146 GOURMET TRAVELLER
T
here’s Édith Piaf on the turntable,
wine stacked high on the walls, and a
dessert station fit for Marie Antoinette.
“We’re up here drinking wine and
telling everyone we’re working,” grins
Curtis Stone, ushering another couple
through the doors of his wine loft. Instead of having
dessert at the table, diners at Stone’s Beverly Hills
restaurant, Maude, are escorted outside onto South
Beverly Drive and led upstairs to a Stone-style
speakeasy. Burgundy is the geographic focus of the
moment, so there’s a glass of Vosne-Romanée waiting,
and a very Gallic spread of chocolate-and-espresso
Opéra cake, madeleines and macarons.
When the Melbourne-raised chef opened Maude,
his first solo restaurant, the menu focused on a
single seasonal ingredient a month. Four years on,
48 star ingredients and more than a thousand recipes
later, Stone has changed tack. In January the approach
shifted from celebrating one ingredient for a month
to concentrating on a wine region for three. The first
was Rioja in Spain, followed by the French region of
Burgundy. From the start of July until the end of
September, the menu will be drawn from the six
counties of California’s Central Coast, from Ventura
in the south to Santa Cruz, nearSan Francisco, in the
north. With diversemicroclimates,rich oceanic and
volcanic soil, and coastal fog, it’s renowned as one of
California’s most diverse wine regions – and it’s only
90 minutes’ drive from Maude. “It’s a bit like running
down to the Mornington for the weekend from
Melbourne,” says Stone of the research trips fuelling
his current Californian obsession. “But it hasn’t
lessened the workload. We’re still driving around
the bloody world looking for inspiration.”
With the spotlight on the coast and the produce,
the process is reminiscent of that on Stone’s breakout
television series,Surfing the Menu. Within three hours
of hitting California’s Highway One we’re on the