Mercifully, in our town, the risk of being dealt poor food is pretty low. In Melbourne, the buzz about a new kitchen is most often generated by fussy bees. Certainly, food is what drives the year-old hot hive, Gigibaba. Chef Ismail Tosun’s food is inspired, singular and exceptional. It’s a resolute heads-up here for Turkish small-plate dining. It’s thumbs down, however, for service.
When I moved as a teenager from the leafy suburbs to the bare inner city, I became familiar with the rudeness endemic to certain of Melbourne’s eateries. I never particularly enjoyed watching a hungover VCA student hurl rigatoni in my approximate direction; but, for the single figure price tag, I tolerated it. It was a fair deal: she was working out her frustrations at not being born in the East Village – I was getting fed for virtually nothing. Moreover, I was confident that one day, I’d afford myself the luxury of dining in places not entirely staffed by a sneering Second Year Drama class.
But then, a funny thing happened. The down-at-heel aesthetic of inner-city life went upscale in the late nineties. Even Starbucks successfully corporatised the dodgy student experience. Communal dining tables, mismatched flatware and other signifiers of “cool” became standard not only at shitty yet dependable St Kilda cafes, but in the high end of the CBD. Nonchalant or just plain terrible service was all part of this let’s-pretend-we’re-poor mini boom.
The bubble has not burst at Gigibaba. It’s not so much that the staff here is rude; they’re just affectedly casual, preferring loud conversation with each-other to interaction with diners. This, I suspect, is not actually a mistake but, rather, part of a pre-GFC master plan.
In true faux-poverty style, the place does not take bookings. Further, as we are proudly told by a waiter who has taken time out from grooming his beard in the bar mirror, the place does not have a sign or a website. Naturally, food is served on floral thrift-store Nanna-ware. Most ascetic of all, wine is served by the millilitre in beakers. This science lab chic might have been cute before the market crashed. Now, as I look at the small volume of decent plonk I can afford, I’m reminded how much money I lost in 2008.
Almost everything at Gigibaba screams “Slumming it!”. Everything, except the food that is. Shopworn irony might abound in this new Smith Street hub but it’s found nowhere on Tosun’s near perfect small plates. The former Perth superstar and Gourmet Traveller’s Best New Talent award winner is not just an extraordinary cook, he’s an innovator. Here is modern Turkish cuisine as you’re unlikely to experience outside Istanbul. There is nothing playful or ironic about the pickled octopus salad; the lamb cutlet; the exquisite quail. There’s no mocking nod evident in the must-order cauliflower or the dessert plate. In his menu, Tosun does not so much defy convention as advance it. Great skill and an abiding respect for Turkish cuisine leads this chef to some stunning conclusions. One of them, surprisingly, being the bill. Two of us drained a 500ml beaker and crammed some of Melbourne’s best food into our pie holes for under a hundred bucks.
There’s no doubt Tosun will shortly rank among the country’s most influential chefs. He belongs in our omnivorous city which will forgive him his fashionable foibles for such wonderful food.
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