Louis Cattoupes has a problem. He's seriously pushing the boundaries of Canberra dining, but in a conservative town such as Canberra, the problem is that not everyone is going to understand or love what he does.
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Some won't like the very basic interior. Some won't like the small font on the menu. Some won't like the sound of strawberries with cucumber and ricotta for their main course. But I'm fascinated by the direction that Onzieme is headed and how Louis solves this problem.
As the crimson sun sets behind us tonight, the wood-fired oven is pumping, and there is a glow in the room, awash with a younger crowd and staff who are dressed like they might be off to a music festival. But I think that it works because Onzieme is indeed a festival. As the guy at the bar in his ripped jeans and blue singlet, tucking into a plate of mutton tartare with tonnato and cured yolk, will no doubt attest to.
We are treated to a small of bowl tomato consomme, spring greens ($6) to commence our adventure and this is a remarkable start. It's not often that you can sample a dish that changes with every mouthful but the delicate smoked oil dances with the clean, coolness of the tomato liquid with a "smoke on the water" type of intensity that Deep Purple would be proud of. Underneath, the essence of tomato is intense and bathes a medley of crunchy spring vegetables, studded with fennel pollen which has been foraged locally.
The staff tell us that the honey bugs, dashi butter, aonori ($8) are a bycatch and the judicious use of dashi butter and seaweed dust makes these taste like sustainable little pots of gold. Variations of seaweed pop into dishes a few times tonight and this appears to be a reflection of Onzieme's focus on using sustainable product.
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The galette, creme cru, smoked roe ($16) has become a signature dish. And one thing that always pleases the market is an amazing chip. But this chip is a fine potato mille fuille, crispy golden on every corner of every layer, dolloped with crème fraiche and "popping" salmon roe. Every festival needs a chip stand.
Ceviche, mezcal tigre de leche, melon ($24) is another one that changes with every bite. It's served on a wafer like pillow of fried rice paper roll and the use of melon, cut perfectly to the same dimensions as the fish, shows off French-trained knife skills that are a headline act, whilst the chilli oil drifts in and out of the dish.
A quarter of cabbage, salted egg butter, furikake ($26) is a dish which helps to pay the rent at that price, but as Darryl Kerrigan would say, "it's what you do with it, love". And Louis roasts this once unloved chunk of cabbage to a nutty burnished state of complexity. The salted egg butter has a rich umami character which works wonderfully with the savoury notes of the seaweed and sesame in the furikake.
The kingfish, sauce chien, sweet potato ($38) is possibly the least exciting dish of the night but that's not to say that it wasn't well executed. It just lacked a bit of Chris Gayle-like flair for a Jamaican sauce.
Smoked duck, nectarine ketchup, fennel ($40) is, however, fever pitch excitement. I'm hard pressed to remember a more perfect condiment to duck than this delicious nectarine sauce. It's fruity and fresh in the first instance. The texture is like fine caramel, with a subtle smoked undertone, and flavours that are at once both sweet and savoury, lingering like a tattoo on a chef's bicep.
We actually haven't drunk too much wine tonight as we have been captivated by the food, but the drinks list is a nice mix of lo-fi wine styles, obscure blends and some project drinks which have been lovingly crafted by a mad scientist out the back. The Wellington and Wolfe riesling ($16) is a clean and intense style, unusually, matured in some old French oak. The Somos barbera rose is also a barrel-fermented style from McLaren Vale, with sour cherry and ripe melon notes.
Dessert is a pain perdu, buttermilk IC, whey caramel ($16) and a coconut panna cotta, mango, macadamia ($16). Both of these are decent, well made desserts, but they lack the daring initiative of the savoury courses.
If Onzieme abandons all fear of offending the intelligentsia, we may well have a stadium rock band on our hands.
Retiring to the recently opened, supercool bar underneath, 11e Cave, for a nightcap, Louis teIls us that he has some really big plans for 2023 and I suspect that he's not underplaying it.
I do wish that we had tried the haloumi, watermelon, szechuan, elderflower tonight though. But that's part of the charm of Onzieme. It's like missing out on asking that lovely girl (or guy) for a dance on Saturday night and kicking yourself the next day for it.
Although they may not be there next weekend, you can be sure that there will be another one there in their place. And if Louis has his way, they may just be "the one" by this time next year.
Onzieme
Address: 35 Kennedy Street, Kingston
Phone: 0424 984 763
Website: onzieme.com.au
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, from 6pm
Chef: Louis Couttoupes
Noise: It's up there a bit.
Dietary: Plenty of options and a lot of gluten free
Score: 15.5/20
- Onzieme's menu changes regularly and the above dishes may not still be available.
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