So what’s all the fuss about?

Matt Moran’s inner-city restaurant Chiswick is being roasted for its exxy cauliflower. I mean, who would have thought that an art gallery restaurant could possibly overcharge?

It’s true, $57 is quite a bit more to pay than $7 for a supermarket cauli, but when staff spend hours preparing anything (and they’re compensated correctly) diners are paying for their time and expertise, not just the ingredients. If Chiswick had simply plunged the cauliflower in boiling water, à la everyone’s nan, then this would indeed be a cause for concern. However, the brassica in question has been brined, twice-cooked and smothered in a house-made harissa paste, topped with hazelnuts and served with a zucchini and pomegranate salad – now that’s an afternoon’s work right there.

And, more importantly, you’re not meant to eat the whole thing yourself (unless you’ve had a really bad day). That cauliflower is designed to be shared among four to six people, making it more of a $10 cauliflower and since when does a $10 side dish make the news?  If you devoured it between two, you’d probably find it’s the cheapest main on the menu as well as one of the more generous serves.

Do we create such a fuss when meat is given the same kind of loving treatment that the Chiswick team gives their vegetables? This is a restaurant that operates a productive kitchen garden at the Woollahra mothership and employs its own gardener, all of which must be factored into the price. We’re happy for chefs to source our meat responsibly, to give it a nice warm bath, massage it and blow smoke at it, yet when we give the same attention to vegetables there’s an outcry.

The real question is not whether this dish is overpriced, but whether the writer just wanted a platform to vent their anti-cauliflower hate-speech and convince others that it’s really just bland, boring and bleh. Sorry, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Cauliflower is a very exciting veg, it can be roasted, pureed, steamed, boiled, riced and eaten raw. And you know what? It’s fun too, especially when you drench it in an avalanche of cheese and bake it until it bubbles.

Whether it comes as a big burnished centrepiece that steals the dinner party glory, or as a wallet-friendly soup or weeknight gratin, there’s always room for it on my table.