The greatest misconception of antipodean food is that Vegemite, a spread made from leftover brewer’s yeast, tastes bad. It doesn’t; you’re just doing it wrong. (It should be scraped, not schmeared, and it is best understood as a delivery mechanism for butter.) Another is that there is no such thing as modern Australian or New Zealand food. There are now plenty of places to grab an Australian-inflected coffee; in some parts of town, the flat white threatens its frothier cousin, the latte. But two new restaurants make a convincing argument for something bigger: a coherent regional cuisine, drawing on the countries’ colonial past and overlaying it with the southern European and Asian influences of postwar migration.
You could eat the six-course tasting menu at the Musket Room, in Nolita, without realizing that the chef, Matt Lambert, intended it as homage to his home country of New Zealand. Lambert’s art is in showing, not telling, as in a dish of cold scallops hidden under a silver cloche, to capture the smell of the manuka wood chips with which they were smoked. It’s a comforting aroma for those who know the tree, which is native to New Zealand, and, for those who don’t, a briefly transporting experience. The scallops are from Maine, but the venison, a standout entrée, is from New Zealand. It’s pleasingly sinewy and chewy, and tastes like the deer got to really roam some vast verdant fields. There’s a nicely astringent flavor, too, because the filet is cooked in gin.
On a recent evening, the bar was packed by eight o’ clock, and a cluster of young women in wrap dresses kept ordering boulevardiers. The drinks were barrel-aged, of course, because the Musket Room takes everything seriously. The expat-nostalgia factor seemed low; not so at Flinders Lane, a few blocks north, in the East Village. There, the storefront had been flung open—no worries that the pungent musk of Avenue A was especially assertive on this late-summer night—and homesick Australians were stoked to see that the bar menu included a sausage roll. (Imagine if Dominique Ansel crossed a hot dog and a croissant.) At a table, the menu gets more refined: softshell crab with a Thai chili sauce; a lovely poached-chicken salad with peanuts and pea shoots; Australian lamb, encrusted with wattle seed, from the indigenous acacia tree, with a taste approximating peas and coffee.
For dessert, there are distinctly Australian ice creams: one based on Milo, a popular malt beverage; another on the Anzac biscuit, a much-beloved cookie made with coconut and oats; and the best, Lemon Myrtle, from another native plant with an intense flavor, like incredibly excited citrus. Does the proliferation of Australian cafés mean we’ve reached peak flat white? Possibly. But, as these restaurants—and the continued false equivalence of Vegemite and cream cheese—demonstrate, there is still much to discover. ♦
The Musket Room, entrées $26-$32; Flinders Lane, entrées $16-$25.
