A master's magic

One of the world's most creative chefs is bringing new flavour to Melbourne.

Within minutes of picking up the phone in his restaurant in London's East End, it becomes clear how Portugal-born Nuno Mendes has risen to the top of his game.

Words such as obsession, passion and excitement punctuate his conversation, and it takes little effort to get the Michelin-starred chef waxing rhapsodic about his favourite ingredients, milk and seafood.

His career could have revolved around either one of those, but in the end it was cooking that captivated him.

Crab with duck-egg yolk and rhubarb (left) is among his dishes.

Mendes grew up in Lisbon, not far from the sea, but his family always had a dairy farm. When his father retired from business, he decided to turn the farm into a going concern.

But wanderlust led the younger Mendes in another direction. ''When I graduated from school in Portugal, I felt that my options were fairly limited … I wanted to see the world.''

	Nuno Mendes.

He moved to Miami to study marine biology, driven partly, he says, ''by a passion for the sea and partly by a dreamer-like ambition to become like Jacques Cousteau, who was a childhood hero''.

Quickly figuring out that, as a marine biologist, he would spend more time in the lab than the ocean, Mendes enrolled in cooking school and felt at home immediately.

Since graduating from the California Culinary Academy in 1997, Mendes has travelled and worked with some of the world's great chefs, absorbing ''a little or a lot from each''.

Austria-born celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck taught him about running successful, glamorous concept restaurants. ''He's able, with a vision and with one idea and with a huge team, to create an amazing experience and replicate that several times, which is quite impressive,'' Mendes says.

From New Yorker Rocco DiSpirito, Mendes developed his interest in Japanese cuisine; from Mark Miller, his knowledge of Latin American cooking; and from Frenchman Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Asian food.

But it was a three-month stage with Ferran Adria at Spain's influential (and now defunct) El Bulli in 2003 that really marked him.

''I always wanted to do a restaurant that was reflective of me, that would showcase my work, that was an individual restaurant, rather than one you can get anywhere,'' Mendes says, his soft accent reflecting his birthplace and years spent in the US and London. ''That's what we're trying to do with Viajante. We're not trying to be El Bulli, but we're trying to develop our own personality.''

Opening the experimental Viajante (''the traveller'') in Bethnal Green's imposing former town hall in 2010 raised a few eyebrows. The rapidly gentrifying area was once one of London's poorest slums, but Mendes' experience of travelling the twisting, treacherous cliff-edge road to the famously remote El Bulli played a part.

Nuno Mendes opened London's Viajante ('The traveller') in 2010.

''I know we're talking about very different scenery, but travelling for food adds to the experience, both on the way in and on the way out,'' Mendes says. ''On the way in, you have the expectation of what you're hoping to experience, the excitement, and on the way back it's like trying to gather your thoughts and analyse the experience.''

Being awarded his first Michelin star last year demonstrated that Viajante was, in the words of the guide, worth a detour. ''It put us on the map. We're not smack bang in the centre of London … it's an area that offers an interesting experience, an area that's got a lot of artists, a lot of galleries and stuff happening. But it's quite out of the way, realistically, for this type of cooking.''

Nevertheless, Viajante has divided critics. Harden's London Restaurants guide gave it the Remy Award for best-rated newcomer, while Sunday Times reviewer A.A. Gill called it ''a marathon of silly pretension''.

Those who do travel to the East End encounter a menu offering six, nine or 12 small, carefully composed courses that aim to take guests ''on a journey across the food maps of the world but still make them feel at home''.

Milk and seafood are recurring themes in dishes such as pickled and raw cucumber with reduced-milk sorbet, brill (flatfish) with duck tongue, beetroot and toasted milk, and lobster with leek and milk skin.

While his menu sometimes references Portuguese seafood dishes, his compatriots might find them hard to recognise. ''I think most people overcook fish in Portugal, which is sad. They have some of the best fish I've ever eaten. The way I like to be eating fish for them it's considered undercooked. I like it as close to being raw as you can get, without it being raw.''

His travels have taken him through Central America, Thailand and Japan, but later this month Mendes will visit Australia for the first time to take part in Taste of Melbourne, a four-day restaurant festival in Albert Park.

He will take part in events such as a cooking demonstration with his friend Scott Eddington, now head chef at Mamasita, with whom he's worked at his previous restaurant, Bacchus, his private supper club The Loft and briefly at Viajante.

''You have no idea how excited I am to [visit], and I'm not saying this just to make friends,'' Mendes says animatedly.

The impending visit already has him considering business opportunities.

''I would love, one day, to do something in Australia. I have a lot of Australians working with us and they're incredibly talented and incredibly passionate. I've realised, from talking with them, that people are really, really obsessed with good food.

''They know the good stuff from the bad stuff, they're travellers, they like to learn, and there's a huge food culture.

''And they're unconventional - a lot of them like to challenge the norm. There's very creative chefs there, judging from the ones I've met, and the public in the big cities seems to be very open-minded. And from what I understand, the lifestyle's pretty damn good.

It ticks all the boxes.''

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 November 2012