Alistair Wise has just returned to his hometown of Hobart after three years working for uber-celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay — two years in the pastry section with him in London and a year in New York helping open his restaurant and hotel complex as head pastry chef. Reviewing a special 22-course all-dessert menu Wise presented at Marque IV in May 2006 while en route to New York, I described it as a technical tour de force of 21st century foams, gelees, emulsions, slurps, pops, water ices, fruit confetti, cremeux, concasses and fondues and said, while provocative and confrontational, it wasn’t a meal. He now says, ”That was in my molecular, technique-driven phase. I’ve now learnt that people’s best food memories are not toothpaste and jelly experiences. In the last year I’ve stood back and realised that just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean it needs to be done. ‘The best dessert I tasted in New York was also the simplest—a silken tofu panna cotta with brown sugar syrup at Koyotofu. ‘It’s much harder to put less on a plate than it is to put more—one of the most difficult, and most important, lessons for any chef to learn.” Sunday Tasmanian, January 13.
Jan 13
