Zumbo’s Bedroom Bookshelf

So the story goes, I was in Adriano Zumbo’s bedroom so I took a snap of his bookshelf but more on that later. And what was I doing at his house? Getting a preview of his new collection: 40 Days and Nights in Paris (due out May 23rd) for my birthday! For a food blogger, this is as close to the best birthday gift you could ever get. “You’re the first to see the whole collection” he says “even the guys in the kitchen have only seen two of them” and I suppress an internal squeal.  Oh yes, birthdays are a good thing indeed.

Kitchen bookshelf

Zumbo recently returned from two months in the City of Lights which included attending the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie (World Pastry Cup) and working at Pierre Herme, hence the collection’s name, and he came home eager to get back into his own kitchen and get started on his new collection. Speaking of his kitchen, the minute I walk through the door, I know I’m in the home of a chef. It’s a huge, gorgeously spacious kitchen with a massive island and one of those heavy duty restaurant kitchen faucets. I spy a bookshelf full of cookbooks (including Nigella’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”) and when I ask if I can take a photo of them, he says “Let me show you the real bookshelf”. This is the one he spoke about in his interview with me which is in his bedroom. It’s packed with some amazing cookbooks of the professional calibre from the Libarie Gourmande in Paris.

Zumbo’s home kitchen

As for the cakes, let me present a preview of them without any further ado. As the cakes remain unnamed at this stage, if you’d like to suggest some names for them, please leave a comment as Adriano will be checking this page. Who knows, he might get inspiration from your suggestions! He said that he loved reading the comments from all of you in his interview so get your thinking caps on and name away!

Cake #1

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Cafe Mix display

I don’t often do buffets. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of them – there’s something so gloriously medieval and Roman about a cornucopian spread of food. It’s just that I just cannot eat enough of it to satisfy that I’ve gotten my money’s worth with many buffets priced at the $60+ range. However there are exceptions to this rule and wave the We Love Sydney card which gives us half price buffet at Cafe Mix at the Shangri-La hotel and say the magic word “Lobster” and I am at the ready. For the magical price of $68 for two on Fridays and $85 for two on Saturdays, you can eat lobsters and seafood to your heart’s content. My friends and family are generally good buffet eaters, and by good I mean good at extracting their money’s worth and enjoying themselves at one.

My friend in High School’s parents loved buffets and I’d always be invited along. We’d sit in their lounge room prior to going out and the mum would announce that she hadn’t eaten all day* and was ravenous in anticipation of the buffet. Her dad used to wear the special pants (not quite maternity pants but loose waisted pants) for the occasion and when we’d get there, they’d request the table closest to the seafood. It was usually prawns (they never went to a buffet without at least prawns) and they’d clear the supply of prawns carrying away plates of the stuff. My friend and I were a little embarrassed but little did we realise that they’d set the tone to how I approach buffets nowadays.

My husband is what you might call a  buffet amateur. This doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been to many, he has but he always gets chided by friends and family for selecting what he feels like eating instead of what might give him his money’s worth. My dad is the same. He’ll get a plate with some slices of roast pork, some potatoes and some pasta salad and be happy with that, forgetting that he has just paid $60 for that plate. My mum will literally tear her hair out at him. When we go to buffets, it’s an almost competitive experience but with a  difference, everyone wants you to do well.

Pork Roast with crackling separated for easy access-yes crackling, food of the gods!

Pretraining

One thing that I asterisked was my friend’s mum’s comment that she hadn’t eaten all day. I think this is a mistake. I find that my stomach “shrinks” if this happens. Some say that eating breads and pastries however ensures that you will be hungry, protein less so.  So despite all natural instincts to eat less carbs, eat more (the opposite of what you’d do when you have a big event coming up and want to look your best). Take it from the word of competitive eaters.

While there

Ask for a table near your favourite foods in the buffet (and no I don’t mean dessert!). Not only does this assist in your endeavour but when the best foods are replenished you’ll be the first to know. Thankfully at Cafe Mix, this wasn’t an issue except for with the fruit salad. The seafood was readily and steadily refilled.

Survey the buffet before digging in. No matter how pretty the desserts look (and they usually look very appealing and colourful) ignore them. Didn’t you know that there is a separate compartment for desserts anyway called the Dessert Tank? Have a look at everything that is offered in a buffet. Pretend you’re on The Price Is Right and price them.

Filling up on drink will reduce stomach space so say no to drinks or only order some still water and merely sip it. I never finish my drink, ever, even when I’m not at a buffet. I have my stomach space reserved for food.

Cafe Mix is divided into 6 sections: a seafood section (with lobster, prawns, balmain bugs, oysters and crab), a Western mix section (roasts, vegetables, breads and potatoes), a Japan Mix section (miso soup and assorted sushi rolls and salmon nigiri), a China Mix section (steamed buns, chicken wings, stir fries, fried rice), an Indian Mix section (pappadums, saffron rice, curries) and the dessert section.

Having a look at the buffet and doing my research online, from the range offered today I categorised the food into 3 sections in terms of value:

Top ranking foods

Lobster: aside from Abalone (which you’ll never get at a buffet, this is the prize pick)

• Seafood: Lobster, crab and balmain bugs
• Seafood: Oysters
• Seafood: Prawns
• Seafood: Mussels and others

Necessary evils

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Regular readers of my blog know that I am crazy about the man but like a lot of Sydney, and the rest of the world, we don’t know a lot about him, apart from the fact that he makes some of the most stunningly masterful creations known to humankind which if anything, gives us a fleeting glimpse into his soul. He’s shy and if I recall back to the first time I met him, nothing like I expected him to look like (I don’t know why but I expected either a portly older gentleman or a skinny ponytailed Franck Eggelhoffer).

To meet the man in the flesh is a surprise. He’s young, modest, agreeable, quite shy and down to earth and possessed with broodingly Brando-esque looks. Nothing like the tortured aesthetically crazed genius that I expected. And he makes the girls go crazy like nothing we’ve seen. A friend of mine, when I told her about meeting him said “Maybe just lick him for me or something” (I didn’t dear reader, although I suspect he might taste of cake, nor did I inquire of her what the ‘or something’ meant). Married or attached friends of mine would profess their outright lust for the man. It seems that a man that creates these beauties can do no wrong with the womenfolk.

I wanted to delve a bit more into the man himself, what fueled his passion and his artistry and so I did what the curious do, I asked for an interview and he was happy to oblige. We talked about his history, growing up, how he comes up with his collections, what he does in his downtime, his thoughts on bloggers, Pierre Hermé and of course the question that everyone wanted to know, whether he is single or not.

It’s a Sunday afternoon when I meet him at his cafe in Balmain, just a few doors down from the shop. He’s late by about 5-10 minutes but calls to let me know.  When he arrives he’s sporting a “I love Betty” t shirt (Betty being the Beresford pub), a few day’s worth of stubble and a New York Jets cap. And of course his eyebrow piercing, arm tattoo (”I’m a bit superstitious,” he has a tattoo of a scarab beetle for luck and his favourite numbers) and shy demeanor. I place my voice recorder down and he straight away asks if I want the music (Come On Eileen currently playing) turned down and I agree with visions of hours of tape of recorded music instead of speech in my head.

The Young(er) Zumbo

Spot the younger Zumbo

Being quite comfortable in Balmain (Zumbo lives here and has both his shop and cafe here) I first enquire about where and how he grew up. He was brought up in Coonamble, near Dubbo, where his parents owned supermarkets, one having a bakery in which he played around after school. He also remembers fondly the other perks of having supermarket owning parents. “I grew up on junkfood. I ate crumbed chicken, Vegemite (which probably explains why his “Zumbo the Kid” cake has Vegemite in it), peanut butter, hot chips with chicken salt, ham panini and pasta with no sauce, only olive oil. I wouldn’t touch sauce, that was yucky and all red with tomatoes.”

Zumbo the Kid-Photo from the Zumbo family.

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