The entire foundation of the Ian Potter Museum’s Residence space, including its location and business model, makes a good case that yes, food is art.
14/20
Contemporary$$
The question of whether food is art is often mixed up with a different question, which is whether chefs are artists. Once that equivalence sneaks in, we tend to let cliche take over. But the image of the brooding, egoist chef making stupid swooshes on a plate wrests the conversation away from its more interesting path.
Art reflects culture, it brightens our cities and our lives, it gives us pleasure, and it challenges us to understand the experiences of others. Sometimes the artist is a pretentious twit, sometimes not.
I thought about all of this as I ate at Cherrywood at Residence, not because chef Robbie Noble’s food is particularly artistic, but because the entire foundation of the restaurant, including its location and business model, make a good case that yes, food is art, and should be treated as such by institutions and society more broadly.
The “Residence” part of the moniker is the more permanent factor in the endeavour; Cherrywood is the current occupant of a space that’s meant as an incubator for young chefs looking to test a concept.
Housed in the Ian Potter Museum on the University of Melbourne campus, the restaurant is the brainchild of Nathen Doyle and Cameron Earl, who collectively have a strong background in the neighbourhood (Earl at Carlton Wine Room and Doyle at Heart Attack and Vine, and Sunhands).
The idea is to provide an up-and-coming chef a year to test a concept. Much like an artist-in-residence, the space is meant to give someone the space to create while being supported logistically and economically. (While the exact financials of the project are not public, Doyle and Earl have said there is a profit-sharing element with the resident chefs.)
Not many first-time chef-owners could afford the expansive kitchen or beautiful dining room that’s been built into the foyer of the Potter Museum, the long space making great use of the building’s tall vintage windows. There’s obvious investment in other things that might be unattainable for a young restaurateur, too, like an expansive wine list and a sommelier who knows it back and forth – both things usually reserved for more established operators.
As a preliminary resident, Noble is hardly a shaky gamble. The chef, who is originally from the north of England, has spent time at Michelin-starred Northcote near his home town, at Vue de Monde, and at Paris wine bar Clamato.
He looks to his roots for Cherrywood’s menu. There’s an homage to his mum’s roast chicken in the form of a “tea”: basically a very rich chicken broth poured from a kettle over aromatic tarragon into tiny cups. “I could drink a whole mug of this,” my dining companion said, to which I replied, “yes, and it would cost you $100”. At $10 a shot for the broth, it’s a lovely but very expensive couple of sips.
Devilled eggs come with a luscious smoked trout emulsion, ramping up the dish into something far more luxurious than your usual eggy hors d’oeuvre.
There’s a take on New York restaurant Blue Ribbon’s famous dish of bone marrow with oxtail marmalade. There, it’s served as roasted marrow bones with bread and the jammy oxtail on the side; here, you have to order bread separately, and the oxtail is piled on the lengthwise-cut bone, making for a layered effect with the wobbly marrow underneath. It’s a cute presentation, but the marrow does tend to get overwhelmed by its topping.
If we think of British cooking as prodigiously meaty, Noble challenges that notion with a surprisingly vegetarian-friendly menu. A lion’s mane carpaccio is actually a non-meat take on a vitello tonnato, the thin-sliced mushrooms over a tofu cream, the cumin-tinged dish clever and satisfying.
A buckwheat pancake with squash and cheddar doesn’t quite live up to its $32 price tag as a main course, but it works well as an accompaniment for a meatier dish, or in combination with some of the excellent vegetable sides.
But if meat is your thing, there’s plenty of it here. Hanger of beef comes with ox tongue and peppercorn, an overload of richness. Lamb rump is beautifully cooked alongside tangy red cabbage and Jerusalem artichokes roasted to a caramelised slump.
Not many first-time chef-owners could afford the Residence’s expansive kitchen or beautiful dining room.
As you might expect, given the concept, there is a sense that Noble is still figuring out how to define himself and his cooking. The through line isn’t as sharp as I hope it will be at the end of his year at Residence. That’s part of the fun of the thing – I’m looking forward to coming back to see how this chef evolves.
If there’s a slight disconnect at Residence – the slick underpinnings of a well-funded restaurant with the food that’s still finding its way – it is 100 per cent made up for by the intent of the project.
I think most people would agree that our restaurants are a huge part of what makes living in Melbourne so wonderful, and yet the economic and logistical realities of running those restaurants – especially for those just starting out – is increasingly difficult. It’s long been accepted that art needs patrons. If food fulfils many of the requirements of art – that it enriches our culture, our city and our lives – perhaps we ought to treat it as such.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Airy art gallery with old bones and a modern facelift
Go-to dishes: Chicken tea ($10); mushroom carpaccio ($26); lamb rump ($54)
Drinks: Seasonal cocktails (the pear martini on the current menu is ace), well-priced wine list with lots of intriguing bottles
Cost: About $190 for two, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
