hundreds of chefs, some 30 of
them now Michelin-starred themselves. He is also
completely charming and full of brilliant advice, like
laying cling film over pastry before rolling it out, and
never using olive oil over high heat.
His soufflé emerges from the oven as a sky-high cloud
of scrumptiousness. And then we cook rabbit – he helps
us gently pan-fry it with tarragon and onions and
vinegar. It’s utterly gorgeous. Raymond’s mother loved
cooking rabbit, ‘but sometimes I’d see a tear rolling down
her cheek’. There’s always a story. Francisca Kellett
BOOK IT One-day course, from £365 a person, with
head-tutor Mark Peregrine (belmond.com/le-manoir-auxquat-saisons-oxfordshire).