HILTON TIGHTWADS EMPTY THEIR GRANGE

THE AUTHOR IN GOOD CULINARY COMPANY, WITH CHEF SO HON HUANG, LEFT, AND CHEONG LIEW, RIGHT, CLEBRATING SO'S RETIREMENT AT T-CHOW LAST YEAR. ALL EYES ARE ON CHEONG NOW: WHAT''LL HE DO NEXT?

MILTON WORDLEY PHOTO

A Triumphant Exit The Great Cheong Moves On Hilton Lets Its Genius Go
by PHILIP WHITE - A version of this story first appeared in The Indepndent Weekly


While you were away, the Hilton military determinedly set about the closure of its restaurant strangely called The Grange. They had a farewell dinner for Cheong Liew, the singularly great chef they singularly failed to appreciate, respect, or support, with, well, funding. They wouldn’t even buy him a wall for his restaurant.

Many of the old hard-core trencherboard faces were at the trough that night, and a few pretenders. People who live off, not on, magazine food: stuff designed to be photographed, celebrated and discussed, but rarely eaten. The chow that feeds our booming gastroporn industry. Some of them even seem to think Cheong’s food fits that same bitter bill. Expecting an embarrassing and emotional night, I went in tidy.

I know I’ve said this before, but it deserves drumming in. Since he arrived here, a reffo, in 1969, Cheong has had a bigger effect on the lives of Australians than any politician. He changed the way we eat, with his invention-cum-liberation of our tucker. East-west fusion they called it, twenty-five years ago. Cheong, the ultimate Australian, now calls it “Australian food”. Perfect. You rarely hear the fusion word uttered now, wherever on Earth this cuisine appears and it appears all over the Earth. Most people simply think it’s food, shovel it in, and wash it down.

THE STUFF WE USED TO EAT



















We’re very lucky the Australian name has not followed the fusion, for while the awkward sprogs of this cuisine are now served all over the world, most of it is half-hearted crap, disrespectfully ignorant of its pedigree of tireless, rigorous ingenuity.

Given the weight of the occasion, and hugely keen to see what they would pour at this feast, I was impressed to see the old faithful, utterly professional floor staff proudly serving Dom. For a naive instant, I thought the budget must surely eventually extend to the even greater Krug, but that was dumb.























We sat, and yes, out came wave after wave of utterly remarkable food. Brilliant, delicious inventions made triumphantly to be adored, savoured, and digested. Healthy food, for Bacchus’ sake! The gastronomic encapsulation of thirty years of relentless invention. But as the evening progressed, the quality of the wine took a determined dive. If they had made a serious attempt to raid what’s left of the cellar, pity help the future Hilton diner. I am not well known for leaving a table littered with half-full glasses, but there they were.

One of the suits made a speech about the complete set of Grange there in the big glass case being the only one on public view: a cool quarter of a million bucks worth, lying on their backs like dead marines. We were supposed to ooh and aahhh. Cheong followed this with a humble, statesmanly delivery in which he revealed a secret otherwise known only to the two of us. He never let on that the Hilton actually leases that set of Grange from Fosters, who dutifully add the new release each year, or that the restaurant pretty well had to close, as the cabinet’s full, and times being as they are, well, the Hilton budget wouldn’t stretch to a new one, and, Jeez, you know, Fosters certainly hasn’t any spare furniture cash lying around. But Cheong didn’t spill them beans.

Instead, he concluded: “Don’t worry about the set of Grange. Philip and I drank that years ago.”

The thing about a complete set of Grange is that nobody ever drinks one. So nobody will ever know whether that set was long ago kidney-filtered by Cheong and Whitey, who simply drank it, refilled it with Jacob’s Creek, recorked it, fudged the capsules from bits and pieces scavenged at Grange recorking clinics over the years, and locked the bottles back in the cabinet. Like gastroporn food, and The Grange, this Caucasian artefact has value only as long as it is never used for its original purpose.

Anyway, we ate our exquisite meal, and suddenly, there we were, the Liews and Whitey, out the front of the Hilton. A calm and dignified exit. Queuing for cabs like everyone else, in a city devoid of a winemaker who can match Cheong’s culinary revolution. A city which now has not one serious cutting edge restaurant. Of course you can go silver service and pay ridiculous amounts for the wine to keep the linen budget covered, but there’s not much food on that top-end napery that will beat the lovely, inexpensive stuff you can find in Wah Hing or Indian Village.

The Grange name can now go back safely to the 1844 farm at MacGill, where Dr. Penfold’s fierce winemaking wife, Mary, picked her first crop of grenache, and set this whole mighty ferment fizzing. And there in Victoria Square young Simon Bryant’s brasserie absorbs that sacred gastronomic battleground while he replaces Maggie Beer with a Quixotic campaign to stop the Chinese eating dogs. Woof woof.



The Grange Restaurant & Cheong Liew’s Last Long Table

Friday 18th December 2009

The Adelaide Hilton International Hotel
Victoria Square
Adelaide
South Australia



MENU


Prawn Plum
2000 Dom Perignon

Jellied Abalone Chicken and the Sea Dances
Drunken prawns, oysters
Olive fried octopus
Calamari turban with squid ink pasta
Tuna with soy-cured egg yolk pasta
Fried soft shell crab with salted duck egg yolk
Turnip in pastries
2008 Mountadam High Eden Riesling
2007 Cape Mentelle Wallcliffe Sauvignon blanc Semillon

Shark fin pouch in game consommé
Salt-baked ocean trout, grilled vegetables with fragrant rice
2005 Chandon Vintage Rosé

Roasted Muscovy duck with sour cherries
Spice-grilled Wagyu beef
2007 Mitolo G.A.M. Shiraz

Russian praline torte
Portuguese custard tart, chocolate sauce, durian cream
Black rice and palm sugar pudding
Flavoured fruit ice, sorbet fruits, agar agar, adzuki beans
Veuve Cliquot Demi Sec NV

Vale


CHEONG JUDGING AT KRIS LLOYD'S CHEESE FEST AT THE PENFOLD'S MAGILL ESTATE RESTAURANT LATE LAST YEAR. WILL THE GRANGE NAME NOW RETURN TO THE PLACE IT BELONGS? BRENT LIEDERITZ PHOTOGRAPH

STACKING UP THE ANCIENT PENFOLDS

GRANGE CREATOR MAX SCHUBERT IN AUSSIE DIGGER'S CLOBBER IN CAIRO DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR










An Overseas Guest
Muscles Like A Cutting Horse

by PHILIP WHITE

March 13^th 2006 I made my annual pilgrimage to Penfolds’ Magill Cellars to visit Peter Gago, taste his new babies, and a few of their great-grand-parents. It’s a zen thing: the pacific sanctuary of the old wood-panelled boardroom; the way Peter treats it like Geoffrey Penfold Highland was still sitting in the office through there, smoking, and Max, dear Max, in the tiny office out there, blending. Always blending reds, Max. Making the best mud pies in Australia.

Down there is the calm blue of the Gulf St Vincent, patron of viticulturers.

Only thing missing is Leonard Cohen. He should be there in the courtyard in his long dark robes, raking gravel.

On the wall is the fierce Mary Penfold, looking rather like Queen Victoria at a funeral. You don’t get cherry red lips like those from suckin’ oranges.

My lovely mate Tony Bilson came too. He was stacking up his ancient Penfolds for his restaurant cellar in the Radisson, in Sydney.

We’d got through all the whites, climaxing – deliberate choice, climax, not just cause it’s got a Max in it - somewhere between the 2004 Bin 04A Chardonnay and the 2003 Yattarna, thinking I preferred the 04A, when Peter came through the door again.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing with another”, he said. “I have an overseas guest.”

Peter’s overseas guests are always worth stopping for.

But I had 28 more bottles to go, so I put my ugly head down and choogled on.

I have tasted in some fairly famous and fusty cellars in my day: this is always as good as the very best; sometimes better. Today looked like better. Koonunga Hill; Thomas Hyland; Reserve Bins; Magill Estate; RWT; Ka-ding! 2001 Grange. “This is what American oak’s for” my notes gurgle. “Making the gums and cheeks gush.”

I can’t stand American oak. It belongs wrapped around a dangerous big lump of bourbon or rye. It’s too coconutty even for Islay single malt. At the risk of upsetting our friends across the big water, I’d like to go and burn Missouri to the ground for what its beloved Quercus alba has done to far too many Australian reds.

So when I praise a Grange for its amoak, everybody should open their duster just a little and rest their spare hand on their piece. I may be taking the piss.

Not that day. In came the guest, a wide, small hardman with a bonedome and muscles like a cutting horse. He spoke in whisper softer’n a rabbit shelterin’ in a holler, and put his nose straight to the winestone. No trouble there. American accent.

And hang on: speaking of the dreaded amoak, where’s the St Henri? That’s the sublime Penfold red famous for not having overt American oak!

Part way through the vertical of St Henri (1958 to 2002) I began getting the feeling that this whispery guy knew his dots on the wine scale. While I gurgled and gooed and kerchoofed and sniffed he simply got quieter. Did the work.

Later, in The Exeter, Dan The Man (who now leads Leader Cheetah) whispered something like “Jeez, Whitey, you’re a dude. Walkin in here with Maynard!”

Around about this time I began to realise who my tasting compadre was. I thought Tony Bilson was famous! But this must be the dude who a coupla years earlier broke the record paid for a magnum of Grange at auction. Rock star from the States. Band name a Tool, whom I’d never heard. I was far too deep in my tenth Tin Huey/Devo/Pere Ubu phase to know much about Tool.

“MAYNARD”, he wrote in my note book, handling my precious antique Rapidograph like a master. “WWW.CADUCEUS.ORG”.

We took lunch, and if anything, his reverent whisper got softer.

1959 Ovens Valley; 1967 Kalimna Shiraz; 1996 Block 42; 2004 Block 42 ... I boast.

Maynard’s delightful partner joined us; we dined. He told me much about how he was planting vines in the high Arizona desert; finding ancient remnant shreds of Spanish varieties that nobody’s ever heard of; propagating; starting from scratch.

“It’s what I do when I’m not screaming for my supper”, he whispered. “Every Tool tour pays for some more vineyard.”

We went our own ways.

Back at The Ex for a cleanser, I discovered my status had gone strato.