Hot 100 2017: food trends

Ramen Lab, New York

Here’s how Ramen Lab works: the noodle counter is tiny, crowded and standing room only; the chef changes every month, along with the menu; and there’s always a wait. Less a restaurant than a permanent pop-up, Ramen Lab is a side project by Sun Noodle, a family-owned noodle maker that fuels New York’s excellent ramen scene. On the edge of Little Italy, it’s a showcase for some of the most celebrated ramen chefs in the world, a chance to taste the noodles they’re eating in Tokyo, or Kagoshima or Los Angeles. Typically, each chef is in residence for the first three weeks of the month (follow the Instagram account @ramenlab for details). Order the signature ramen and a can of sake − as pure a culinary experience as you’ll find anywhere. ramen-lab.com

Tarts from the past

Ben Shewry’s Imperfect History of Ripponlea as Told by Tarts is a high-concept dish that actually flies. Recreating moments in the story of Ripponlea – the Melbourne suburb Attica calls home – it arrives in three lidded containers, each holding a two-bite tart. The tarts reference indigenous history via native pepper and riberries, use fresh cheese and rosemary to honour the man who built Ripponlea mansion, and celebrate the suburb’s Jewish population with matzo, schmaltz and chicken-soup jelly. Clever and tasty. attica.com.au

Emojis on menus

Explosion. Black dot. Butterfly. Menu descriptions that are terse to the point of opacity are nothing new in the restaurant world, but Gaggan, Bangkok’s celebrated neo-Indian eatery, takes things a step further, listing its tasting (at the beginning of the meal, at any rate) entirely in emoji. Lightning bolt, rainbow, dancing lady indeed. eatatgaggan.com

String theory

Grilled. Poached. Pan-fried. Some people even try to cook red meat sous-vide. But roasting it à la ficelle offers a touch of MacGyver-like genius as well as a great result. A leg of lamb spinning gently at the end of a piece of twine (ficelle is French for string) in front of the coals has been one of the most talked-about sights in the open kitchen at Fred’s in Sydney. “It hangs in front of one of our fires and if you give it a little nudge, it just gently turns and turns and cooks evenly all the way around,”says American-born chef Danielle Alvarez. We’re hooked. merivale.com.au

The Capri, Marfa

Deep in the heart of West Texas, in the desert city of Marfa, chef Rocky Barnette and collector Virginia Lebermann are the American food couple to know next. Lebermann co-founded the non-profit arts and culture institution Ballroom Marfa and owns The Capri, a restaurant and performance space, where Barnette showcases pre-conquest Mesoamerican cooking techniques. Barnette is a tequila fanatic who regularly hops across the border to source Chihuahuan Desert ingredients such as jicama, huitlacoche, epazote and amaranth for an “eat when it’s ready” menu that appeals to this remote arts community in Big Bend country. Order chilled Modelos or Lone Star longnecks to pair with his prickly pear-braised rabbit tamales, calabaza squash-masa fritters, and turkey in black-garlic mole Poblano. thunderbirdmarfa.com

Bird of paradise

Yeah, it’s a hundred-dollar chicken. Or $578 Hong Kong dollars to be precise. But it’s really something – trussed with care so it’s roasted to a rich, deep gold all over, stuffed with button mushrooms, spinach, chicken liver and a bouquet of rosemary, thyme and flat-leaf parsley. The flavour of the bird itself is excellent – in a city where the term “jet-fresh” is used without irony, it’s pleasing to see a Western restaurant finding a good local product rather than simply flying everything in from Paris or Tokyo – and the accompanying petits pois à la Française and pommes Anna are impeccable. It’s served whole, from beak to claw, which prompts the intriguing question: are Hong Kong’s finest chicken feet now served in a French restaurant? belonsoho.com

Tables in Vegas

Momofuku’s new Las Vegas outpost isn’t an exact analogue of its New York City cousins, whether it be the freewheeling Ssäm and Noodle Bar or the fine-diner Ko, though it shares some personality traits from those eateries. The 200-seat restaurant’s lengthy menu reads like a David Chang greatest hits album, with everything from the comfort of a bowl of ginger and spring onion noodles to the gluttony of the legendary bo ssäm, a slow-cooked hunk of pork that can feed 10. Everything on the menu bursts with that umami-focused swagger that made Chang’s name, and, in its own way, Momofuku fits right in with Vegas’s brand of debauchery – where else might eating a dinner comprised entirely of fried chicken and caviar feel quite so appropriate? High-rollers can rent a raised private room (lined with custom peach-themed carpet, naturally) that looks out over the Strip, and the rest of us can slurp that famed porky ramen under a canine-themed David Choe mural. It’s a new face of Vegas cool, and we’re all in. vegas.momofuku.com

Bread winner

The sourdough loaves that wowed diners at Magill Estate Restaurant are now sold in a suburban market – but only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and queues form early. Gifted pâtissier Emma Shearer applies the smarts that established her fame at Magill in her boutique bakery The Lost Loaf, in an urban renewal development in Bowden. The bread is baked on a mezzanine level above the market floor, along with a changing array of pastries sold from an antique bread trolley – but it’s her perfect baguettes that make customers swoon. Plant 4, Third St, Bowden, SA.

Cooking with Scorsese and Others

Each volume of Cooking with Scorsese and Others plucks more than a dozen food scenes from the silver screen for your indulgence. Feast your eyes on courtesan au chocolat at Mendl’s (The Grand Budapest Hotel), rice omelettes with Sonny (Tampopo), Julia Child’s potato gratin (Julie & Julia), gazpacho à la Almodóvar (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) and more. Volumes one and two are now available in hardcover for $13 each. hatopress.net

Staplehouse, Atlanta

There’s a tragic but ultimately heartwarming backstory to Atlanta’s Staplehouse. The original chef and co-owner, Ryan Hidinger, died of cancer at 36 before the restaurant opened. The business now supports The Giving Kitchen, a non-profit that helps hospitality folks in need. But even without that context, it’s an easy place to love. Chef Ryan Smith, who’s been running kitchens for some of the region’s other great chefs for the past decade (Hugh Acheson and Linton Hopkins among them), tinkers with notions of what Southern food can be: the aged duck may come with blue barley and collard greens, but clams get their kick from a caramel infused with the tang of fish sauce. Smith is a master at combinations that are clever rather than tricky – chicken liver mousse is reimagined as a rich savoury tart, while oysters grilled with butter imbued with the toasty flavour of popcorn offer a glorious slurp of brine and nostalgia. Sometimes doing good and tasting good are in magnificent harmony. staplehouse.com

Indian-Chinese

Indian-Chinese restaurants are becoming a feature of suburban restaurant scenes from West Footscray to Lakemba. The cuisine is thought to have developed in Kolkata’s Hakka enclave in the 1920s, and is gaining traction in expat Indian communities in the wider world. While its connection to the food of China can sometimes appear tenuous, it has an internal logic all its own. Indian-Chinese in Australia is typically halal, the tables are usually set with forks and spoons rather than chopsticks, and menu staples include vegetarian chow mein, chicken spring rolls and masala fried rice. Manchurian sauce – a masala-based gravy finished with soy sauce – gets a good workout, and while the “Sichuan” dishes often include no Sichuan pepper, they still pack plenty of heat. At Parramatta’s Dragon House, the signature dish is Triple Sichuan, a layered dish of crunchy noodles, fried rice and vegetables dressed in Sichuan sauce, while the dessert list at Taste of Tangra in Lakemba offers deep-fried ice-cream alongside pistachio and mango kulfi. dragon-house.com.au; tasteoftangra.com.au

The pezzo

Pizza? Bah! Say hello to the pezzo, the love child of Guy Grossi’s 48-hour fermented pizza dough and the pita pocket. The Melbourne chef invented it while experimenting at his salumi joint Ombra – instead of stretching the dough, he baked it as a bun, broke it open and found it was hollow. Cue fillings such as meatballs and sugo, and cotoletta with Italian slaw and white sauce. Grossi has done his research ahead of opening a dedicated pezzo shop in the CBD later this year and found similar things in Rome. “We’re saying it was born in Italy, raised in Melbourne,” he says. ombrabar.com.au

Up and coming

It’s still months before opening, there’s no name and chef Dave Verheul remains fluid on the menu, but the new restaurant above fan-favourite wine bar Embla is already Melbourne’s most feverishly anticipated opening. New windows flood the upstairs space with light and a walk-in glass wine cellar will allow browsing. Following Embla’s lead, the new restaurant will include only wines that “express where they came from, not what somebody did to them”. In other words, a detailed snapshot of things co-owner Christian McCabe likes to drink. Set your watch for the second half of this year. embla.com.au

Titillating proposal

Four fat pig nipples sit on an upturned ceramic pig. But this is no mere Instagram bait; it’s the resurrection of a dish popular in ancient Rome. This fresh incarnation is a hit at Dos Pebrots, the new Barcelona restaurant from former El Bulli chef de cuisine Albert Raurich. His menu references Mediterranean food from across the ages; his tetas de cerdo Ibérico are cut from the bellies of Maldonado Ibérico sows, confited in lard, fired up in the wood-burning oven and then brushed with jamón fat. They’re sticky and gelatinous, offer incredible length of flavour and are extremely popular with diners. dospebrots.com

Raising the bars

Los Angeles chocolatier Compartés is run by Jonathan Grahm, who took over the company when he was just 21. Grahm packs all his favourite things into his thoroughly textured milk, white and dark chocolate bars – think coffee grounds and chunks of doughnut from LA’s finest cafés, candy-like cereal and marshmallows – and he’s even dabbled in kale. Wrapped in graphic prints and inscribed with poems written by Grahm himself, Compartés bars are a fun-packed Californian antidote to some of the more painfully earnest players in the chocolate game. compartes.com

Dry-aged fish

Don’t mention the “F” word to fish-ageing proponent Josh Niland from Sydney’s Saint Peter. “We never push it to the point of fishiness,” the chef says. “The aim of dry-ageing is to sum up what the fish actually tastes like.” So wild kingfish aged for nine or 10 days might taste as though it had been dressed with lemon, say, while Spanish mackerel acquires complex, savoury mushroom-like notes. “Dry-ageing produces significant changes to the fish’s flavour and the way it acts in the pan,” Niland says. “It’s not a gimmick and it doesn’t work on all fish – you can age mulloway for 15 or 16 days, for example, but it tastes a lot better on day two.” Sokyo chef Chase Kojima, from Star City in Sydney, prefers wet-ageing to bring a fish to flavoursome ripeness, working with the likes of tuna, ocean trout and alfonsino. saintpeter.com.au, star.com.au

Happy feats

It’s been a seamless transition from fashion to food for Cameron and Jordan Votan. The brothers created Imperial Brand Clothing, a niche denim label, and Cameron is co-founder of online retailer The Iconic. In 2014 they introduced Brisbane to hip Chinese diner Happy Boy and last year they opened Greenglass, a French-inflected eatery in a low-rent section of the city, a showcase for Cameron’s Spokenwine online cellar door. Happy Boy 2.0 is due this month. “There wasn’t a lot of experience there when we started,” says Jordan. “But we’ve always been interested in the business side of things and we have an obsession with food.” happyboy.com.au; greenglasswine.com

Stir-fried milk, Queen Chow

Stir-fried milk. “It’s a strange dish with a strange name,” says Patrick Friesen, chef of Sydney’s Queen Chow. But after trying it at Pang’s Kitchen in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley he decided it needed to be on the new Enmore restaurant’s menu. The traditional Chinese dish is made from roughly equal parts milk and eggwhite, and usually served with scallops, but at Queen Chow Friesen serves it with roe, prawns and fried bread – “Who doesn’t like toast with their scrambled eggs?” he says. merivale.com.au/queenchow

Emu on menus

This all-Aussie bird is turning up on some top tables. At Attica you might find emu cooked with potatoes and scrambled emu egg. Brisbane’s Detour puts the flank to work in a standout tartare seasoned with smoky habanero salt on a cracker with egg yolk and dill. Chef Damon Amos takes pride in eating part of our coat of arms and chooses emu because it tastes great. “Kind of like a lean, gamy dry-aged tenderloin,” he says.

attica.com.au; Detour, 11 Logan Rd, Woolloongabba, Qld

All small and great

It’s booked until January 2018 – but it’s not a typical Michelin-starred establishment. Heron & Grey, the only new one-star restaurant in Ireland last year, sits in a nondescript street market in a seaside suburb of Dublin. When it scored its first star, it was so tiny diners had to use the toilets around the corner. The 24-seat dégustation-only affair is co-owned by Dubliner Andrew Heron but chef and co-owner Damien Grey hails from Canberra and trained in the Sydney suburb of Glebe. heronandgrey.com

Focaccia is back

With handsome examples coming from the likes of Fugazza in Melbourne and Sydney’s Bar Brosé (with seaweed butter, no less), the question isn’t so much “why is focaccia coming back now?” as “why did it go away in the first place?” The loaves Enrico Sgarbossa turns out at Sydney pizzeria Al Taglio are impressive enough to put any questions of retro naffness to rest permanently. He ferments the dough for 20 hours at 18 degrees, putting a third more water into it than most recipes call for, producing a result that’s light and spongy but full of flavour. Fugazza, 31 Equitable Pl, Melbourne, Vic; barbrose.com.au; altaglio.com.au

Much ado about mushrooms

Forget zoodles, king oyster mushrooms are the new vegetable pasta. They’re free of gluten and mighty versatile: at New York’s Little Park, Andrew Carmellini cooks strands of the fungi in a shallot and porcini butter sauce, while only blocks away Ivan Ramen serves king oyster mushroom ribbons dressed with yuzu and shiso salsa verde. littlepark.com; ivanramen.com

Ku De Ta does Perth

Ku dining isn’t fine dining. At least that’s the thinking of Daniel Fisher and Liam Atkinson, the two Print Hall alumni behind the food at the new Ku De Ta in Perth, the Balinese beach club’s first international expansion. That might be the case, but there’s no denying the restaurant’s chawanmushi – a shimmering custard of duck egg studded with bone marrow, Goolwa cockles and XO sauce – says as much about the pair’s cooking pedigree as it does Ku De Ta’s likeable brand of luxe-casual eating. kudeta.com

ShortStop’s cruller

In a time of shock-value doughnut design ShortStop Donuts’ Australian honey and sea salt cruller is a simple, airy reprieve. Shallow-fried four minutes each side, the light and crunchy cruller is dipped in a malty honey sourced from Brunswick’s Bee Sustainable, then sprinkled with Murray River sea salt for a savoury-sweet hit. “It’s never leaving the menu,” says owner Anthony Ivey. Amen to that. short-stop.com.au

The seafood platter is back

The questionable reputation of the seafood platter as a triumph of quantity over quality may need to be revised. Recent sightings at Cutler & Co‘s newly revamped bar in Melbourne and on the waterfront at Cirrus in Sydney have revealed a distinctly modern take on the genre. Sauces are kept to a minimum and the content is all killer, no filler: honey bugs, tiger prawns, lobster, oysters, clams and mussels on the shell all putting in appearances alongside excellent raw fish. Just add Champagne and let the magic happen.

Salad burnet

Looking to turn over a new leaf? Here’s one: salad burnet. The dainty saw-toothed salad herb is appearing on menus across the nation. It’s paired with yellow squash at Cirrus, and goat’s curd and peas at Bentley, and is easy to grow at home, too. It’s tangy, with a hint of cucumber – perfect for throwing in a salad or garnishing your G&T.

Mercato Centrale Roma

All paths lead to Mercato Centrale Roma, a food market of serious quality that has transformed Stazione Termini, the city’s otherwise seedy train terminal. The team that founded Mercato Centrale in Florence in 2014 has attracted some of Rome’s finest providores to 1,900 square metres of market space in the 1930s station. There’s the likes of bread and pizza by the slice by Gabriele Bonci, meats by Roberto Liberati, seafood by Edoardo Galluzzi of Antica Pescheria Galluzzi, and cheeses by Beppe Giovale of Beppe e i Suoi Formaggi. Shop and eat downstairs among the stalls, or book a table upstairs at chef Oliver Glowig’s restaurant. mercatocentrale.it

Chef-branded caviar

In the bad old days, a chef might have slapped his or her name on a line of saucepans or a collection of canned soups. But these days, America’s best chefs are aiming higher. Eric Ripert was the pioneer of chef-branded caviar, launching his own line of Imperial Select caviar with the company Paramount Caviar in 2012. Now it seems more and more chefs are aiming to put their names on small round tins: both Sean Brock and David Chang are in the process of partnering with Regalis for their own caviars. And the trend isn’t just at the super-high end. In Los Angeles, chef Micah Wexler of Wexler’s Deli recently released a line of private-label Siberian and oscietra caviars in partnership with Black River Caviar.

Pudding Club

Sydney’s Elizabeth Hewson Chapman is a pudding fan. She doesn’t discriminate: bread and butter pudding, golden syrup sponge, classic Christmas pud and jam roly-poly are equally adored. Inspired by a copy of Regula Ysewijn’s Pride and Pudding, which delves into the ancient savoury and sweet puddings of Britain, Hewson Chapman has launched Pudding Club, a monthly meet-up of fanatics to eat and swap titbits of history. “It’s like Fight Club, just with more pudding and less fighting,” she says. BYO custard. instagram.com/puddingclub_au

Beyond the taco

While we may have gone a little taco-crazy thanks to some better examples appearing on Australian shores, there are plenty more tortilla tricks we’re yet to see. Tlayudas, for instance, are crisp tortillas topped with the likes of rendered pork fat, Oaxacan cheese and shredded meat, memelas comprise a slightly thicker, sturdier corn tortilla that can be stuffed with slow-cooked meat or something closer to a hash brown, and then there are sopes, which are thick like a memela but with a crunchy exterior and pinched sides that cradle their filling.

Designer dining

To each restaurant age there is a designer, and the designer du jour is Iva Foschia. The woman behind IF Architecture has recently put her mark on the rebirth of Melbourne dining landmarks Attica and Cutler & Co. “Restaurants are a passion of mine,” she says. As a student she worked for the Van Haandel Group’s development arm and, as a graduate architect, she worked on the Normanby Chambers iteration of Vue de Monde. As for her signature style, look no further than the invocations of herbs and spices at Cutler (green marble and deep-red banquettes) or the motifs of charred wood and textured fabrics in the new Attica. ifarchitecture.com.au

Grown-up garlic bread

The garlic bread at Sotto Sopra, Alessandro Pavoni’s new tratt in Newport on Sydney’s northern beaches, is something else. Baked in the wood-fired oven on a cast-iron skillet, the sweet little buns are splashed with marjoram, oregano and rosemary crisped up in garlic butter, and served hot and dripping. sottosopra.com.au

Esquire on tap

Diners have lusted after Ryan Squires’ kimchi chips and buffalo jerky for years. The latest venture from the chef-owner of Esquire, Brisbane, is Esq Shop, a concise range of small-batch pantry items available through outlets such as Brisbane’s Sourced Grocer in Teneriffe and Craft Wine Store in Red Hill. The fine treats include pickled ginger and handcrafted pancetta, fermented chilli sauce, burger pickles and the ketchup that features on Esq’s Rangers Valley burger. Need a barbecue and hardwood table for six or eight to complete your party? Yep, good to go. esquire.net.au

Fine-dining delivered

Now that the trio of rival food delivery services – Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Foodora – have all but colonised Melbourne’s bike lanes and Sydney’s roads, they’re cycling into new frontiers as fine-diners sign up. In Sydney, luxe up your cheese and cracker spread with Jatz à la Acme or order in Bar Brosé’s late-night sandwich, summon Chaco Bar yakitori by the stick or dip into the “Neil Perry Selection” from Saké. In Melbourne you can Netflix and Nobu, or if you’d prefer, stream and Supernormal. Entrecôte and Gazi are on board too, among others. ubereats.com; foodora.com; deliveroo.com

Port Phillip Bay scallops

They’re neither cheap nor plentiful – there’s only one harvesting licence in Victoria and it comes with strictly enforced quotas and ongoing controversy about the quotas. But Port Phillip Bay scallops, plucked from the seabed by hand, are absolutely worth the fuss. Small and beautifully formed, they have an exquisite texture and a subtly sweet taste. Recent menu sightings include Attica and Rockpool Bar & Grill.

Ester: more of the best

It doesn’t have a name. It doesn’t open till the spring. But there’s nowhere we’re more excited to see opening in Sydney than the new Ester. The Chippendale restaurant has grown to be one of the city’s most consistently impressive and best-liked eateries, and now it’s taking the show to Surry Hills, expanding with a new wine-bar eatery at the hotel development opposite Longrain on Campbell Street. With sous-chef Isabel Caulfield heading the kitchen and sommelier Julien Dromgool turning things up on the wine list, it’s looking mighty promising.

Mexican new wave

As vibrant as Mexico City is for food, the high-end restaurant scene has seen relatively little action following the breakthroughs of Pujol and Quintonil. Lorea, though, is turning heads. Right from the start things are couched in the playful, provocative terms that chef and owner Oswaldo Oliva enjoyed for years in the kitchen at Mugaritz, the famed restaurant in the Basque country. Will it be Menú One, “A tasty sequence that does not require complications” or Menú Two, “Audacity with an inspiring impact; a constant challenge”? In any case, it could mean choko-root gnocchi dressed with roasted hazelnut and potato skins, a radical pairing of plums and mezcal, or a taco-like sweet of fermented toffee, rye and marshmallow. Brace for impact.