Nora

Signature dish: ‘Daft Punk is playing in my mouth’ – pickled mackerel with compressed watermelon, black sesame paste and green chilli granita.

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156 Elgin Street, Carlton, 9041 8644

My score: 3.5/5

Nora is the restaurant as trust game, the culinary equivalent of closing your eyes and leaning back into space. The chef is as much artist as cook. The food is a series of tasty tricks. The multi-course menu is compulsory but you don’t see it until you’ve eaten it.

The flavours are Thai but you won’t have eaten any of Nora’s dishes before. They are highly original and include items you may not order if you saw them on a menu (insects, innards). It’s risky and it won’t be for everyone but, ‘If’ if you’re happy to give yourself over, it’s a fun ride.

A meal here is as much art experience as dinner, which makes sense when you learn that chef Sarin Rojanametin, 26, has a fine art background. He made the plates and, with partner Jean Thamthanakorn, designed the spare, stylised 20-seat dining room.

What’s entirely curious is that Sarin is a self-taught cook with no track record in restaurants. Like, none. Prior to opening Nora (as a cafe) in October 2014, his only cooking experience was making himself stir-fries as a student “to survive”. He thinks growing up in Bangkok in a family of excellent cooks and with a lunch market outside the front door may have trained his taste buds, if not his hands. Then, with a little experience making coffee but certainly without a plan to change the face of dining, he and Jean opened Nora. They soon added a Friday night ‘dinner club’ and, in March, refashioned it as a degustation-only restaurant.

The mysteries of Nora’s dishes are their key, so I’m loathe to tell you too much about them. However, I will spill the beans on the mackerel. A salted, lightly pickled skin-on fillet is laid over a sheet of compressed watermelon flavoured with white wine vinegar and mirin. Green chilli granita is piled over the fish and a dot of black sesame paste punctuates the icy cold plate. The succulence at low temperature is striking and the spicy snow and oily fish combine thrillingly.

The mackerel course is called ‘Daftpunk is playing in my mouth’ and it’s something of a signature dish. All the dishes have kooky, conceptual names that tell you less than nothing about them. The only thing you can be sure about ‘Sorry I’m crabby today’ is that there’s no crab in it.

Thai cuisine is famously balanced and there is a poise to this food, both in individual dishes, and through the menu’s progression, which is more of a delicate highwire act than a dogged trek from light to heavy to sweet. Thai tones predominate – spice, salt, sweet and sour – interwoven with a sensitive plundering of the European canon. There’s a cake of sorts, ‘Thai cupcake wanting to become western’, that plays on soufflé, Thai street snacks and the humble baked spud. A noodle dish references the local neighbourhood – it’s called ‘Too many Italians and only one Asian’. This food is serious, jokey and earnest all at once.

It almost goes without saying that the wines and sakes are ‘natural’ and low-intervention; there are creative non-alcoholic drinks too, like a fermented strawberry, basil and balsamic juice with tamarind.

The small team are welcoming, warm and winningly enthusiastic but you wouldn’t come just because you’re hungry. This is food that wants to be noticed. It’s edgy and arty, but it amply repays attention and trust. If you are looking for a feed, there will be restaurants to suit you better. If you’re open to a thoughtful rethink of what dinner might be then you must give Nora a go.

See their website.

More Degustation:

IDES, 92 Smith Street, Collingwood, 9939 9542.
Ex-Attica sous chef Peter Gunn has been running IDES pop-ups for three years. He’s now found a permanent home for his contemporary degustations. Ask about One Day Sunday, a monthly rehash of the restaurant. (This month it’s becoming a jazz club.)

Igni, Ryan Place, Geelong, 5222 2266.
The Geelong area last enjoyed Aaron Turner food at Drysdale’s Loam and fans are happy to see him back at this degustation-only restaurant that makes much use of a charcoal grill.

Amaru, 1121 High Street, Armadale, 9822 0144.
Clinton McIvor’s degustation menus aim to be a sensory and expressive reflection of contemporary Australian cuisine.

First published in The Age, 8th May 2016.