Top Adelaide chef serves taste of Tassie wilderness
A five-course dinner inspired by Tasmania’s wilderness is taking over a one-of-a-kind Adelaide venue.
A top city chef is serving up a special menu that took months to craft at a special event at Light Square’s Immersive Light and Sound (ILA) venue next week.
Executive Chef Robin Wagner – who works at Aurora, the venue’s award-winning restaurant – is spearheading the five-course menu for diners seated at long communal tables surrounded by an unfolding natural landscape projected across ILA’s 50 square metres of LED screens.
Diners will see imagery of wild landscapes across the screens inside ILA’s Lab, including forests, rivers and the ocean for the event, called “Untamed”.
Robin says it took about eight to 12 weeks to prepare the creative direction and menu for the event, which reflects his culinary philosophy: “sustainability, simplicity, and memorability.”
“‘Untamed’ means, for me, a little bit more natural. More botanic… a little bit more freedom for [the] menu or discretion,” he says.
You might like
The menu will align with Aurora’s spring offering, focusing on fresh South Australian produce.
“We’re going to have a lot of botanics [and] fresh ingredients… stepping away from winter, from heavy food to everything a little bit more fragile, more delicate,” Robin says.
“I think it’s a perfect opportunity to showcase what’s all around and what the bloom is going to bring.”
One dish will feature smoked celery, Granny Smith apple and taro — an award-winning signature dish Robin presented at the 2022 San Pellegrino Young Chef competition in Milan.
“The crispy taro is going to look like roots, and you’re having a lot of earthy flavours… It’s just working basically with only a few ingredients,” he says.
Subscribe for updates
Robin says the food is intended to help connect diners with the exhibition, Art for Takayna, which is running at ILA until October 10 with more than 36 artworks commissioned by the Bob Brown Foundation.
“Food really should be there to engage… [and] bring that kind of connection between art and culinary experience together. That’s the main focus,” Robin says.
The Art for Takayna exhibition features works created by Australian artists in a residency run by the Tasmanian-based Bob Brown Foundation, where artists spend almost a week in the 447,000-hectare northwest Tasmanian wilderness area.
“It’s an environmental campaign around saving the Takayna rainforest, which is under threat from logging and other development,” ILA’s head of creative Sarah Bleby says.
“Going into Untamed… you’ll be greeted by incredible footage of wild landscapes on the screens, and an environment that really taps into the wild parts of ourselves and the natural world.”
That connection between art, nature and the senses is central to Untamed, Sarah says.
“We’re trying to tap into the nourishing aspects of our wilderness. Where does our food come from? Why is it so moving to be in nature? And what happens to our senses when we’re really immersed in nature, including our senses of taste and smell?”
The Immersive Table: Untamed, hosted by Aurora’s restaurant on ILA’s ground floor, will run from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm on October 8.
The Art for Takayna exhibition is running from September 18 to October 10.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
