The Maestro’s Vegetarian Degustation

Name: The Maestro’s Vegetarian Degustation
Cuisine: Australia
Ingredients: gazpacho; puff pastry; sweet eggplant; sour curried eggplant; vegetarian mock goose meat; silken tofu; smoked soya bean; tomato tarragon jelly

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Cheong Liew

By David Sly and Cheong Liew

Published 2025

About

This was an extravagant celebration of vegetables that Cheong designed in 1998 to appease an Italian maestro staying at the Hilton Adelaide during performances of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. He was a vegetarian with particular taste and Cheong ensured that he dined luxuriously at The Grange restaurant.

Method

The elements of this vegetarian degustation were not new – individual parts had popped up in many of Cheong’s menus over the years – but putting them together as a single banquet was a fresh idea that reflected growing respect for vegetables as hero ingredients in elite restaurant menus.

I’d already presented a vegetarian platter at Neddy’s – the Dingwu vegetarian platt