My International Shopping List: Lauren Eldridge, Head Pastry Chef at Van Haandel Group

Lauren Eldridge
Stokehouse
Lauren Eldridge
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Lauren Eldridge
Stokehouse
Stokehouse
Stokehouse

Lauren Eldridge ·Photo: Pete Dillon

Lauren Eldridge has experienced – and created – award-winning food the world over. In partnership with NAB’s new Platinum Visa Debit Card, which can help you save money when making purchases overseas, we asked the celebrated pastry chef for her international dining highlights.

Lauren Eldridge has seen the world – and its kitchens.

The award-winning pastry chef creates magical desserts for the Van Haandel Group, encompassing four venues: Stokehouse St Kilda; Pontoon and Fatto Bar & Cantina in Melbourne; and Stokehouse Q in Brisbane. That experience comes via stints in some of the best restaurants in the world, including Osteria Francescana in Italy, Le Cinq and Guy Savoy in France, and in Australia at Marque restaurant. In 2015 she won the Josephine Pignolet Award for young chef of the year.

Away from the buzz of international kitchens, a three-month tour of Europe in 2016 provided many of her best eating experiences – from dining at Frantzén, a three-Michelin starred restaurant in Stockholm, to feasting on churros and jamón in Madrid.

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With so many food miles on the clock, we asked the talented chef for tips on her best international food experiences, be they just a delicious memory or something more tangible.

Dining out in Copenhagen
Eldridge, whose boyfriend is Danish, has visited Copenhagen so often she’s almost a local. “Copenhagen is a really good place for foodies,” she says. “It’s a beautiful city as well.”

On her first trip she dined at Noma, Rene Redzepi’s much-lauded restaurant. Eldridge worked with Mette Brink Søberg, Noma’s research and development chef, at Marque in Sydney. “After the meal at Noma she gave me a tour of the kitchen,” says Eldridge. “It’s something they do for all their guests – they like to show people around. It was an amazing meal. I’m trying to convince my boyfriend to go back when we visit this year.”

On her most recent trip to Copenhagen she ate at fine-dining restaurants Amass and Kadeau – “I’d recommend both,” she says – as well as Relae, which “is a bit more casual in terms of service, but it’s the type of food Australians like to eat. A lot of Australian chefs try to eat at these places when they go.” A standout dish that lingers in her memory is, unsurprisingly, a dessert, albeit an unusual one: Jerusalem artichoke cooked in house-made malt syrup.

Eldridge loves eating at less glamorous establishments too – especially those that serve smørrebrød: open-faced sandwiches made from sourdough rye bread and toppings such as pickled herring, boiled eggs, cured meats or smoked fish. “Copenhagen has some old traditional restaurants that do that really well,” she says. “It’s classic Danish food – what people eat every day.”

Danish design
Eldridge, a fan of Scandinavian style, trawled Copenhagen homewares stores on her most recent visit looking for gems to kit out her new house in Melbourne. She picked up glass- and tableware “bits and pieces” at stores like Søstrene Grene, one of Copenhagen’s numerous large homewares chains. “We don’t have that sort of thing here,” she says. “It’s like a Scandinavian version of Muji, the Japanese homewares store. I bought as much as I could physically bring home with me!”

Portuguese tarts in Lisbon
Eldridge says it’s worth travelling to Lisbon, the Portuguese capital located in the western corner of the Iberian Peninsula, just to try the city’s famous pasteis de nata, or custard tarts.

When Eldridge visited she stayed a few doors up from Manteigaria, a famous pasteis de nata bakery with an open kitchen offering an unimpeded view of the entire baking process. “As they pull a tray of tarts out of the oven, it goes into the front window and then you buy them,” she says. “I could stand there for hours watching and eating them.”

Shockingly, Eldridge has never made a Portuguese custard tart – which could explain why she loves eating them so much. “I find the more I produce something, the less I enjoy eating it,” she says. “Sure, I could make them myself. But it’s never going to be like in Lisbon, watching them come out of the oven fresh. When it’s made in this traditional way, and made so well, I’ll leave it to them and have that memory.”

Marvellous Modena
In 2016, Eldridge spent two months working at Osteria Francescana in Modena, a small regional city in northern Italy famous for its balsamic vinegar and, more recently, for its starring role in Master of None. Eldridge’s arrival coincided with the crowning of Osteria Francescana as number one on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. “It was probably the best possible time to go,” she says. “Everybody was excited and there were all kinds of special events going on. I got to participate in all of that.”

While there, she immersed herself in the local food culture. “Modena’s a small city, it’s all cobbled streets and quaint apartments,” she says. “The food venues aren’t big chains, they’re all independently owned, often with no English.” She particularly loved the stand-up espresso culture (“It’s not like in Melbourne or Sydney where you go in and order a flat white, they all look at you like you’re crazy.”) and gnocco fritto, a local delicacy made from fried pastry dough served with prosciutto. “I would eat as much as I could,” she says.

The fresh produce in Italy was incredible. “You’d go to the markets in Modena, and all the stalls had the same produce,” she says. “It’s not like you’d go to one to get your apples. If apples weren’t around, no one had them. I was there in summer and it was cherry season and there were always big boxes of cherries everywhere. They were best cherries I’d ever eaten.”

Finding bitter almond
One ingredient plentiful in Modena but impossible to find in Australia is bitter almond – distinct from the ubiquitous sweet almond. When raw, bitter almonds contain hydrocyanic acid and are potentially toxic to humans (baking removes the toxic compounds).

The chefs at Osteria Francescana often used bitter almonds in desserts. “I really like the flavour,” says Eldridge, who has searched unsuccessfully for fresh bitter almonds in Australia. “To get the bitter almond flavour here, you have to buy it bottled and artificial,” she says. “There, you could buy bags and bags of bitter almonds.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with NAB’s Platinum Visa Debit Card which offers no foreign currency fees on international purchases both online or when travelling overseas as well as seven complimentary insurances including purchase protection insurance.*

*A qualifying purchase is required to get the benefits of the complimentary insurance. See terms, conditions and exclusions of the complimentary insurances specified in the NAB Card Insurance Policy Information booklet and in the NAB Purchase Protection Insurance Policy Information Booklet. The complimentary insurances are issued by QBE Insurance (Australia) Limited ABN 78 003 191 035 to NAB. Access to the benefit of cover under the NAB card insurances is provided to eligible NAB cardholders by operation of s48 of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth).

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