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GOURMET TRAVELLER 23

PHOTOGRAPHY CELESTE MITCHELL (COMO BEACH CLUB), RODNEY MACUJA (CHANEL) & NIKKI TO (QUAY). STYLING LIZ ELTON (CHANEL)

News

Pearl jam

Chef Peter Gilmore relaunches Sydney’s Quay

and reboots the oyster along the way.

“When I was really young, I think

my mum tried to feed me oysters and

I threw up,” says Peter Gilmore. The

chef’s oyster aversion has lasted so long

he’s kept them off the menu at Quay

for 17 years. It’s not the flavour, which

he says he loves, but the texture that

puts him off. With the harbourside

Sydney restaurant reopening after its

first big renovation, Gilmore thinks

it’s time to change his ways: the

new menu opens with a dish called

Oyster Intervention, which showcases

everything he loves in oysters, minus

the bits that unsettle him.

Gilmore takes a ceramic shell by

Studio Jam’s Jacqueline Clayton and

Paul Davis, fills it with an oyster

cream, then tops it with crackling

made from a crushed deep-fried sheet

of dehydrated oysters, chicken skin

and tapioca. He finishes it with

oscietra caviar “for that burst of

umami and sea flavours”. It’s his

COOK PORTUGAL

The Portuguese version of surf ’n’ turf, carne de

porco à alentejana (above), is one of the dishes

on the menu at Mimo Algarve, a new immersive

cooking school on Portugal’s south coast. It’s the

first outlet beyond Spain for the well-regarded

Mimo group, which runs cooking schools,

gourmet shops and food experiences in Seville,

San Sebastián and Mallorca. Operating from Pine

Clifs Resort, the school runs two- to seven-day

courses, family classes, supper clubs and wine

tastings. Mimo Algarve, Pine Clis Resort, Praia da

Falésia, Albufeira, Portugal, algarve.mimofood.com

wallet-phone check, settle in for a film,

remove make-up before bedtime. Chanel has

the oft-neglected travel ritual covered with its

spruced-up cleansing collection, with four new

facial cleansers and a toner for all skin types in oil,

milk, foam and a non-rinse milk-to-water formula.

$62 for 150ml, (02) 9900 2944

dream version of oysters, served with

a handcrafted mother-of-pearl spoon.

Like most of the relaunched

Quay menu, it’s a completely new dish.

“The Snow Egg is gone, the congee is

gone,” Gilmore says. One keeper: the

pork belly and scallop dish that he’s

been remixing since he first served

it at De Beers at Whale Beach nearly

20 years ago. Quay’s rebooted line-up

will be served in a more intimate

space (thanks to a reduced 80-person

capacity), and the restaurant finally

maximises its view of the Sydney

Harbour Bridge. Upper Level, Overseas

Passenger Terminal, The Rocks, NSW,

(02) 9251 5600, quay.com.au

Do the boarding-gate farewell, the passport-