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Why a Paris chef was in 'shock' when she turned up at Attica for Gelinaz! Shuffle

Dani Valent
Dani Valent

Adeline Grattard and her chefs before service.
Adeline Grattard and her chefs before service.Dani Valent

Gelinaz!, an international chef shuffle involving 40 of the world's best chefs, circumnavigated the world on Thursday night. It started simultaneously in Melbourne (at Attica), Sydney (at Momofuku Seiobo) and Birregurra (at Brae) with diners arriving to the sold-out event having no idea – fierce gossip notwithstanding – who would be cooking for them. As time marched, the international kitchen swap continued, with restaurants from Tokyo to Copenhagen to California serving their own Gelinaz! dinners.

The Australian reveal was exciting. Momofuku's chef in residence was Alex Atala from Brazil, whose D.O.M. restaurant consistently ranks in the world's top 10. At Brae, it was Blaine Wetzel from island getaway the Willows Inn in Washington State. And at Attica, the highest rated Australian restaurant in the world, the drop-in chef was Adeline Grattard, from Michelin-starred Yam'Tcha in Paris. (Attica's chef Ben Shewry was dispatched to Meadowood in California, where one of his dishes riffed on Vegemite toast).

"I am in shock," said Grattard late on Thursday night, as her last dish was carried out to a rapt dining room. "I don't quite know how yet, but I know that I am changed." She had arrived on Monday night and immediately started eating, thinking and, eventually, cooking.

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This intense jaunt was the first time Grattard had left her tiny Paris restaurant. "When I was asked to do it I said 'No, it is impossible, I cannot leave my restaurant, there are only four of us in the kitchen.'" Even when she was persuaded, she considered pulling out. But once she heard she was on the way to Attica, Grattard got excited. Australia was so far away and the cuisine and ingredients promised to be so different from her sensitive Chinese-French fusion.

She arrived with no ingredients and no ideas. "What is the point? I am coming to be inspired," she explained. So, after a herb-nibbling tour of Attica's extensive garden, a night eating in her adopted restaurant and a shopping tour of Asian market stalls in suburban Springvale, she started creating her eight-course menu.

For the most part Grattard used produce familiar to Attica – marron , sorrel, kangaroo – but she rendered it in startling new ways. The marron was bathed in hot oil and dressed with soy. Bright, emerald sorrel was whipped through cream and served with almond milk ice cream. Seared kangaroo came with fried Chinese eggplant and black beans.

Diners were transported, not to Paris, but to a unique amalgam of Hong Kong, Melbourne and France. Sweet-and-sour pork with the pickled and reduced juice of quandong, a native plum, seemed suddenly obvious. Black, nutty desert oak seeds were wokked into a brilliant new take on fried 'rice' with XO sauce. As well as unfamiliar ingredients, Grattard relished the new challenge of cooking for 60 diners (Yam'Tcha seats 30) and working with a team of 15 chefs. "I can get used to telling people what to do," she laughed.

Dani Valent is a freelance journalist and restaurant critic for Fairfax. She was an embedded ambassador for the Grand Gelinaz! Shuffle, spending five days with Attica's guest international chef.

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Dani ValentDani Valent is a food writer and restaurant reviewer.

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