GOMA Restaurant: A new vision

 

The GOMA Restaurant has a striking new vision for their food and wine experience, with QAGOMA Executive Chef and his core team re imagining their menu and contemporary wine list.

Mirin-washed Hervey Bay scallop, tom yum, yuzu, crystallised peanut

GOMA Restaurant

Moving away from the traditional menu format the team reimagined what the restaurant represents.

“We wanted to retain the remarkable level of artistry and culinary technique in our dishes, continue to highlight the close relationships we’ve built with local producers, and lead on sustainable fine dining.  We want to invite in more of the community to experience what we do here. We also wanted to inspire more playfulness from our guests — we want people to feel less obliged to follow the usual meal progression and instead have the freedom to explore the menu any way they choose. The new menu encourages guests dropping in for a quick glass and bite on the terrace, or a long lazy lunch, and everything in between. Everyone is welcome here; I want our guests to feel like this space belongs to them”. Douglas Innes-Will, Former QAGOMA Executive Chef

Saku tuna, crème fraîche, cucumber, fennel pollen
9Dorf Farms chicken, black garlic, black rice, pickled blackberry

As always, you can still enjoy gastronomic treasures, skilful culinary techniques, and leisurely tasting menus. Now in addition, the team is offering more options to suit any occasion or appetite. The menu shows a long list of sumptuous-sounding dishes, from small and salty, to not-so small and savoury, or intelligent and fresh. And happily, the menu ends with indulgent and sweet plates.

“We’re looking forward to having that incredible energy from a room full of happy people.  We can’t wait to welcome everyone back and show you our new concept”. Matthew Blackwell, QAGOMA Chef de Partie

Preserved Granite Belt black cherry, macadamia nougat, amaretto, roasted white chocolate, sake lees
Matthew Blackwell plating Confit & hay-smoked celeriac, PX prune, aged Comté, preserved winter truffle

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) operates its own restaurant, bistro and cafe using local seasonal produce to create menus inspired by the art on display. Enhance your visit with a dining experience at the GOMA Restaurant, GOMA Bistro or QAG Cafe.

Every purchase supports QAGOMA’s mission to provide visitors with a wide range of exhibitons, events and programs. Read more

All our dining outlets are currently cashless for the health and safety of our guests and employees.

Featured image: AACo Wagyu beef cheek, bone marrow, Fino sherry, malted onion
#QAGOMA

GOMA Restaurant takes out two Chef’s Hats, third year running

 

Chef’s Hats are awarded on assessment of ambience, service, ‘x-factor’ and food, with a focus on customer experience, with over 500 restaurants reviewed for this year’s awards. For the third consecutive year GOMA Restaurant has been awarded two Chef’s Hats in the 2018 National Good Food Guide.

The GOMA Restaurant is one of only six Queensland restaurants to receive the honour

Make a booking

This year marks the inauguration of the first National Edition of the Good Food Guide; combining The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Brisbane Times guides and follows a 38 year tradition of food reviews and awards.

GOMA Restaurant Main / Spring lamb, leek, yoghurt

Since its rebranding as a fine dining restaurant in 2013, the GOMA Restaurant team has worked towards offering a unique culinary experience that compliments the stunning artworks on display at GOMA utilising the best produce Queensland has to offer.

After only one year, and under the leadership of former Chef Josue Lopez, GOMA Restaurant was awarded their first Chef’s Hat in the 2015 Brisbane Times Good Food Guide.

Ryan Ward, Chef de Cuisine receiving the award on behalf of GOMA Restaurant

Following Josue’s departure in September 2017, newly appointed Chef de Cuisine, Ryan Ward (who has worked alongside Josue for the past five years) is looking forward to future menu developments drawing inspiration from his passion for fishing and gardening.

QAGOMA is very proud of the achievements of the GOMA Restaurant over the past five years and congratulates the team, past and present, for their commitment, passion and dedication to establishing a truly world class dining venue.

Left to right: George Nolan, Jun Bhang, Bridie Bush, Ryan Ward Casey Ryan, Ryan Woodward, Danielle Moy, Moresby Brett, Justin Naudi, Adrian Templeman

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) operates its own restaurant, bistro and cafe using local seasonal produce to create menus inspired by the art on display. Enhance your visit with a dining experience at the GOMA Restaurant, GOMA Bistro or QAG Cafe.

Every purchase supports QAGOMA’s mission to provide visitors with a wide range of exhibitons, events and programs. Read more

All our dining outlets are currently cashless for the health and safety of our guests and employees.

Amy McElhenny is former F&B Services & Events Assistant, QAGOMA

Featured image: GOMA Restaurant Entree / Suckling pig, pecan, grape, lichen
#QAGOMA

Waste Not, Want Not

 

The dichotomy between today’s foodie culture and sustainable eating often looks like exactly the same thing. We want the best flavours, the freshest produce and ingeniously prepared dining. We want to see the words ‘local’ and ‘organic’ appear at least once in the dish we’re about to order from the newest, hottest restaurant. We tend to think of these labels as sustainable eating benchmarks. But are these really the best ways we can eat sustainably? Well, yes, but also… not quite. They don’t paint the whole picture – these labels are just the easiest to discuss.

A tougher sell to foodies, is building frugality into every step of the food system, to value more than just the epicure. In a world where we toss out over one third of global food production, while almost two thirds of the human population lives in food insecurity, the question has to be asked: Can we have our flourless, heirloom citrus cake with hand-picked elderflower icing and eat it too? QAGOMA’s Executive chef Josue Lopez believes so, but we’ll need to redefine what we consider to be our ‘cake’. Eating local and organic isn’t going far enough.

The unusual theme for the recent collaboration dinner was ‘Wasted’; a challenge to create five courses exploring how we can rethink our approach to food, waste, opportunity, and value our food system differently. If you thought overcoming food waste is going to be saved by nose-to-tail or farm-to-plate philosophy alone, Lopez’s and Matthews’s approach invites you to dig a little deeper. The discussion on the night probed the ways our current food system justifies food waste as a necessary act of profit making – the economy of scale in mass food production is clearly no longer economical.

Lopez and Matthews are both passionate about how their menus are executed in the sourcing, planning and preparation stages and the ‘Wasted’ theme was a welcome opportunity to talk about those philosophies out in the open. Even an entry-level foodie knows chefs reuse food off-cuts to make other food items, such as stock – but this philosophy carries through the entire menu development of the GOMA Restaurant and The Long Apron and you wouldn’t know it to look at the end product. ‘Wasted’ was a welcome chance to put celebrity status aside, and talk about those decisions.

Lopez is big on narratives, being surrounded by the Gallery of Modern Art’s walls and the stories behind the artworks. He’s adamant that any dish he creates is a reflection of the many stories that went into making it – where the produce was sourced, how the animal was raised, how it’s parents were raised, and where, and what it ate. He insists that farmers, producers, consumers and chefs still aren’t the entire cast of our food story. There’s also the people who connect our favourite kitchens to the source of overlooked or unconventional producers – passionate providores like 20-year food veteran Shirley Harring, who deals between sustainable farmers and chefs or consumers who really get it, and with surprising food sources to boot.

In attendance on the night, Harring saw firsthand her hard work seeking out sustainable food items turn into a stunning main dish such as Josue’s ‘Coq au Bière’, rooster with chickpea and winter vegetables. This dish was a striking example of how we can rethink fine dining with a conscience, and how the food industry can help turn the tide on mass waste. Our love for eggs and chicken has an extravagant reality – only hens are valued for flavour and laying ability, while millions of rooster chicks are discarded as a by-product each year.

QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez plating ‘Coq au Bière’, with QAGOMA Head Chef Aaron Holt and team / Photograph: Judit Losh, for Delicious Magazine

Harring thinks ‘Coq au Bière’ was brilliant not just because it heroes the rooster, but also because Lopez took the time to consider each other element on the plate to let the flavour of the protein really shine. Spent beer grains were procured from Stone and Wood brewers; carrot iota was made from jellified carrot puree and veloute; husks from the hand-hulled chickpeas were used as a crunchy element on the rooster; the entire shallot was used on the plate – Harring was delighted to taste the way the flavour changes from the roots, through the sweet white, to the green leaf tips.

Lopez’s favourite dish he created for the dinner was the entrée ‘Cauliflower Gratin’ – always a crowd favourite, but with some unexpected plot-twists. Starting with a salt-baked cauliflower, the usual flour addition in the crust was replaced with spent espresso grounds and mixed with salt and egg before baking, while caramelised florets, and blanched leaves were taken in two different directions to create surprising yet familiar contrast.

He included shaved and dehydrated florets, a fresh salad made from more of the cauliflower leaves, dressed with a spent-coffee dressing and topped with a brioche crumb. A hidden element beneath the crumb was ‘Gjetost’ (yay-toast), a Norwegian-style cheese created from whey, discarded from the goat’s-milk ricotta made for the dessert dish; the whey was caramelised and reduced with butter and cream to add the creamy flavour associated with Gratin.

Two of Queensland’s champions for reducing food waste and loving ugly produce, special guests OzHarvest’s Queensland State Manager Amy Cobb and colleague Rebecca Spencer were thrilled to see their no-waste philosophy play out in the dining room. Both Lopez and Matthews are OzHarvest Ambassadors, with Matthews recently winning the Churchill Scholarship for Sustainability in Fine Dining – a 10 week tour educating and campaigning for applying ethical methods to restaurant kitchens around the world.

It’s hard to think of where Lopez could possibly have squeezed more value from his ingredients. And humble ingredients, too. He’s excited to see a resurgence of ‘ugly’ vegetables, such as supermarkets trialling dedicated fruit stands for not-so-perfect produce and rescued food markets. Ask any of these food waste defenders where they source their products and each one will tell you – it’s not hard to find, you’re already handling it every day.

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) operates its own restaurant, bistro and cafe using local seasonal produce to create menus inspired by the art on display. Enhance your visit with a dining experience at the GOMA Restaurant, GOMA Bistro or QAG Cafe.

Every purchase supports QAGOMA’s mission to provide visitors with a wide range of exhibitons, events and programs. Read more

All our dining outlets are currently cashless for the health and safety of our guests and employees.

Amy McElhenny is former F&B Services & Events Assistant, QAGOMA

Feature image: Cameron Matthews, Group Executive Chef at Spicers Retreats, creates Caraway grissini, mushroom caramel by piping mushroom caramel onto the grissini.
#QAGOMA

Recipe for a Bush Fire

 

Former QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez guest starred on Channel Ten’s MasterChef showcasing his signature Emu dish ‘After the Eucalypt Fire’ available on the GOMA Restaurant‘s Winter menu. We talk to Lopez about his experience in the MasterChef kitchen.

Former QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez with MasterChef judges / Photograph: Martin Philbey
Former QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez with judges and contestants during Masterchef Series 9 – Ep 22 Pressure Test / Photograph: Martin Philbey

Q&A

You’ve carved a niche for creating dishes that respond to the surrounding art at QAGOMA, by telling stories through your food. Tell us about the story and inspiration behind the dish you made for the MasterChef Pressure Test – ‘After the Eucalypt Fire’.

The dish is inspired by the Australian landscape and its unique relationship with fire. Fire is what brings both death and new life. It evokes the memory of an Australian bush fire. As chefs, we are still exploring native ingredients in Australian cooking; I want the diner to contemplate ingredients such as bush cherries and myrtles, unique to our landscape. The dish also includes beetroot which while not native, has been ‘Australianised’. View the episode

‘After the Eucalypt Fire’, available from the GOMA Restaurant’s Winter menu / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA
‘After the Eucalypt Fire’ presented to contestants during Masterchef Series 9 – Ep 22 Pressure Test / Photograph: M Philbey

What do you consider the most challenging element of the dish and why?

There are six different textures of beetroot on the plate which are all unique and important to the enjoyment of the dish. Failing to pay close attention to each of these diverse expressions of the ingredient will fail the dish as a whole. It’s about getting to know how far you can explore the different textures, flavours and personalities of the beetroot, while maintaining the integrity of the dish as a whole. View the recipe.

Australian native flora and fauna play a central role on the GOMA Restaurant menu; what draws you to these?

I had a transformative experience at noma (Copenhagen) which at the time was the world’s best restaurant. I realised what set them apart from other top restaurants was their intention to put Scandinavian culture and landscape on a plate. Australian native ingredients are the flavour of our landscape and are truly delicious, all of which deserve to be showcased.

If you had to pick a contestant from MasterChef to join your team, what would you look for?

Working in a kitchen is a difficult career with long hours in a high pressure environment and it requires dedication to see out an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship is an important rite of passage to becoming a great chef. I look for common sense and someone’s willingness to learn. I’m not sure you can learn these things, but you can learn almost everything else.

You’ve cooked for heavy weights such as POTUS Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and you’ve won awards and accolades such as two Chef’s Hats and 2016 Citi Chef of the Year; what keeps you grounded?

My wife, family and friends don’t let me get too ahead of myself. It’s important to be humble and I don’t do it alone. I lead a talented team and teamwork is what achieves results.

You’ve just finished your sensory degustation series ‘We Who Eat Together’ with Brisbane artist Elizabeth Willing, exploring the human experience of food culture and eating with all the senses. Your next investigation on the topic of food is a dinner with Delicious Magazine, exploring the theme ‘Wasted’, with a focus on food waste.  What can you tell us about the Delicious dinner and your take on ‘Wasted’?

We are all becoming growingly aware that our cultural behaviours and expectations around ‘perfect’ food and unseasonal availability is creating big issues around food waste. It is most alarming when we live in a world where every day, people die of hunger. So much of the food we throw away can actually be delicious. I am going to be serving a dish of cauliflower stalk cooked in spent espresso coffee grinds. The dinner is actually collaborative with Cameron Matthews (The Long Apron, Spicers Group) who is also passionate about accountability of food waste. We both work with OzHarvest, a charity which deals with combating some of these issues.

What’s coming up at the GOMA Restaurant that you’re excited about?

Marvel: Creating the Cinematic Universe’ is finally open and we’re so excited to be a part of that. GOMA will be opening until late Wednesday evenings and we wanted to offer Marvel fans an opportunity to linger at the Gallery. We’re hosting the ‘Xanadu Wine Bar’, offering a premium wine and bar food menu in response to this amazing exhibition.

Amy McElhenny is former QAGOMA Food & Beverage Services & Events Assistant


GOMA Restaurant

The restaurant’s philosophy is to deliver a dining experience as contemporary and creative as the artwork which surrounds it. Like the best artists, our menu strives to tell stories. With a focus on local ingredients, we work with growers and suppliers to source produce at its peak, profile new ingredients and rediscover forgotten ones. ‘Billabong’ and ‘The sky is falling’ are offered on our Winter menu.

GOMA Restaurant:: ‘Billabong’ – eel, waterlily, onions, sorrel, and beef / Photograph: Mark Sherwood © QAGOMA
GOMA Restaurant: ‘The sky is falling’ – chicken, avocado, macadamia, figs, sprouts, and herbs / Photograph: Chloe Callistemon © QAGOMA

XANADU WINE BAR

Xanadu Wine Bar: Chicken, truffle, saltbush waffle
Xanadu Wine Bar: Kangaroo corndog, eucalypt
Xanadu Wine Bar: Macadamia gazpacho

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) operates its own restaurant, bistro and cafe using local seasonal produce to create menus inspired by the art on display. Enhance your visit with a dining experience at the GOMA Restaurant, GOMA Bistro or QAG Cafe.

Every purchase supports QAGOMA’s mission to provide visitors with a wide range of exhibitons, events and programs. Read more

All our dining outlets are currently cashless for the health and safety of our guests and employees.

Feature image: QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez with judges during Masterchef Series 9 – Ep 22 Pressure Test / Photograph: Martin Philbey
#QAGOMA

Art so good, you can just eat it up

 

Humans have a complex relationship with mealtimes; the dining rituals, quirky food hang ups and memories forged in childhood of that one recipe your Grandmother made. Food and art have long been closely connected to pleasure via the senses and often the lines are blurred between the two.

‘We Who Eat Together’ explores the relationship between art and food / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA
‘We Who Eat Together’ explores the relationship between art and food / Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA

Enjoy a meal at any fine dining restaurant and it can sometimes seem sacrilegious to fork apart an artfully crafted plate, yet we all surrender once our eyes and nose have had the first feast.

In ‘Stroke of Midnight’ old becomes new again / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA
In ‘Stroke of Midnight’ old becomes new again / Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA

It’s in this fascinating space that Brisbane artist Elizabeth Willing has spent almost a decade exploring our relationship to food and the dining experience. Her work practice has examined gastronomy from various perspectives, incorporating sculpture, installation and performance dining events. Her subject can range from wearable food art, eating disorders and food history, to more nuanced questions about the process of eating, sensuality and sensory pleasure.

Willing, a Fine Art honours student from QUT and awarded the QAGOMA Melville Haysom Scholarship in 2010, has travelled the globe exploring these questions. Her professional development has seen her work with New York artist Janine Antoni (2011), the Experimental Food Society in London (2012) and Thomas Rentmeister in Berlin (2014). This year, after a 12 month post as Australia Council Artist in Residence at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2014-15).

Willing is back in her home town of Brisbane to deliver her latest in a long body of work; a unique multi-sensory degustation dinner named ‘We Who Eat Together’.

Brisbane Artist Elizabeth Willing and QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez discuss their ideas and artistic process at the exclusive dinner for ‘We Who Eat Together’ / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA
Brisbane Artist Elizabeth Willing and QAGOMA Executive Chef Josue Lopez discuss their ideas and artistic process at the exclusive dinner for ‘We Who Eat Together’ / Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA

Former Executive Chef Josue Lopez was at the helm of GOMA’s own Restaurant for over four years, receiving multiple awards including two Chef Hat status from the Good Food Guide for his pioneering culinary style. Taking inspiration and context directly from the art around him, Lopez brings an artistic process every bit as informed by sensory exploration as Willing’s. Drawing on ‘coherence and deliciousness’ as his ongoing creative force, his food concepts are designed to tune in to your senses in subtle ways. Josue believes in each element on the plate speaking for itself, while leaving room for the other voices in the dish, which includes the wine. His attention to the senses compliments Willing’s art practice and together they’ve explored their common interests from opposite perspectives.

In a QAGOMA first, as part of the ‘GOMA Turns 10’ celebrations, Willing & Lopez collaborated to deliver an exceptional dining experience, blending performance art and food. The dinner is their response to the summer exhibition ‘Sugar Spin: You, Me, Art and Everything’, which is a retrospective of GOMA’s most popular artworks and installations over the past 10 years.

Designed to be interactive and spirited, some dishes from ‘We Who Eat Together’ invite the dining audience to eat in unconventional ways / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA
Designed to be interactive and spirited, some dishes from ‘We Who Eat Together’ invite the dining audience to eat in unconventional ways / Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA

Each of the seven courses includes custom-made artworks, unexpected twists on familiar ideas and cultural explorations; developed by the pair to evoke all the senses and invite the audience to reassess their relationship with mealtimes. A retrospective of sorts, together the pair explore some of their own ideas from their very different journeys with food and some new ideas devised purely for the love of creating an experience for the audience. Be prepared for dishes that evoke strong responses and vivid memories, such as the aching sweetness of your first high-school kiss.

Experiencing unexpected twists on familiar rituals / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA
Experiencing unexpected twists on familiar rituals / Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA

This dinner is not to be missed; with limited seating and only one performance date announced, you will be guided through each course with live discussion by Josue and Elizabeth.  Packed full of nostalgia, stunning art and food concepts, and genuine surprises, the dinner is designed to be playful, thought-provoking and shared with wonder.

Amy McElhenny, QAGOMA

Yering Station Wines / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA
Yering Station Wines / Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) operates its own restaurant, bistro and cafe using local seasonal produce to create menus inspired by the art on display. Enhance your visit with a dining experience at the GOMA Restaurant, GOMA Bistro or QAG Cafe.

Every purchase supports QAGOMA’s mission to provide visitors with a wide range of exhibitons, events and programs. Read more

All our dining outlets are currently cashless for the health and safety of our guests and employees.

‘We Who Eat Together’ was a multi-sensory degustation held in an intimate setting at GOMA Restaurant  on Thursday 23 February 2017. Guests experienced seven courses of gastronomic art, complimented by Yarra Valley wine varieties from QAGOMA’s proud partner, Yering Station.

#QAGOMA