Ortiga: Brisbane’s Iberian star
May 1st, 2012I’m going to keep on the Spanish theme for a bit and share with you my dining experience at Ortiga in Brisbane’s Valley district. The growing list of accolades achieved by this restaurant played a big part in my insistence that my beautiful wife invite her biggest Sydney client up for dinner here. And the opportunity to sample the creations of a chef with Michelin-star experience was too good to pass up. Restaurant owner Simon Hill and head chef Pablo Tordesillas opened Ortiga (which means stinging nettle) in 2010 and it has since become one of the “must-do” dining experiences in Brisbane.
The upstairs bar is a chic place to start with tonnes of exposed brick and rustic timber. The bar frames the main feature of the room, the glass cold-cabinet that houses the prized whole legs of Jamon Iberico. For those in the know, it’s hard to pull your eyes away long enough to look at the wine list, currently Gourmet Travellers Wine List of the Year. We begin with olives and embutidos; cured pork (of course!) house recipes from the hand of Tordesillas.
While the bar is classy and cool, the real magic takes place down stairs. The low ceilings instantly take me back to the vaulted brick underground bars around Plaza Mayor in Madrid. The dining tables surround the theatre kitchen where Tordesillas stands at the pass that looks like a big kitchen table. You feel the intimacy of one man in his element; hand finishing each dish before it goes out. He looks up momentarily, to see the diners response, smiles and gets back to it.
The menu is written almost entirely in Spanish which put the spotlight on my translating prowess. Luckily the wait staff came to my rescue and clarified the some of my Spanglish explanations. Classic Spanish flavours like morcilla (blood sausage), conejo (rabbit), favas (broad beans) and gambas (prawns) are welcome sights. I was delegated as menu planner, so I added lambs fry, croquettas and orejas (pig’s ear) to our list of appetisers. Admittedly, some eyebrows at the table were raised as I took a couple of our guests out of the culinary comfort zones. But these concerns quickly disappeared once the food began arriving.
Each plate was accompanied by a communal hushed “Wow!”. Foams, jellies, soils, wafers and dusts were the vehicles for flavours I thought I knew. Each dish came to our table looking like an artwork and everyone took a moment to breathe in the precise compositions before hesitantly taking a fork to it.
Our main meals were much more full-bodied, homey affairs: slow-roasted whole lamb shoulder and very large aged rib of beef. Here Tordesillas let the meat do the talking; delivering them without the molecular gastronomic wizardry. Yes, the meat was definitely talking because we were speechless. They were tender, succulent and moor-ish (ha! in joke if you know your Spanish history).
The desserts were always going to find it hard to sit alongside the sublime previous courses. And in all honesty, it was the glass of Jerez that I was most looking forward to, to finish of my meal. I took the sommelier’s advice as I had done with my Temperanillo choices and was well rewarded. Our meal at Ortiga was complete and the experience was fantastic.
It got me thinking on where the genre of molecular gastronomy sits in my appreciation of food. No, it’s not the meal you can make at home, or follow the recipe to in a cookbook. There are so many experiments made, knowledge acquired and processes needed to deliver food like this. But that’s why you come to Ortiga. To be taken away from the every day to a dream-like place that seems so familiar, where you think you know what’s going on. And there, centre stage, is a smiling Spanish Willy Wonka. Put simply, I can’t cook like this; but I’m glad that there are people who can.
