Melbourne chef Shannon Bennett should feel quite at home in Dubai for the next few days. The top Aussie chef — regularly rated one of the best in the country — is vising the UAE as part of a tour of 22 countries for an upcoming book, in which he’ll be giving his take on the city’s food scene as well as recipes inspired by the city.
As part of that, he’s going to see how At.Mosphere, the restaurant at the top of Burj Khalifa, compares to Vue Du Monde, his fine-dining restaurant at the top of Melbourne’s tallest tower, the Rialto.
But don’t think he’s only going top end — Bennett is also visiting Palestinian and Pakistani restaurants.
“I want to capture the current food culture in each city,” said Bennett, an ambassador for kitchen company Miele, at the company’s Dubai headquarters on Monday, a few hours before he was due to cook a meal for 30 VIPS.
“Dubai’s a really interesting one. What do people come here for? And what do foodies here want out of their city? I’m trying to look at those perspectives. A couple of chefs that used to work for me now live here, always been raving about all the chefs that come to the city. That’s my perspective — it’s about high-end sophisticated dining, and Dubai is a city that’s wanting to put itself on the map for fine dining, and compare itself to New York and other cities. But underneath that, I’d like to discover, what do people eat every week because you can’t eat at Gary Rhodes every week. I want to go to a Palestinian street food place, then we are going to look at some Pakistani food, and then to a more opulent place like Zuma. I’ll document that in 3,000-4,000 words and with recipes.”
One of his Dubai-inspired recipes is already clear: “A beauitiful braised leg of lamb in spices. Then you remove the meat, and you have all the juices, with spices and tomatoes and onions — and pour some rice in. You’ve got your flavoured rice and beautiful lamb.”
Want to make it? Better get your pressure cooker out, because along with induction cookers, Bennett is a big fan, although he never used to be.
“Now I realise the advantages — good flavour comes from secondary cuts of meat, and when you use a pressure cooker you can cook those cuts of meat in the time it takes to cook a primary cut, but with more flavour.” He equipped Vue Du Monde with induction he says, because it’s a sustainable way of cooking — and has easy cleanup.
“A great kitchen is easy to clean,” said the father-of-four, who cooks a family dinner every Sunday. “Chefs at home have a very bad reputation of doing all the cooking but walking away when you have to clean. I don’t get that luxury so when I cook, I like to be satisfied that I don’t have to get up and clean.”
The dishes he prepared for the lucky Miele VIPs were “a snapshot of what food culture is in Melbourne,” said Bennett of the menu, which included wild nettles, eel with white chocolate and caviar, Blackmore wagyu beef with pear and macadamia and — of course — a pavlova (which he made a point of describing as “Australian”, should any dissenting New Zealanders try to disagree.) The city is now known for its food culture, but Bennett says it’s something that was ignored for a long time.
“Vue Du Monde evolved from a French restaurant to telling a story about Melbourne, about the gold rush, when Melbourne was the wealthiest city in the world and the most populous. A lot of French and American chefs came over and left their mark but we never took much notice.” There, he’s serving up Australian ingredients such as wallaby and saltbush, both with a sustainability backstory, and fruit, veg and dairy from his 80 acre farm — and in his bar, ice for drinks is carved and shaped by hand, harking back to the gold rush days of 1850s Melbourne, when ice was shipped in from America, with 40 per cent of it melting before it arrived. He’s also happy to serve fine dining to vegans.
“We’ve got six acres of our own vegetable garden and we found so much interesting produce that we didn’t know about a few years ago. It helped me look at vegan food in a different, creative perspective. We can offer multiple course vegan without any problem whatsoever. And you can still eat truffles, which is important!”
