From Canvas to Plate: How Art Shapes the Menu at Heide Kitchen Each Season

Asked to spotlight her favourite dish on the spring menu at Heide Kitchen, head chef Laura Boulton goes immediately for the gnocchi. Not just for the taste, but for its visual appeal as a homage to the flourishing kitchen gardens on the grounds at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

“When I built the dish, I wanted it to be like a spring garden, and it’s coming out on the plate looking exactly like that,” says Boulton. “It’s really pretty and every part is so individual. It also reflects the art, because it’s very photogenic.”

The spring version of the gnocchi sees the chickpea pasta sitting atop a layer of white cashew cream and then dressed with flowers, freshly blanched greens, pickled pumpkin strips and shaved, candied beetroot. The colourful plate reflects both the vibrancy of the Heide Kitchen gardens and the art on display inside the museum.

In 2023, Boulton became the Heide Kitchen’s head chef after a period spent championing zero-waste cooking at Kensington’s now-closed Cassette and elsewhere. Heide Kitchen sits opposite the museum entrance in the generously shaded parkland tucked away in suburban Bulleen. She fell in love with the space immediately, and changed the focus from a cafe to what she describes as more of a modern Australian dining room. Heide Kitchen does a short period of breakfast every day (except for Mondays, when the museum is closed), before lunch starts at 11.30am and runs until the restaurant closes at 4pm. Boulton compares the seasonal menu to what you might find at a small winery: garden-driven and produce-forward.

“It’s not just a cafe anymore,” she says. “The food is more refined, and people are starting to come here as a celebration space. They’re catching up with friends and having a really nice glass of wine and pasta, or sitting down and having a steak. It suits the space a lot more than just eggs on toast.”

Boulton has also embraced the idea of matching the menu – at least symbolically – to a changing slate of artwork. The spring gnocchi is partly an ode to the eye-popping colours in the current exhibition devoted to Australian abstract painter John Nixon. The beetroot tart was designed with a similar brightness in mind, and Boulton says even the steak and schnitzel have playful parallels with Nixon’s large swathes of block colour.

Elsewhere, the menu features subtle nods to Face Everything by Nell, which is on view at Heide. "Nell uses everyday items as her muse in her work, giving them animated faces that, in turn, bring people joy and make them smile,” Boulton explains. “I feel like my menu does the same. The inspiration comes from the art, the garden, the grounds, and all the different artists. The everyday ingredients we bring to life in the kitchen create a symphony of smiles and colour, just like Nell’s work."

For the previous exhibition Molto Bello: Icons of Modern Italian Design, Heide Kitchen showcased several standout Italian dishes. And for Blak In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience earlier this year, Boulton and her team utilised assorted native ingredients, paying homage to the traditional owners of the land, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation.

The kitchen gardens at Heide were originated by Sunday Reed, the art collector and patron who co-founded Heide with her husband John. The Reeds bought the property in 1934, and the Australian artists who later took up residence at Heide became known as the Heide Circle. Just as those creative figures’ art shaped what became Heide Museum of Modern Art, the gardens that fed them remain in full bloom.

“The gardens are an integral part of Heide,” says Boulton. “They’re a huge part of what Sunday Reed implemented here. She saw the gardens as a way to nourish the bodies of the artists that came here to nourish their souls in their artistic endeavours.”

What visitors get at Heide is a full-circle moment: ordering a drink made with things from the garden and then strolling through those garden spaces, or eating dishes inspired by the art before or after taking in the art visually.

“They’re individual experiences,” says Boulton, “but there’s a symbiosis that’s really beautiful to reflect on. There’s a storytelling element to the food and the gardens that’s so cohesive. It’s such a nice thing to be able to experience that all in one place.”

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