Top chefs smart as tables turn

SYDNEY - After absorbing criticism by the ladle-full, Sydney's finest chefs have struck back the only way they know how - with a serving of scorn and a pinch of arrogance.

Until last month the city's premier restaurants had been celebrating a pre-Olympic Games culinary boom, with 120 new eateries opening within a year and skyrocketing prices barely causing a murmur.

Sydney's love affair with food developed around a restaurant lifestyle and was praised for its flair and quality by critics around the world.

But things started going wrong when a restaurant owned by Sydney's most celebrated chef, Neil Perry, came in for a stinging downgrade and the chef himself was the target of a bitchy newspaper review.

Rockpool is an upmarket establishment that for several years had been graded with the rare rating of three chef's hats by the Good Food Guide, the annual bible of restaurant assessment.

At the launch of its latest edition, hosted by Perry, all and sundry were stunned to discover that Rockpool had been downgraded to two hats.

The next day, a Sydney Morning Herald review reported on the humiliation for Perry, describing him as a "noodle king" whose "trademark ponytail was looking a little limp."

It was too much for the foodie fraternity, which launched a revolt of sorts. In a letter to the paper, 40 prominent chefs, so long used to having their praises sung, described the article as spiteful and said the ideals they set for themselves were not matched by restaurant reviewers.

But it was not long until the next grilling came, this time from New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.

Commenting on the sharp drop-off in lunchtime business for restaurants, Carr said customers had had enough of waiting 40 minutes between courses.

"I know good food takes time, but the rest of us have jobs."

Carr was at it again after dining at an upmarket restaurant where his potato were doused in butter.

"It might be the French style, but I want my heart to work.

"Cooking food in butter has always been associated with ratbag politics. Whenever a dictator has stubbed out his cigar in a lobster tail and ordered the gendarmerie to shoot down starvelings in the boulevards, it has always been preceded by a meal cooked in butter."

The restaurateurs' reaction was mixed at best, but more heat was to follow.

Apparently the latest trend in the best kitchens is away from an Asian-Europe mix to retro-French.

A former chef with his finger still on the pulse, Peter Maresch, revealed publicly that those same kitchens' workers were being forced to speak French. And along with the French style, a culture of brutality had crept in thanks to an influx of French-trained British chefs who espouse overt discipline.

"A lot of British Francophiles act like little Nazis. You have to say 'oui chef, oui chef' all the time."

Further stories of slave kitchens and worker abuse have emerged from other sources.

One restaurant general manager said he had an irate chef kick an oven door closed on his arm because he kept it open a fraction of a second too long.

Rather than attempt a positive defence, the restaurateurs counter-punched with a spicy feature article in a newspaper's food section.

It was an expose of the irritating habits of Sydney diners that really get up the chefs' noses.

The most common sin is guests showing up in greater numbers than they booked or simply not showing up at all.

For the latter crime, Liam Tomlin, of the Banc restaurant, said: "Sometimes I'd like to do what the London chef Antony Worrall-Thompson used to do early in his career.

"He used to call people who didn't show up at four o'clock in the morning and ask them if it was okay if he sent the staff home now."

Another beef is stingy tables of five or six who turn up and order only a round of entrees and some green salad.

Then there are customers who "misread" the style of the restaurant.

Said Stefano de Pieri, of Stefano's: "We are underground in an old building and we hose our floor once or twice a day.

"Yet people come dressed up to the hilt because it's a three-hat restaurant so they miss the mood of the place and then get their noses out of joint."

The same chef is fed up with couples who choose to have an argument under his roof.

"They can poison an entire restaurant. In 20 minutes that mood has moved into the kitchen and coloured the tone of the whole evening.

"When you go out to a restaurant you shouldn't discuss your money worries or a marriage disagreement."

Richard Moyser, of the Riverview Hotel, winces at the thought of customers who dare to request a swap of ingredients between dishes on the menu.

"Last week we had a curry-spiced blue-eyed cod with creamed leek and sauteed wild mushrooms, and a customer wanted the cod without the curry spice and with 'the stuff that comes with the beef."

Then the doozy from David Rayner, head chef at the Vault, who has a particular dislike of patrons locked in a time zone.

"Some of them are out of the 1970s. They still ask for oysters Kilpatrick or cocktail sauce with their prawns."
- NZPA