Heirloom – one foam too far

Heirloom looks great but the food needs to be simpler.

The best French chefs are Japanese nowadays, they say. But they aren’t French they are Japanese. They are just cooking French-style with the addition of Japanese ingredients.

Meanwhile, the best French chefs are now open in Japan. They rock. Or at least Michel Bras does, the man who is one of the inspirations for local, sustainable super-natural cuisine several decades before Noma had even been dreamt of.

And now this whole Japanese French thing is in Melbourne with the 2010 opening of Duck Duck Goose in the QV shopping centre and the recent opening of Heirloom towards the top end of Bourke St, under the Citadines Apartments.

Melbourne has a huge appetite for all things French and Japanese. We love escargot, steak tartare, moules et frites, steak with béarnaise all washed down with a burgundy.

Chicken terrine: good

Or we love the pared down simplicity of sushi, sashimi and tempura, nowadays washed down with a sake rather than white wine.
But bring Japanese together with French and you’ve got confusion. I can’t even find a funny fusion between the two words; Japanch or Frapenese don’t really cut it.

I’m not sure I want to go to a very fancy restaurant for the fusion and by the accounts I get from diners who’ve eaten at DDG (who mainly say the food is reasonably good) it probably isn’t as full as the owners would like.

Eel fritters – great.

As one high profile restaurant critic said to me: “…the whole French/Japanese idea repulses me.”

The theoretical appeal of Heirloom is Shigeo Nonaka, a chef who worked at Shoya in Market Lane. In the main restaurant the chefs aren’t French-Japanese with Kyle Doody billed by a waitress as a “molecular chef”.
That spells F-O-A-M!

John Dory with, yes, foam. Not so good.

The trouble with Heirloom when you visit the staff don’t bother to tell you about the sushi bar, which is hidden to the back right of the restaurant. They sit you down to eat French-Japanese (or is it Japanese-French?) and encourage you to drink sake.
And I’m afraid the combination of all three isn’t good.

Beetroot. Ouch!

There is nothing wrong with the sake alone, and there is a splendid list of them together with a knowledgable sake sommelier.
There is nothing wrong with the base ingredients used; they are beautiful and fresh.
The problem is that the French-Japanese fusion takes great basic ideas for dishes and adds far too many differing elements. It’s all “a little bit fancy”.

Take three of this summer’s vogue ingredients – heirloom beetroots, goats curd ( or cheese) and walnuts and mix them into a simple salad. Philippe Mouchel, a French chef with affinity for Japan, does it well at PM24. It’s one of those matches made in heaven that Heirloom billed as “whipped chevre, beetroot tuiles, black olive caramel, tatsoi, rye crostini”. I was taken down to purgatory.

Kingfish carpaccio – lose the wasabi ice cream

Kingfish carpaccio, which is thickly sliced and “scorched” would have been perfectly good left like that. But it was assaulted with a bright green scoop of wasabi sorbet sitting on top.

If only the fingers of Dory had been like fish fingers and my partner, @melbournebitter, and I would have been happy.
The dory alone was cooked decently, although could have been more moist. But the pea mousseline and the truffled pea veloute was just boring. And there was foam.

None of these dishes particularly matched well with Sake, although I will single out the beetroot as the worst.
The menu is split between Tastes (a very good) smoked eel croquette for $4; nice gyoza at (5 for $12) Larger, which we ate, at $18-$22, and Meat locker.

The complementary amuse bouche was a shot glass of bouillabaisse made with pernod, which was bitter. It wasn’t a good start.
The fit out of Heirloom is great. The floor staff are still finding there feet. And maybe I’m being too harsh.

As I said the eel and chicken terrine were good. But there was just too much going on with each dish. Subtract the Japanese elements and have with a crisp white wine and it might be quite good.
It’s just a shame we had to take one for the team and spend $167 to find this out.