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GOURMET TRAVELLER 73

ON TOUR

chef Peter Gilmore travelled to California

to speak at an heirloom produce fair. “The

guy I buy a lot of seeds from runs the fair

with farmers from all over America, so I

really wanted to go,” he says. “But when

you go overseas from Australia, it’s such

a big commitment – you want to make

the most of it.”

Rather than ship straight home,

Gilmore visited bakeries and restaurants

in San Francisco, and dined at the

garden-inspired Meadowood Napa

Valley. And despite his interest in

vegetables, what ended up inspiring

him as much as the candy-coloured

heirlooms was a single plate of cheese.

“There was a candle that sat on

my table during the whole dinner,” says

Gilmore. “At the end of the meal, the

waiter came over and cut it open, and

in the centre was this beautiful cheese

that had been melted by the gentle

heat from the wax. It was so clever –

the theatre of cracking it open was

something you didn’t expect.”

When he reopened Quay in July last

year, Gilmore wanted to bring a similar

sense of theatre to the new menu. The

result is a dish of Tasmanian uni with

broth, the separate components brought

to the table for guests to assemble

themselves. “What you take away from

these trips isn’t necessarily a specific

thing,” he says, “It’s more a feeling

or an emotion that triggers further

exploration at home.”

For others, like Analiese Gregory,

of Franklin in Hobart, research might

be deliberate, or stem from a chance

opportunity, like landing a last-minute

booking at the new Noma during its

vegetable season. “Vegetables are one of

my obsessions,” she says. “I’m interested

in taking them and treating them like

something else. I was keen to experience

some of the techniques I’d seen on Noma’s

Instagram – like the celeriac shawarma.”

Gregory’s most memorable trip,

however, was less about eating. She

recalls how a season spent in the research

kitchen at Mugaritz in San Sebastián,

an innovative bunker much like Noma’s

Nordic Food Lab, shaped her learning.

“When I was younger, I thought I’d

worked in a lot of places that taught me

how to cook,” she says. “But I didn’t know

a lot about the creative process, and I

wanted to fully understand it.”

The research and development team

at Mugaritz work in a separate kitchen,

and it was here that Gregory learnt the

importance ofseparating innovation

from the grind of daily work.

These days, she uses travel as a means

of fighting creative anxiety. “I can get

bogged down in my own head sometimes,

but going to the other side of the world,

you always see produce in a different

season,” she says. “It gives you ideas

that you can go straight into working

on, which can be really inspiring.”

It sounds fun, all that eating and

globetrotting, but when we see those

plates of foie gras and meals at Noma

or L’Ambroisie clogging our Instagram

feed, who’s picking up the bill? Well, that

depends. Hospitality giants like Merivale

and Fink Group (who own the likes of

Quay and Firedoor) typically have staff

development budgets, meaning chefs

might be sent overseas to do research for

a new menu or restaurant opening. But

how much of that trip is funded can vary.

“We don’t have a little book with ‘how

much money are we going to spend on

travel this year’,” says Fink Group creative

director, John Fink. “A sous-chef might go

overseas and we might say, ‘while you’re

there, let us buy you a couple of really

decent dinners, here’s a few thousand

dollars towards it – come back and tell

us what you learnt’.”

For independent operators, though, a

little creative budgeting might be needed.➤