Yiaga is the first solo project by the award-winning chef.
Take one of Australia’s most awarded chefs and one of Australia’s most legendary architects, John Wardle, add 13,000 terracotta tiles and what do you get? Yiaga, Vue de Monde chef Hugh Allen’s first solo project.
Whereas Vue retains traces of founding chef Shannon Bennett, who ran the kitchen for 19 years, Yiaga is entirely Allen’s project. He’s used this clean slate to write a menu that treads a fine line of Noma-reverence and being very much itself. (Several of Yiaga’s chefs have spent significant time working at the game-changing Copenhagen fine diner, including Scottish expat and head chef Michael McAulay.)
It’s still early days, and the dishes are changeable, shifting with the seasons and available ingredients. There might be Granny Smith and Geraldton wax. Coconut and caviar. Coral trout and Mexican chilli. White miso and desert lime. Herbaceous burns and citric pops. Deep umami and salty funk.
You’ll get all of that in a subversive, three-ish-hour tasting menu ($295 a head, excluding drinks) that moves at a surprisingly swift pace. Wines are 70 per cent Aussie and, no, there is no chocolate souffle.
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Myffy Rigby is the former editor of the Good Food Guide.
