Top Adelaide chef spotlights seafood for winter festival
After a tough year for the seafood industry, a special event from Illuminate will transport diners to SA’s top seafood regions, without having to make the trip.
In a series of immersive dinners, Illuminate is bringing the best of SA’s coastline to the heart of the city in an event called Ocean to Plate.
The event uses sound and projections of the state’s seascapes on the walls of the Adelaide Convention Centre that complement a seafood-heavy menu to transport guests.
Adelaide Convention Centre Executive Chef Gavin Robertson says while the venue has experimented with similar events before, Ocean to Plate is “taking it to the very next level”.
“It’s been designed to engage all your senses, not just your taste,” Gavin says.
“We’re trying to transport you to that area where the specific produce comes from, so you feel like you’re eating oysters in Coffin Bay, or you’re having kingfish from Port Lincoln.”
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Gavin has led the Convention Centre kitchens for more than a decade, and before that got 20 years working in five-star kitchens under his belt. He says SA seafood “definitely” stands up as the world’s best.
He said accessibility is a huge benefit to kitchens like the convention centre, when the city is so close to high-quality oyster and tuna farms.
“The tuna that’s farmed out in Port Lincoln is a fantastic product; it’s something that can be brought into the convention centre within 24 hours of leaving the ocean,” he says.
When choosing producers to fuel the kitchen at the city’s major event centre, Gavin says “they all have to be local”, have to invest in sustainable practices and have a great business story.
SA seafood producers have reported a difficult year after the algal bloom devastated shores, closed some farms, and shook consumer and business confidence.
The industry peak body Seafood Industry South Australia said in April that it would take at least a decade to recover from the algal bloom’s impact.
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But Gavin says, from a commercial kitchen point of view, they “still managed to get all the produce we would normally get”.
“We had to change farms every now and then, and then once those farms came back online, we just had to make sure we were supporting them as best we could, but we like to support the producers and the coastal communities as well.”
And if he’s playing favourites, Gavin has a penchant for Smoky Bay oysters despite the fact “some people will argue that Coffin Bay is better than Smoky Bay”.
Ocean to Plate isn’t just an event title, but a mantra for Gavin’s kitchen, with chefs taking a special trip to their producers late last year.
“That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do that, and to actually be out there in the oyster beds and having oysters freshly shucked from the ocean and given to me straight out of the sea,” he says.
“It has really inspired me to use the produce as much as I can in its natural form, and then also going out to the mussels, seeing how the Yumbas Kinkawuka Port Lincoln mussels were harvested, and then trying to incorporate more mussels into large-scale catering is something that’s been a bit of a challenge for us, and something we’ve really enjoyed.”
Mussels will feature on the menu for the Illuminate event as well as a warm twist on kingfish, which Gavin says “95 per cent of people have only consumed raw” as sashimi or crudo.
“It completely changes the whole texture of the fish and brings out a completely different flavour profile which I think will surprise some people, and we’ve served that, but that’s on a dish with some mussels.
“We have to put some beef [on the menu], just because South Australia has some of the best beef money can buy as well, and we’ve topped that with a lobster thermidor glaze, which is just an old favourite of mine, lobster thermidor, so I think that will help build a little bit of a wintery element.”
Illuminate Ocean to Plate is on Friday, July 10, and Saturday, July 11, at the Adelaide Convention Centre.
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