Top 10 Restaurants of Australia
Cuisine: Modern Australian/Contemporary
Location: Melbourne, VIC
Head Chef: Ben Shewry
Ben Shewry grew up in an isolated coastal farm in New Zealand where his family grew their own food and made use of surrounding plants and seafood in their daily lives. This bred an appreciation for eclectic ingredients and foraging for wild produce1 that Shewry does every day near his home on the Victorian coast to use in his cooking at Attica. Determined to be a chef since he was five, Shewry worked in his first kitchen at age ten. He has apprenticed under chefs such as Michael Lambie, Andrew McConnell and David Thompson and spent 6 years of his spare time developing his Thai cooking skills2.
This dedication is finally paying off at Attica where Shewry has forged a highly unique style. His cooking draws reference to many different styles of cuisine around the world and makes use of technology and unconventional new techniques. In creating a dish Shewry draws inspiration from taste memories of his childhood, he attempts to make “a dish visually appealing and with great flavours, but also trying to evoke other emotions”3.
Number 2 in our list of the top ten restaurants of Australia is Ben Shewry's Attica. Again, the only Victorian based restaurant in Australia to make the World Top 100 list in 2011, it has climbed up the list 20 places to number 53. It is now also the second highest Australian restaurant on the list. Set in the unassuming suburbs of Melbourne, dining at Attica is all about the food. Ben Shewry delivers tantalizing combinations of unique and eclectic ingredients, some of which are foraged by Shewry himself in the morning near his home on the Bellarine peninsula. These are then prepared using elaborate techniques and an array of home-brewed technology within the kitchen of Attica. Though the wine list, setting and service is no match for most of the other restaurants on our list the heights delivered by the food elevate Attica to its current position.
References
- http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/trash-or-treasure-20100408-rsus.html
- http://www.starchefs.com/cook/videos/interview-ben-shewry
- http://gourmettraveller.com.au/ben_shewry_out_of_attica.htm
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