Sauce Code

With classical technique balancing contemporary flair, Melbourne’s Ryne shows that savoir-faire never goes out of fashion

- Michael Harden

With Donovan Cookein the house, you know the sauces are going to be every bit as interesting as the things they sauce. Cooke’s classical training and impeccable technique shone especially brightly in his sauce-work at Est Est Est in the late 1990s and at Ondine in the early aughts. Sauces were less of a feature during his seven-year tenure at Crown seafood behemoth The Atlantic, but at Ryne, his new 60-seat restaurant in Fitzroy North, they’re up front again. Red wine fumet. Antiboise. Bois boudran. It’s back to the future.

The “returning to his roots” narrative is unavoidable at Ryne and it’s not just about the sauces. Cooke’s menu references the past as consciously as a heritage rock tour.

How else can you read a dish of pigeon that’s been slow-cooked and then pan-fried and served with peeled grapes macerated in muscat and a sauce that involves pigeon, chicken and veal stock, a gardenful of herbs, and has chicken-liver parfait folded through it? You may not be surprised to hear that the sauce is great – so much so that you might find yourself closing your eyes to savour its silken power and the elegance of its seasoning. It takes you back.