Restaurant News

First Look: inside the Lexus Design Pavilion at The Melbourne Cup Carnival

Ben Shewry and David Moyle have big plans for the menu.

By Michael Harden
Attica's All parts of the pumpkin
Lexus, never shy of pulling out the culinary big guns at its Design Pavilion in the Birdcage during the Melbourne Cup Carnival, has upped the ante this year. Over the course of Derby, Cup and Oaks Days. The luxury car company's three-storey pavilion at Flemington will see chef Ben Shewry presenting dishes from his current menu at Attica and David Moyle from Hobart's Franklin dishing up a five-course set menu in a dining room with views towards the track.
In keeping with the high level of culinary cred, Lexus has also taken on florist-designer-artist-businessman-entrepreneur-sustainability activist Joost Bakker as Pavilion designer for the third year, ensuring an air of good-looking edgy sustainability and a high level of recycling. Bakker's material of choice for this year's "Futurecave" is 100 per cent reclaimed concrete.
Ground floor of the Lexus Design Pavilion will show off the company's latest car moves - the LC 500 coupé, recently unveiled at Milan's Salone del Mobile - alongside the izakaya-style, booze-friendly food from Windsor food and liquor store Mr Miyagi.
The Miyagi offering - fried chicken and a "nori taco" filled with grilled salmon belly, sushi rice and spicy cabbage - will be available to all who gain access to the Pavilion, but for those interested in Moyle and Shewry, forward planning and a fair bit of networking are necessary.
Ben Shewry and David Moyle.
Moyle's five-course menu is influenced "by the sea and the environment" and will be served over five sittings per day. Bookings are taken in the Pavilion at the beginning of each day and the menu will include raw striped trumpeter with salted turnip, mustard and horseradish, smoked bone marrow toast with celery, peas, lovage and nettle sauce, and lemon and bay leaf ice cream.
On level three, where there's also an outdoor terrace with views of the racetrack, Shewry will be keeping things exclusive, serving just eight guests at a time, six times a day.
Those lucky enough to get an invitation-only seat will be treated to a selection of four dishes straight from the current Attica menu: hand-dived Port Philip Bay sea scallops, lightly steamed and served with lemon myrtle butter and desert lime; tiny little tarts with a matzo shell filled with chicken-soup jelly, ground chicken meat and schmaltz; a dish called All Parts of the Pumpkin, which means just what it says (cold-pressed pumpkin-seed oil and pumpkin juice included) and Shewry's take on a classic mint slice.
Giddy-up.