NYC-Based Arlo Communal Comes Home for a Transformative Dining Experience at Vivid

For Tobi Fox and Cal Fernie, New York has always been the greatest conquest of all. Post- lockdowns, the hospitality duo behind Arlo Communal traded Sydney for the States, keen to transition their unique supper club events to something bigger and bolder in NYC.

“The storytelling aspect of Arlo today stems from connecting with cultures at the table and expressing that through imagery and video,” says Furnie, the media and brand guru who plays off Fox’s culinary skills. “Over the past two years, we’ve grown into this kind of 360-degree agency, like a creative hospitality collective.”

With apologies to New York, though, creative storytelling doesn’t get much bigger than Vivid, which is why Fox and Fernie are bringing their dining experience back to Sydney for the annual festival of lights, art and food. The pair’s headline event – a collaboration with Museums of History NSW titled Dream Feast – is set to transform The Mint with animated projections, a live soundtrack courtesy of DJ Munasib, and a menu of Australiana.

The Mint is the Sydney CBD’s oldest surviving public building, built for the cost of 45,000 gallons of rum. Originally part of a hospital for convicts, it eventually became the first branch of the Royal Mint outside of London. Today, you can visit for free and explore the historical site; it’s also home to the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection, which the Arlo team has mined for inspiration regarding the event’s era-spanning menu.

“The Museums of History NSW reached out to us last year with this idea of exploring the Caroline Simpson Library Collection, which is a deep collection of Australian ephemera from the 1800s to today,” says Fernie. “So there’s things from old cookbooks and The Home magazine to private notebooks from dukes and duchesses talking about their recipes.”

It’s those archival recipes that naturally sit at the heart of Dream Feast, giving you a glimpse into the food and dining experiences of Australia’s past, shaped by immigration and ever-changing tastes.

“It’s been super interesting diving into so many different generations, and you can really see what people thought the peak dining experience was back then,” Fox says. “There’s this certain elegance and elevated feel and attention to detail that just seems so much more theatrical.”

The menu, which is divided into courses with names like Intriguing Introductions and The Initial Indulgence, isn’t going to be a direct re-creation of those old recipes. Instead, Fox is taking inspiration from them while tweaking the flavours to suit contemporary palates.

“We did some renditions of the menu, and there were lots of rich sauces back then which are super tasty, but it’s about balancing that with freshness and lightness around the menu,” he says.

Take Fox’s early favourite, for example: a curried lobster canape. “On the menus that we’ve been referencing, there’s been Indian-style curried lobster served with rice,” Fox says. “We’ve taken that concept and placed it into our context. We’re doing this curry lobster vol-au-vent which is basically a curry lobster stuffed in puff pastry and then drowned in this delicious Thai-style sauce, keeping it nice and light.”

Other menu standouts for Fox and Fernie are the Caveman Canape – a snack of roasted bone marrow spread on crisp toast that takes its inspiration from a vintage Women’s Weekly recipe – and the old-school dessert classic bombe alaska, which ups the nostalgia with Neapolitan ice-cream.

Elsewhere, the menu goes heavy on French-inspired cuisine of yesteryear, starting with a palate-cleansing chicken consommé flavoured with tomato essence, and the rich main course: steak Robert.

“Basically it’s a steak course with a really classic French sauce called sauce Robert, which has all the good things like bacon, onions, seeded mustard, really good quality wine and vinegar, and lots of fresh herbs,” Fox says.

Beyond the menu, Museums of History NSW will also be bringing the space to life through intricate projection-mapping light displays and sound design, alongside tableware, crockery and cutlery referencing the era developed in collaboration with Arlo Communal. The idea is to create an immersive experience that evokes the evolution of Australia’s culinary and social history.

Dream Feast takes place at The Mint, 10 Macquarie Street, Sydney from June 2 to 5. Seatings are from 6pm to 9pm, and tickets cost $250 per person.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Museums of History NSW.