The Luke and Guy Show

Luke Mangan and Guy Grossi, two celebrity chef's in Australia, well Melbourne and Sydney anyway, put on a show and dinner at the Regent Plaza ballroom
on Friday and Saturday night last week. About 300 foodies and fans paid anything from $150 to $375 to watch some low level buffoonery while these two 'stars' lapped up the adulation of several admiring young women. They cooked each of the courses on stage before teams of waiters poured out of the kitchen
to lay their offerings before us. There was plenty of pre dinner finger food, with Pommery champagne, in the foyer, which was just as well as it was a long wait for the first course. This was a carpacchio of Kingfish overwhelmed by a sweet ginger, citrus (orange) dressing with radish, coriander and Flying fish roe.
Give me sashimi next time please. This was followed, some considerable time later, by a red leg lobster angnolotti, with a barely detectable bit of lobster and no taste of it at all, accompanied by "passata", pecorino, fried basil, shallots. It looked good but the essential ingredient, a taste of lobster was AWOL. A slow cooked Hopkins River beef yearling eye fillet,
marinated then cooked in a vacuumed bag at 80 degrees for 40 minutes was terribly over cooked. You can do this at home Luke told us several times but who would want to. The smear of celeriac paste, hardly a teaspoon full, was thew best part of the dish. It came with a very ordinary feta salad. Finally the dessert called a St.Tropezian tart. I don't know how it got St. Tropez attached to its name. It was dry, heavy and desperately needed the quince and sauce Anglais.

Wines were supplied by Shelmerdine and were above average and water by Sanpellegrino. In my view it is close to criminal to buy bottled water in Melbourne where, I believe, the stuff that comes out of the tap is far superior, far cheaper and leaves a far smaller carbon footprint.
Kate Cebrano was supposed to provide entertainment. She managed one solo song and one with the company. In total the show was plebeian and the food was worse.
A final irritation was to find Luke's book on sale for $45 when two days before I paid $59 for the same thing at his gastropub!!! They say there's a sucker born every day, I've got May 27.
Score: 11.5/20