ARTE E CUCINA
Double Bay , Sydney

In recent weeks the newspaper headlines and columns have been all about Howard and Latham and The Worm and The Great Debate. Which is understandable in the middle of a federal election campaign.

Personally, MY Great Debate, has been about the origins of food being served in Australian restaurants.

First it was sardines being passed off as “whitebait” in a restaurant in Beechworth, Victoria. The latest involved oysters in a classy Sydney restaurant called Arte e Cucina.

Now this place in Double Bay isn’t rubbish. It is a spin-off from the legendary Lucio’s in Paddington. And, as the menu correctly says:

“Proudly continuing Lucio’s tradition of insisting on the finest quality ingredients and professional hospitality, surrounded by an impressive collection of modern Australian art”.

And all of that is true. Except for the bloody oysters! I dined there with my literary agent, Margaret Gee, to talk about my new book, Human Headlines, and the oysters were featured in the waiter’s enthusiastic verbal specials. We could have Pacific oysters or “ creamy Sydney Rock oysters”. As I have written before, I believe the only oysters really worth eating are South Australian. Coffin Bay, Smokey Bay, Streaky Bay. The best, cleanest, most briny, oysters in any river or ocean in this world.

And I said so. The waiter, straight-faced, came back to tell me the Pacific oysters were, in fact, from South Australia. What is this South Australian defence? That’s what the young waitress told me about the “sardines turned whitebait” in Beechworth.

I knew I was being lied to but I ordered four anyway. And I love the way that in many classy restaurants these days you can order two or four or six oysters. Even though it gives the eatery owner the excuse to charge you up to four dollars a piece. I think $3.80 at Hugo’s in Sydney is my record to date.

(Reminds me of the time I owned Sardi’s Restaurant in Melbourne about twenty-five years ago. I instructed the chef to always serve seven when somebody ordered half a dozen and thirteen, a baker’s dozen, when they ordered 12. Got people excited. We just added ten cents to the original price.)

At Arte e Cucina they weren’t South Australian oysters. They were, I suspect, fat and strong, Tasmanian ones. Still I ate them. Although they declined to batter and fry them and had slices of lemon but no lime to enhance them.

Ms. Gee, my literary whipmaster, loved them but then she raves about New Zealand Bluff oysters, from the shadow of Stewart Island and on the brink of Antarctica, which are as strong and “oystery” as you can get.

When I was a kid my Dad used to bring them home from the local fish shop in an elongated jar we called “a pottle”. He would take the top off and we would get a whiff of the briny, pungent mollusks and I couldn’t imagine how anybody could actually swallow these slippery, grey, things. I do now.

This is not to bag Arte e Cucina. It could become a Sydney favourite. In fact it will. And it is for a lot of well-heeled, so-called movers and shakers. The night I was there recently other noshers included Andrew Peacock, Laurie “Snake Eyes” Brereton and the handsome bloke who owns Wizard Home Loans.

For a main course I stuck to my “nightly nibbles” which has ripped heaps of weight off me and went for a second entrée only. Three out of four people at our table ordered the same dish: carpaccio di trota salmonata. That’s a raw ocean trout carpaccio with a mound of julienne vegetables and some lime. The same lime they couldn’t find for my oysters.

It was stunning. They also had what I didn’t sample but a fellow guest raved about: a big mushroom soup that spelled the word fungi in capital letters.

A good night in a great place. Just don’t bullshit me about stuff that supposedly comes from South Australia.