World’s top chefs trade places for The Grand Gelinaz Shuffle
It’s a program designed to take the world’s top chefs to each other’s kitchens.
Welcome to the Gelinaz Shuffle, a loose affiliation of chefs brought together by Lyon-based Italian food writer and impresario Andrea Petrini.
The idea is for people to out down hundreds of dollars for a seat at one of 40 restaurants around the world, knowing that will be cooked by one of the world’s best chefs on the roster.
The restaurants on the list include Orana in Adelaide, Brae in country Victoria or Momofuku Seiobo in Sydney to Le Chateaubriand in Paris to Jimbocho Den in Tokyo.
Left: Blaine Wetzel (The Willows Inn), Right: Dan Hunter (Brae)
As a result, diners arriving last week at Brae, chef Dan Hunter's acclaimed restaurant in Birregurra west of Melbourne, were treated to a meal prepared by Blaine Wetzel who had jetted in from Washington State in the US.
For Wetzel, who his own award-winning restaurant The Willows Inn, it was an opportunity to cook with ingredients he'd never seen or heard of before.
"I got into the kitchen and asked to taste one of everything," Wetzel told the Australian Financial Review.
It seems he was particularly impressed with wallaby, labelling his first marsupial dish "a f***ing wallaby shank". He called his dish of citrus fruits "I never get to use citrus":
As for Hunter, he ended up at DOM in Sao Paulo in Brazil.
It gave him the opportunity to connect with the sous chef in Spanish and cook dishes he had never prepared at Brae.
“The restaurant I'm at is quite famous for using indigenous ingredients of the country they are based in so that's what I'm doing. I ate here, I ate lunch with the host chef's friends and family at their house, I went to a typical food market that the everyday person goes to and then I wrote the menu. I then discussed the menu with the sous chefs at the restaurant and they basically gave me the all clear," Hunter told the AFR.
by Leon Gettler, 14th November 2016
