That Jess Ho

So, with the recent article in the Herald Sun about food bloggers and George Colombaris’ hate for us types (just in time for the season of Celebrity Master Chef), Scott (or as we now know as Scotty) Pickett of The Point ironically hosted a blogger’s dinner.

Now, before I get to the dinner, I have to throw in my pennies on the issue because I have a big fucking mouth.  If you haven’t read the article, basically, Mr. C over there slags off bloggers saying that we have no palate, don’t understand if it is a good or a bad day in the kitchen and know nothing about food, that and reviewers go several times to a place before making a judgment.  On top of that, he hates how we write from pseudonyms, which makes it difficult for him to respond to.

Look, I’ll keep this short, sweet and even dot point it for easy reading.

- A blogger, like a person from the general public, eating from a generalized palate (generally…hmm, how many times can I say this word) therefore voicing the common, lamen opinion of the food.  So, the question becomes, are you cooking for yourself, trying to be flashy and technical or cooking for your clientele?  Secondly, if you’re a fucking blogger, you’re probably a geek.  An obsessive one, hiding in the dark with a camera and fetishes for lenses, comics and homoerotic anythings as well as having a dry sense of humour and probably a hidden liking for dorky vampire novels.  We know how to write, generally, and are pretentiously geeky enough to know something fully before voicing our opinion on it.  Meaning: we are the presidents of the chess club or come from a long line of Go masters.

- Most people, unlike bloggers, don’t see eating as a sport, therefore probably don’t have the “dining experience” as often as a blogger.  With that, visiting a high-end restaurant isn’t a weekly activity, but more like their night out, so, if they have bad service, food that just isn’t quite right, are you going to go up to them and say, “Oh, sorry but we’re having a bad day.”  No, they leave with that impression and form their own judgments from that, the only difference between someone from the general public having this experience and a blogger is a flapping mouth spreading the word and a few key strokes.  Plus, I doubt you’re going to change the value of the dining experience because the restaurant is having an off day, there is no note, no written apology, no discount.  There is the same value on the end product, the only difference that can probably be seen is the tip, and hell, these days it is hard to predict who will and won’t tip.

- As with reviewers going several times to a place, well, that depends on your publication and the partnership that they have with the restaurants and events.  It’s all back scratching and the perpetuation of a myth, image or support of other publications that they are associated with.

-Pseudonyms?  Well, firstly, refer to the fucking URL of this blog and you’ll see how much I’m hiding myself.  Apart from my ever changing hair colour, if you hear swearing coming from the front door, you better know it is me.  Oh, also…if you click on the “About Me” section of themajority of blogs, you get some form of answer unless the person is hideously shy or just plain hideous.  It’s maths, everyone’s a bit of a narcissist and what they fuck is the point of writing your opinion of you’re not going to attach a bit of yourself to it?

-As with having no knowledge of the industry, I personally work  in a restaurant and make an effort to engage in the whole process, and a lot of bloggers in Melbourne are either in the same boat or have been in the industry (front and back of house) for longer than I have been alive.  That comment just makes me wonder what fucking blogs George is reading and what the hell he is typing into the search engine.

Whatever your opinion is, I think it is all just something that the love-child of media can’t control and it’s a marketing strategy to push the very piss-weak Celebrity Masterchef and to keep the topic hot in the public, as well as promoting him a little more because what is worse than being talked about is…

So, Scott organised for Thahn, Sarah, Claire, Jack, Ed, Neil, Elliot, Cam and I to have a tour of the kitchen, break down a lamb and have dinner.  Not bad for a Tuesday.

Their private dining room and working cellar hiding great wines.

Upstairs: Glory box.

Downstairs: lamb, venison and hares.

This is an example of chefs with different attitudes and very different egos.  Scott has obviously embraced technology, or the accessibility of it, especially with having his own blog, if admitted to being rarely updated.  Blogs are written out of opinion, being general ones or not, but are in the end subjective.   By what I could see, Scott understands that there is no war.  He isn’t under the misconception that people are trying ruin him because he knows the world doesn’t revolve around him.  Essentially, we all just like hearing the sound of our own voices (or key tapping).

The evening started as something rigid and ended up being a casual evening of discussion over excellent food and wine.

Which is another thing we brought up.  Food guides are inaccurate.  They are products of media, back-scratching, ass-kissing, myth-perpetuating industry and politics.  The interesting thing about the food industry is, though, is that it takes the academics and the misfits and allows them to see each other on common ground or communicate through taste and debauchery.  The latter being something less talked about outside of the industry itself.

So,  even if this evening was set up to be a marketing strategy, with more people turning to blogs for opinion, it isn’t as if we walked in not knowing that.  The thing is, The Point deserves to be talked about (after finally receiving a hat) and Scott has a genuineness about him.  He engaged with us, joked around (and hell, he is very intelligent) and admitted to just being a bogan who can cook.  We had a great evening, which extended into a few too many drinks till Cookie closed, but I don’t think Scott knew quite what he was getting himself into when he invited me out for a drink.

The evening started off with a tour of the kitchen, which is hotter than most.  Hell, I have been in a few kitchens and well, let’s put it this way: I was wearing a backless leotard and I could fucking feel it.  We then went down to the cool room to see where he hung his ‘beasts,’ and on our way saw several pots of stock which he puts a lot of time and love into (as being a saucier by trade).

Fillets, sweetbreads and kidneys.

Scott then broke down a 6-8 week lamb at the table.  Jack pointed out that I was the obvious student at the table, sitting in the front and taking notes.  I also showed up early so I could sit right up near the action, but also, apart from taking pretty rockin’ notes, I, like any pro-student, left them at The Point.

L-R: Neck, shoulder, crown (chops).

The five primals.

As Scott was butchering the lamb, we sucked down a couple of  Kumamoto oysters.

When dinner started, we had another student-like activity.  Scott gave us the menu, but only listed the main ingredient of the dish and wanted us to write down the parts that we tasted, you know, just to check our palates.

Lightly sugar cured and confit salmon with Oestra caviar, quail’s egg and salmon roe, sitting on goat’s curd (which I later found out was from Merideth) and a chinese lantern petal, which is quite sweet,  with a potato parmentier which was poured on at the table to bring it all together.

In action.

This would have to be my second favourite course for the evening, you’ll see why later.

On the menu it is written as, Confit King Salmon, potage parmentier and three different eggs. So much more eloquent.

We also got to go into the kitchen and see a construction of a course, each.  This was a two-man job.  This was inspired by Scott’s local chicken shop in Fairfield, as he likes to eat a chicken wing or two.  Here, they bone out the mid-section of the wing and make a ballotine, cooking it with shallots, Madeira and herbs, finishing it off in a pan, it sits on top of a pumpkin gnocchi and a field mushroom puree, coloured with squid ink.  It’s dressed with a fried shallot, a trumpet mushroom and a potato and truffle emulsion which is brought down with chicken stock.  I don’t understand how one person could fit so much chicken in such little chicken.  I know I sound mad, but you have to taste it to understand. Simply described as the Caramelised stuffed chicken wing, pumpkin gnocchi, emulsion of potato and black truffle.

This course was so rich and left Ed saying that every course was officially a plate-licker.  The marron had been poached in butter and topped with black salt, served again with the chinese lantern flowers, a foie gras parfait which had been spiked with brandy, port and armagnac and sprinkled with crumbs of brioche and salmon roe to give it a salty kick.  It came with an apple jelly as well, because Scott is admittedly old-school and a dessert wine reduction which I couldn’t name.  This was just so good, and perfectly proportioned as I would be able to have a bite of this with a bit of that.   Butter poached Western Australian marron, foie gras parfait, brioche crumbs and sauternes reduction, well, the menu description tells you all, or at least more than me.

A taste of New Season’s Lamb. My photograph really doesn’t do it justice, this was incredible and the best lamb I have eaten in my life.  I wanted to eat this for as long as I could and every time you ate a section of the plate, it would give you even more.  Starting from the bottom right hand corner and going to the top left: braised lamb neck which had been picked and rolled in a brik pastry with ras el hanout and potato which had been blanched and curled around and deep fried.  Next to it is the lamb’s brain which had been poached for a firmer texture, the outer membrane removed, crumbed and deep fried, sitting on a sauce gribiche, followed by the double-podded broad bean and the backstrap, rump and cutlet (which you pick up with your fingers and gnaw at, to bring out your bogan side) which hide half a globe artichoke.  Then, there is the potato fondant with the glazed and sticky shank sitting on top of it with the freshness of the asparagus.  A cherry tomato and an organic clove of garlic which had been confit (and before slicing into it, presents like a pearl onion), leading on to the kidney wrapped in Jamon Iberico and pierced with rosemary flowers.

Fucking hell.

Let us all have a moment of silence as I reminded of all the textures and flavours.

…

…

…

…

…

…

Ok.

Which brings us to the Pre-Dessert of cranberry and vodka jelly, a blood orange and lemon granita (made from the promotional San Pellegrino cases that Scott received earlier in the week) with poached blood orange and a basil foam.  Refreshing enough to spark an argument over agar agar and my rant on it being its own thing, how vegans have it all wrong and reminiscing on a dessert my father made when I was a child with a sugar and ginger syrup cooked with ribbons of egg and set with agar agar.

It’s something entirely different.

Camera one.

We had interchanged desserts on the table and I usually don’t like sweets, and more specifically chocolate, but I swooned over this Valrhona Chocolate and Chestnut Tortellini, Coffee Ice Cream and Tonka Bean Foam.

Camera two.

The chocolate tortellini was filled with a chestnut ganache which spilled little pools of butter when you bit into them, it also came with a warm chocolate mousse which contrasted the cool coffee ice cream, highlighted with a few bare pistachios and roasted coffee beans, mimicking the crunch from the sugar of the caramelised pears.  I swaped a taste of mine for Cam’s pineapple dessert and I think I won.

Caramelised Pineapple Crumble, Coconut Cream and Anise Myrtle. The pineapple was done two ways, one with a blow torch and the other had been cooked sous vide and then caramelised, highlighted with a neutral yogurt ice cream and ginger jellies.  Those dots on the plate are licorice and those coconut tuilles filled with coconut cream had me drooling.  They are souped-up version of those Chinese sweet egg rolls that come in tins, from my childhood.  Wow.

And because there is never enough, Petite Fours to have with my double espresso and Schofferhoffer Kristallweissen.  The little pink poo-looking things are musk marshmallows, along with plum jellies and salted caramel chocolates.  You can never go wrong with a salted caramel.

The thing is, this isn’t something special that we got because Scott was trying to impress us, it’s their incredibly well-valued seven course degustation at $95, and $155 with matching wines (which is what we had, and then some).  Personally, I think The Point is worth so much more than a hat, but according to George, what would I know, I have no palate.  Certainly not for a person who used to live in the building next to the Press Club when it first opened and ate there in its first week.  And the food there is amazing, but if I hadn’t eaten there previously and had only been witness to his person in the media, I would be put off from visiting any of George’s restaurants.

So, thank you Scott for being open minded and opening our minds.  When I have the stomach space, I will certainly come back.

The Point Albert Park

Aquatic Drive,
Albert Park Lake.

(03) 9682 5566