Can pork be eaten pink? Can you eat unopened mussels? Do venues really put the highest mark-up on the second-cheapest wine? Chefs and wine experts delve into some of the most persistent dining myths.
Twenty-five years after the release of Anthony Bourdain’s chef memoir Kitchen Confidential, some customers in restaurants around the world still refuse to order seafood on Mondays. The book famously advised diners to avoid seafood due to the difficulty of sourcing and storing fresh fish on weekends.
Like the mistaken belief that pork must never be eaten pink, and that microwaves have no place in top restaurants, kitchen myths can take on a life of their own.
Even the late Bourdain tried to dispel the narrative he created. In 2016 he reversed his earlier advice. Bourdain said the culinary landscape had changed since his early days working as a chef in New York City, when seafood wasn’t delivered on weekends and storage was questionable. But it was too late.
“Regrettably, ‘Don’t eat fish on Monday’ is going to be on my headstone,” Bourdain said in later years.
When Kitchen Confidential hit the shelves at the turn of the century, Australian seafood suppliers and chefs bristled at Bourdain’s seafood hypothesis as inaccurate. It didn’t help. Once an idea takes hold in the food world, it spreads faster than burrata menu fever.
Food facts versus fiction
Plenty of “food flat-earthers” still believe truffle oils contain fresh truffle (most don’t) and that serious restaurants don’t use microwave ovens, when some definitely do. Some hatted chefs will use a microwave to bring ice-cream to the right serving temperature, for instance. American celebrity chef and restaurateur David Chang of Momofuku fame also declared the microwave “the single best piece of equipment in a kitchen” in his cookbook Cooking at Home.
Danny Russo, co-owner at chefs’ hatted Sydney restaurant Sala, said the hysteria over a bit of pink in your cooked pork is slowly being put to rest. “Customers have so much access to information these days, a lot of those old myths are dying,” the chef said.
“Pork doesn’t need to be overcooked to be safe to eat and can be enjoyed with a hint of pink in the middle,” an Australian Pork Limited spokesperson, Lylle Balzer-Blackstock, said.
“As a rule of thumb for pork, well done is 77C, medium 71C and medium-rare 63C. Like all meat, pork continues to cook after you remove it from the heat, so for the best results let your dish rest uncovered for 1-2 minutes in a warm environment just before serving,” he said.
When it comes to poultry, more caution is required. While some people wash raw chicken before cooking to “clean” the meat, Food Standards Australia New Zealand warns this can spread harmful microorganisms around your kitchen. “Instead, cook it thoroughly to ensure it’s safe to eat,” the organisation advises.
Seafood is another area fraught with confusion. When cooking mussels, should you throw away ones that haven’t opened? According to the Sydney Fish Market, not necessarily: “While traditional wisdom was to discard shells that don’t open when cooked, you can pry them open, away from the plate, and if they smell good, eat them; if they’re bad they’ll have a distinctly ‘off’ aroma.”
Drinks do’s and don’ts
As for myths about drinks, Caleb Baker, co-owner and wine buyer at Melbourne hospitality venues Mr West and Bar Spontana, has heard the story about operators placing the highest mark-up on the second-cheapest wine on a list – because it’s a big seller – on repeat since he joined the industry.
“I don’t go out of my way to put a higher margin on it, and other venues like ours aren’t doing it either,” Baker said.
But wine drinkers can be set in their ways. The myth that only red wine matches with red meat continues to hold with many punters. “The way I see it, there are two different types of wine matching: complementary and contrasting,” Baker said. “Red wine is great with red meat, but a fatty steak can also be good with a crisp, acidic, zippy white wine.”
Annita Potter, chef-owner at Viand restaurant in Sydney, is one of the country’s leading authorities on Thai food and takes umbrage at what she sees as the myth perpetuated in Australia that Thai food and wine don’t belong together. It was a theory held by the late chef Tony Bilson and promoted by some wine writers.
“We have a merlot that’s great with the mince quail curry with young ginger. I tell people: if it’s on the list, it’s good and works with the [Thai] food,” Potter said.
Loic Avril, head of wine at Lucas Restaurants, agrees with Potter’s view that the so-called mismarriage of Thai food and wine is outdated. As well as overseeing the wine list at upmarket Melbourne restaurant Society, Avril has had first-hand experience pairing Thai dishes at the group’s South-East Asian Chin Chin restaurants, in Melbourne and Sydney.
A traditional match of hot, spicy Thai food with a room-temperature red isn’t going to cut it, however. “Chilled red wine is perfect, you want the fruit to generate a pillow of texture,” Avril said. Aromatic whites team perfectly with coriander and lemongrass, rieslings with sweetness and spice, and “skin contact” whites with a classic green chicken curry. Avril also champions non-alcoholic wines as Thai friendly. “The acidity, freshness of fruit and zinginess goes well with lighter-style Thai dishes, and lemongrass,” he said.
Daring pairings
As for Malaysian cuisine, Ho Jiak owner Junda Khoo said: “I’m not sure if it’s a myth or not but back home they say if you drink beer while eating durian, it can kill you.” The Malaysian-born Khoo will soon add a Melbourne CBD restaurant to his eastern seaboard Ho Jiak chain of restaurants.
Restaurant myths are often sparked by a break with tradition. Khoo received criticism from some of his customers who objected to him using white wine in Malaysian dishes, or butter when the original recipe used oil.
A chef with a fine-dining background, Sean Connolly, now oversees kitchens including Melbourne’s Shush Burger & Bar, and Gowings, in Sydney. Connolly believes kitchen myths are often created by traditionalists.
“I’ve been told chocolate and passionfruit don’t go together, [but] that’s bollocks,” he said. “That whisky and oysters will give you a bad stomach … [but] these days there’s a lot of smashing everything together.”
One of those overarching rules, staunchly guarded by many Italian chefs, is that parmesan – or any cheese, for that matter – shouldn’t be in the same postcode as seafood. Caterina Borsato from Melbourne CBD stalwart Caterina’s Cucina e Bar is in that camp and admits to being unsettled when she recently spotted a blob of cheese with an octopus ragu.
Danny Russo, however, points to traditional Puglia dishes that use pecorino with baked rice and seafood and even mussels and potato as myth-busting examples of the so-called unholy union of cheese and seafood.
While Russo said there were many examples where he wouldn’t use cheese with seafood, if a customer asked for parmesan sprinkled on top of a seafood pasta he didn’t judge.
“You may not agree but you can’t play God. When a customer is paying, they can have anything they like.”
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
