22/03/2023
Adelaide's Restaurant Botanic has reopened with Vue de monde chef Justin James at the helm
The Botanic Gardens restaurant has turned over a new leaf. Words by Alexis Buxton-Collins.
From Michigan to Adelaide by way of New York, Copenhagen and Melbourne, Justin James has worked in some of the world’s best restaurants. And the establishments he admires most all have one thing in common: “they all have a sense of place.”
At Eleven Madison Park he saw how fine dining could incorporate accessible New York traditions like potato chips and clam bakes while NOMA’s use of foraged and traditional Scandinavian ingredients inspired chefs around the world to look in their own backyard. So when he arrived at Vue de monde in 2014, it’s no surprise that he immediately began experimenting with native Australian ingredients.
Now as the executive chef of the recently rebranded and renovated Restaurant Botanic he incorporates those flavours into almost every dish but insists that “this is not a native ingredient restaurant.” Instead, their use is one of five guiding principles that shape the offering without defining it. The others are using produce from the surrounding Botanic Garden, reflecting the season and weather, cooking over fire and fermenting ingredients.
The last one is closest to the venue’s USP and evidence of James’ passion for pickling, preserving and fermenting is everywhere. He began preserving ingredients six months before the restaurant’s July reopening and the shelves overlooking the open kitchen are lined with jars of pickled kangaroo apples, riberries and rose petals alongside chive flower, eggplant and nasturtium vinegars. Next door, a temperature-controlled lab is filled with the scent of pungent misos, kojis, kombuchas and garums that are highlighted in the two degustations.
There are no turns during service and James suggests allowing at least two and a half hours for the Short Path, plus an additional hour for the extended Long Trail that currently runs to 8 “courses” and another 8 deviations. He has designed both as immersive sensory experiences, inviting diners to “pick up a tea of winter herbs and feel the warmth of the raw ceramics in your hands” and taste a scallop cured in lime juice with fermented celeriac, preserved quince and finger lime from “a skewer that looks like a branch sitting in a garden of prickly juniper branches.” Other dishes use chopsticks or invite diners to eat with their hands.
Just as memorable are the drinks pairings. The compact walk-in cellar has 600 bottles ranging from 2005 Barolo to BK Sparks grenache, but James is arguably more excited about the non-alcoholic pairings that blend kombuchas, juices, stocks and infusions. No matter how exclusive the wine list, another restaurant might stock the same bottle “but we’re making the temperance ourselves,” he says, “so nobody else is serving it. And that gives you an opportunity to create a better pairing because you can create whatever you want to go with that.” So a big South Australian red might be replaced by fermented beetroot juice infused with charred wood and cacao nibs that is every bit as complex.
There’s also a tight range of 8 cocktails including an amber old-fashioned that swaps out sugar syrup for koji and a spritz enlivened with finger lime and lurid red Davidson plum consomme. Sit at the Chef’s Counter where ten seats overlook a gas-free open kitchen with a wood-fired hearth and you’ll find the chef doubling as a bartender, making coffee, running food and even clearing.
That’s possible because there are just twelve other tables on the floor, where the all-white interior of the former tearoom has been replaced by a soft green that mimics the environment outside. Large windows open onto the Botanic Garden and a sprawling floral arrangement sourced from the gardens hangs overhead in place of a chandelier. Even the reservations book is perched on a preserved stump. It’s all part of James’ vision to reflect the surrounding environment in every aspect of the restaurant. “Where you’re at is what you should be cooking,” he says, “but ultimately my identity is a sense of place not just in cooking, it’s in everything… I want to bring the Botanic Gardens into the restaurant.”
