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LIFE
THE AUSTRALIAN, MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2017 theaustralian.com.au/life
AUSE01Z10MA - V1
HOME TRU THS RUTH OSTROW
Unleash the beast every now and then The other day I was at a party. There was a guy dancing freely on his own. It was liberating to see such passion being expressed. Afterwards we talked. “I loved watching you dance,” I said. He grinned. “I was letting out my inner wild man, my bastard. I really like my bastard side.” He explained that he was a dad of two young kids, a good husband and hard worker, believed in God. But he needed a break from being good all the time. “So you express it on the dance floor?” “Yeah, I let the beast off the leash. Sometimes I feel real anger, sometimes ecstasy or sadness, or I feel very sexual, it depends on the music, but it’s a powerful energy I release.” I liked what he said about unleashing his “inner bastard”. I’ve felt it many times myself. I practise loving kindness. It is one of the founding principles of Buddhism. But put me behind the wheel of a car at peak hour and loving kindness flies out the window along with a wave of expletives. I’ve worked on my temper with meditation and healing. But the truth is that the bitch has never gone. And the fact is I don’t want her to. I liked Donald Trump’s description of Hillary Clinton as “a nasty woman”. There are times when the nasty woman or man is absolutely necessary. It’s the fierce aspects of nature — the volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. Destruction before creation. The rambling, green hills with fluffy sheep have come from violent eruptions of Earth’s core. It never was, nor is, all light and love or, as someone put it: “Peace, love and mung beans.” And that’s what is in us all: we are microcosms of the macrocosm. Carl Jung called the darkness our “shadow” selves, the side that is laden with so-called deadly sins — greed, lust, pride, wrath: the bastard and the bitch. “Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” He said that aspect links into more primitive and primal animal instincts. It’s simmering just under the surface, repressed in polite society and often forced to break out in depression and passive aggression or pathological behaviours. But Jung believed we need to embrace and accept this side of ourselves because it’s the force behind creativity, the driving force towards aspiration and procreation. It need not be totally repressed, merely integrated and gently channelled into positive, creative pursuits rather than let run amok. Jung said our sinister shadow represents the true spirit of life.
There is no night without day, good without bad, male without female. There is no objective right or wrong In Eastern spirituality (the Hindu and Buddhist tradition of Tantra) it’s called non-duality — as in no separation, everything and everyone is connected. There is no night without day, good without bad, male without female. There is no objective right or wrong. In essence there is no duality. All apparent opposites are part of the same coin, just flipped differently. Thus the sacred element is that there is no separation from the divine: “As within so without.” Therefore the challenge is self-acceptance, or rather non-judgment. The conscious “adult” self has to remain in charge of the mothership and steer, but that doesn’t mean the other facets are not welcome on board. The shadow self is childlike, fun, naughty, greedy, petulant, lustful, creative, and needs to be kept in check. But as my dancing friend said: “The shackles sometimes have to come off.” Loving kindness has its place. I practise it avidly. But another main Eastern teaching is moderation: the middle path. Walking a fine line between extremities. There are times when the human animal needs to rise or passions rule or anger be unleashed, especially against injustice. And from time to time we just have to behave badly for fun and to remind ourselves we are alive — or, as my new friend said: “To dance like there’s no one watching.” Ruth.ostrow@hotmail.com @OstrowRuth
AFP
Eleven Madison Park offers a theatrical experience; bottom, chef Daniel Humm; below right, a chocolate palette dessert, and turbot with poached zucchini blossom Between courses six and seven, my date and I are whisked into the kitchens of Eleven Madison Park, apparently the world’s best restaurant, for an edible cocktail. This involves perching on a makeshift bar while a mixologist pours liquid nitrogen, bourbon, Concord grape ice cream and popping candy into a bowl. Eventually an extremely elaborate whisky sour emerges from a plume of smoke. This wasn’t just special treatment. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time to diners at Eleven Madison Park, which was voted top of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list this month at a gala night in Melbourne. It’s the first New York restaurant to win the accolade and only the second American one to do so. The top spot has long been hogged by a clique of innovative but pompous European restaurants that have reinvented fine dining over the past 15 years. First there was the Fat Duck in Britain and El Bulli in Spain, where Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adria respectively pioneered so-called molecular gastronomy, making bacon and egg ice cream and liquefying olives. After that came Rene Redzepi’s four-time winner, Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant that precipitated the Nordic dining revolution: hyper-local, foraged, fermented, artfully delivered tasting menus. Last year the winner was Osteria Francescana, a small room in the town of Modena, Italy, where lentil caviar and oyster water are part of Massimo Bottura’s gastronomic show. Eleven Madison Park is a departure from all that. Housed in a grand palace on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, it is much closer in its aesthetic to the fine dining houses of the 1980s and 90s, redolent of bull markets, shoulder pads and chateaubriands. Its elevation is a huge victory for the New York food scene, which has at times been derided for its vulgarity by the high priests of European haute cuisine. Eleven Madison Park’s Swiss chef, Daniel Humm, and Ameri-
can restaurateur, Will Guidara, have long coveted this prize. Described as the “Glimmer Twins of gastronomy”, Humm and Guidara have transformed the restaurant from a place where bankers hunker down over cote de boeuf and a bottle of bordeaux to the very best in the world, at least according to the judges who vote for the 50 Best award. Humm is the athlete — intense and driven. Guidara is the charm — witty and precise. He’s also the driving force behind Eleven Madison Park’s obsession with service, which has turned it from a mere dining experience into something more akin to immersive theatre. The staff have Googled you before you get there. They know your nationality, favourite football team and first pet’s name before you’ve sat down for an amusebouche. My date very recently took up an exciting new job, so she arrived to a handwritten note congratulating her on the appointment. The waiters eavesdrop on your conversation and pass any useful titbits to the restaurant’s “dream weaver” (think of a much, much sexier version of Roald Dahl’s BFG), who stalks you throughout your meal, in the nicest way possible. Over dinner I mentioned in passing that I’d always wanted to go to the library bar at the nearby NoMad hotel. After our meal, a waitress escorted us on a walk to the NoMad, where a table and a cocktail customised to our personality types awaited. This again is a far from unusual experience at EMP. Stories abound of the dream weaver’s most elaborate after-dinner treats. There was the Spanish family who arrived during a blizzard. The children had never seen snow before, so on finishing their meal they were presented with two toboggans, painted with the restaurant’s logo, for them to take tobogganing in Central Park the next morning. One regular diner, notable for his debonair style, was presented with a pocket square with the faces of his favourite staff embroidered
TO DINE FOR FOOD
The wine is opened by blowtorch, and a ‘dream weaver’ turns your chance remarks into reality on a $400 dinner at the latest ‘world’s best restaurant’ JOSH GLANCY
ON THE MENU •Sea urchin cappuccino with peekytoe crab and cauliflower • Little neck clam bake with veloute and parker house rolls • Prawn roulade with avocado and yoghurt • Foie gras torchon with maple syrup and pain d’epice • Carrot tartare with rye toast and condiments • Turbot with poached zucchini and squash blossom • Winter in Provence black truffle, celery root, potato and chevre frais • Suckling pig confit with rhubarb and cipollini onion • Chicken poached with black truffles, potato and asparagus • Milk and honey with dehydrated milk foam and bee pollen • Chocolate palette with peanut butter and popcorn ice cream
on it. Another is soon to have a “cat cafe” made for her outside the restaurant; her boyfriend is secretly collaborating to bring her cat along for a digestif. Mention pizza and you’re presented with a slice as though it were part of the tasting menu. Discuss the fantasy television show Game of Thrones and a complimentary glass of mead greets you at the end of dinner. The wine is opened by blowtorching a pair of tongs at the table until they are hot enough to melt off the entire top of the bottle — cork, glass and all. Thankfully, the barolo was unharmed. It’s all wildly, absurdly, preposterously over the top. But that’s the point. A fantasy. An experience that you can bore all your friends with until they decide they too want to shell out $US300 (almost $400) each to enjoy it. Oh, and of course there’s the food. Which is seriously good but not, to my mind at least, best-inthe-world good. The menu at Eleven Madison Park is a regularly evolving affair, reflecting the hyperactive inventiveness of its chef. Currently they’re doing a Daniel Humm greatest hits menu, which is a trip through all the fads and fetishes of the foodie revolution. There’s sea urchin cappuccino, frothy and extravagant. A clam bake full of sumptuous razor and quahog clams from Long Island and a suckling pig adorned with impossibly crisp crackling. The very best dish was a dessert: “milk and honey”, a blend of dehydrated milk foam and bee pollen that will truly take you to the promised land. Not all the dishes were hits. The sousvide chicken with black truffles was ever so slightly bland. The carrot tartare is ground at your table and presented with a tray of elaborate condiments (dried peas, quail’s egg yolk). It was better than it sounds, but the philistine in me would still have preferred raw beef.
In a way, though, it’s reassuring to have food made from ingredients that you at least recognise. Or, as the Danish chef Bo Bech described Humm’s approach: “He’s not only cooking for himself. He’s actually cooking for people. He wants them to be happy. He’s not trying to f..k your mouth with things you’ve never heard of.” Eleven Madison Park is a special-occasion sort of place that’s a long, long way from cheap. In fact, when I sent the receipt to the office — $US642.36 (and that was just for the food) — the picture editor wryly informed me that it could have bought him 146.39 portions of scampi and chips from the work canteen. I’m pleased it has topped the best restaurants list, though, because it’s so much fun. When I switch jobs from lowly journalist to wildly overpaid financier, I’m going back all the time. THE SUNDAY TIMES
Make a fashion statement by getting feelings off your chest in style Designers have cleverly — and often very lucratively — appropriated the good old message tee CARLI PHILIPS
Cute and kitschy, retro or rebellious, branded or (surprise, surprise) political, it seems everyone is getting it off their chests with a slogan T-shirt. It’s the most basic of wardrobe staples and graphic designs are hardly anything new, but this is no Chesty Bond as luxury designers take the humble tee highbrow. Social justice and political activism featured heavily in Prabal
Gurung’s ready-to-wear autumn 2017 collection, his T-shirts stamped with the likes of the The Future is Female, Revolution Has No Borders and I am an Immigrant. Dior’s We Should All be Feminists T-shirt will retail for $US710 ($940) but a portion of sales go to charity. It’s a basic cut in black and white, but with actresses such as Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence (she fronts the campaign) jumping on board, it’s set to become on-trend. British fashion designer and eco-warrior Vivienne Westwood is no stranger to provocation, regularly selling activist clothing alongside her main and couture lines. Her Save the Arctic and Climate Change tees feature on organic, unbleached cotton from a
20-year-old co-operative in Peru. Aside from the serious stuff, there’s a whole lot of nostalgic branding going on. Instagram is awash with Gucci’s self-referential 1980s cotton jersey gold logo tee by Alessandro Michele, who was inspired by the brand’s vintage roots. Athletic nostalgia has also made a comeback, with track-andfield brands such as Champion and Fila hitting home runs with their baseball tees. Faded, hole-punctured rock band T-shirts aren’t fooling anyone (let’s face it, the worn-in look wasn’t from washing) and it’s safe to say the contrived vintage look has had its day. The nail in the coffin was Justin Bieber’s Nirvana Tshirt, sold at Topshop and H&M. Now it’s all about touring merchandise. They are no longer sou-
FAB FOUR
BELLA FREUD, $148, www.net-a-porter.com
ALEXANDER McQUEEN
$138, www.mrporter.com
PAUL SMITH
$275, (02) 9331 8222
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, $140, www.viviennewestwood.com
venirs: concert apparel has gained credibility. Take Kanye West, who sold his Life of Pablo tour merch across 21 pop-up stores in the US and internationally, or Rihanna’s Anti tour pieces sold at respected cult Parisian boutique department store Colette. There’s no mincing words when it comes to designer Henry Holland, whose 10th anniversary women’s tops feature rhyming puns referencing all manner of pop personalities. Regularly mocked for her dour demeanour, this month’s winning sartorial meme goes to Victoria Beckham, who finally explains why she’s always frowning in a self-effacing Fashion Stole my Smile T-shirt from her own range. At $155 and already sold out, guess who had the last laugh?