Cook, television personality, food writer, “domestic goddess”. Nigella Lawson is known for many things, chiefly her fantastic taste in food. Earlier this week Lawson – with former Masterchef judge Matt Preston – addressed an audience of adoring fans at QPAC as part of her An Evening With Nigella Lawson tour series.
When Lawson wasn’t performing she was experiencing the best of Brisbane’s local food scene and documenting her journey on Instagram.
She shared a picture of jewel-toned sushi platters at Sushi Room and called the plates at the Fortitude Valley eatery “beautiful”.
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SUBSCRIBE NOWLawson also called out the viennoiseries at the much-lauded hotel – and celebrity haunt – The Calile Hotel. She called them the “best ever croissants” and shared her delight that the glossy and laminated treats were crafted by a baker called Ju Butteri. Butteri, the aptly-named Calile Hotel pastry chef, commented on the post saying: “You have no idea how happy I [am] knowing you like my food.”
But, the British cook was most effusive with her praise for Adam Wolfers and Agnes. She shared an Instagram post that’s as gushing as it is thumb-achingly long.
“Ever since I found out that Adam Wolfers was opening Agnes Restaurant, I’d been longing to go,” Lawson began, “and lo, the Food Gods looked favourably upon me and made sure it came to pass.”
She describes the Fortitude Valley space as “a cave of delights” and shared a photo of Agnes’s “headily sensational Skull Island tiger prawns with fermented chilli butter … It’s imprinted on my taste-memory: the sweetness of the prawn; its smoke-licked tender flesh; the richness of the butter, with its modulated heat and deep, deep tang. Oof!”
Following up the prawns with a second seafood dish Lawson ordered “rock oysters with coal mignonette (suitable for a former foundry) and Koji hot sauce, which was an extraordinary experience. I’m usually of the view that oysters are best eaten with absolutely nothing added, so that all you get is the kiss of the sea … I’ve never, ever been convinced by mignonette – that mix of shallot and vinegar – or not up till now. Coal mignonette sounds crazy, and it is! It brings forth some elemental sensation of fusing fire and ocean, and I was entranced by it.”
Lawson shared some insight into the methodology behind the game-changing mignonette with her three million followers. “I’m even more entranced now I know how that flicker-of-furnace flavour is arrived at: a red-hot coal is dunked into olive oil, a drop of which is added to the vinegar-doused chopped shallots. Such brazen culinary poetry!”
Lawson’s Agnes dinner knocked it out of the park on all counts with the caption continuing: “I must also report ecstatically the raw beef – chopped bigger than a regular tartare – with dripping toast. And the Bangalow pork chop with piccalilli and a concentrated sauce of trottery pork broth spoke insistently to me. But the dish that quite spun my senses was the chicken skewer with fenugreek: chicken oysters brined in onion juice, flamed, and brushed with toum, along with turmeric and fresh fenugreek.”
Lawson’s ode to Agnes finished with the line “still reeling with pleasure” and – after reading the talented food writer’s lyrical descriptions of some of the city’s best dishes – so are we.