Southern Exposure

Closing the door on Gastro Park, Grant King looks south for his new guiding star at The Antipodean. And, writes Pat Nourse, the results are most promising.

- Pat Nourse

New Zealand, if you listen to the militant New Zealanders who work in the Gourmet Traveller offices, not only brought us the pavlova, lamingtons, the flat white and Lorde, but also invented fire and domesticated the sheep. Attempt to counter this line of argument by raising such trifling Australian contributions to civil society as the black-box flight recorder, ultrasound scanners, the electric drill, AC/DC permaculture, the medical application of penicillin and, if you’re a fan of Bruce Pascoe’s research on Aboriginal agriculture, the invention of bread, and they’ll blither about bungee jumping and jetboats. Jetboats.

In fairness, I feel I should add that they seem happy to let us have Russell Crowe.

Where this leaves us in the matter of chefs is tricky. Tricky in that if they’re any good, they have a habit of moving to the big island, and don’t often go out of the way to showcase L&P, hokey pokey ice-cream, and Perky Nana chocolate bars in their restaurants.

Which brings us to The Antipodean. Grant King hails from New Zealand, and has decided that cooking with ingredients sourced from Australasia is the way forward. But don’t worry – that’s about it in terms of concept, and the menu at The Antipodean is blissfully unadorned by anything resembling a philosophy or a mission statement. If you’re looking for a place to pigeonhole it, just file it under “very tasty food”.

Among the tastiest things it serves is shavings of New Zealand abalone – I think they call it paua over there – with a gooey-centred egg. The thing that pushes it firmly into whoa-baby territory is the combination of the abalone and some shiitakes King has found in the Blue Mountains. The singular texture of abalone, given a slippery rhyme by the mushrooms, goes past the sublime into deeper territory.