Feature
Public profile
by Cheryl Sucher
New Zealand chefs Peter Gordon and Anna Hansen introduce their adventurous antipodean cuisine to the sceptical tastebuds of the Big Apple.
In New York City, it’s suddenly chic to be antipodean. Ugg boots, in traditional tan and trendy baby pastels, are selling out of mountaineering and shoe shops, and Kangol caps have their own flagship store on Columbus Ave. Nicole Kidman and her best friend Naomi Watts are sneaking into sexy downtown champagne lounges, while Russell Crowe is back in period ponytail as a literary naval commander with a flair for the classical violin.
Most impressively, the entire country seems to be coming down with the same southern hemispheric flu that my husband brought home from Auckland last August just as it’s catching a whopping case of Lord of the Rings fever. By its fifth day of release, Return of the King had grossed an astonishing $US125 million, and the erudite New York Film Critics Circle voted it their Best Picture of the Year. What’s most interesting is that when I left Manhattan four years ago to live with my new husband in his homeland, most New Yorkers thought that New Zealand was a quaint suburb of Sydney. Now everybody sighs when I say that I, too, lived in the land of Middle Earth, where sheep outnumber people and the entire population equals that of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Now they don’t have to go further than a taxi ride to experience a taste of the antipodes. Kiwi chefs Peter Gordon and Anna Hansen have brought their distinctive antipodean fusion fare to Public, a restaurant recently lauded by the New York Postas “the chicest place to have brunch”. Located on hip Elizabeth St in trendy NoLita (North of Little Italy), Public is the brainchild of American brothers Adam and Brad Farmerie. Adam works for Avroko, a design firm that transformed a muffin factory into Public’s sleek, charcoal-tinted space, and Brad is head chef, having served in a similar capacity at Gordon and Hansen’s Providores and Gordon’s Sugar Club in London.
Before deciding on the fare, the Farmerie brothers went with Hansen and Gordon (Public’s co-executive consultant chefs who alternate monthly visits) on a fact-finding mission. Was there room in Manhattan’s crowded culinary stratosphere for their fusion cooking? They reckoned there was. Manhattan’s best restaurants seemed to be either theme-oriented or priced beyond reach. Thus, they discovered their imprimatur – to offer “fun, cool, affordable food based on high-quality ingredients”.
The original menu was fashioned after Providores’ signature cuisine, with adjustments for the US palate. I asked Gordon what he perceived were the main differences between the American and Continental palates. “Americans eat less organic meat,” he says, “but we’re hoping to change that.”
“New York hadn’t been hit by something so basic but so adventurous before,” Adam proffers as he greets me and my husband when we come for a Saturday evening meal, suggesting that we start with the grilled scallops and sweet chilli sauce.
In its first month, Public received a rave review in the New York Daily News and excited notes in New York magazine and the New York Times. There’s a distinctive buzz in the air when we are seated. Within an hour, the restaurant is packed. Not a small feat for a bistro opening at the tail end of a major recession.
First surprise – the scallops have been rendered footless (another concession to the US palate), but the subtle mixture of sweet and sour/soft is sublime. My husband decides that the butter is so good, it must have been flown in from New Zealand. He’s wrong. Public’s sous-chef has worked in New York restaurants for years, and knows the best purveyors. At Public, taste is everything.
Colonial influence abides. An English irony pervades the space, which is divided into three rooms – two dining spaces, one with intimate large tables gated by grey concrete blocks serving as wine racks, the second highlighting cosy, rectangular tables where one’s tête-à-tête can extend into the adjacent table’s conversation. The third is a step-down lounge with a few dining tables in front of large windows, an exuberant bar (no smoking, this is New York where it’s illegal) adjacent to a softly lit lounge marked by charcoal settees, exposed ceiling fixtures and suspended naked halogen bulbs.
There’s an openness yet an exclusivity here that plays on the idea of Public as an English gentlemen’s club. This theme is underscored by decorative library shelves filled with cookbooks from the 50s, restored card catalogues and oak and rippled glass restroom doors that look as if they’ve been lifted from my Brooklyn elementary school. Mailboxes with keys for exclusive wine-list members flank the reception desk of the elegant maître d’, whose silver hoop earrings are so large that I could fit my wrists inside them, which is what I wanted to do when she reprimanded me for being late, warning me that next time I would lose my reservation.
Once seated, we’re presented with a wooden clipboard containing separate dinner, wine and dessert menus printed on the same thick manila paper once used for municipal records. There’s a cheeky frost to the presentation that is instantly warmed by the imaginative fare. “Grilled kangaroo on a coriander falafel with tahini-lemon sauce and green-pepper relish.” I’m suddenly in Brisbane, Bombay and Jerusalem. “Tasmanian sea trout and pan-fried John Dory on saffron fingerling potatoes.” (Fingerling?) For a New Yorker, the adventure would be the taste of kangaroo, not the subtle condiment variations.
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