Next month, head chef of New York City's Michelin Star gastro-pub, the Spotted Pig and the newly opened Breslin Bar & Dining Room, April Bloomfield, is coming to Melbourne to participate in Crown’s Stars of America program as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
British-born Bloomfield never wanted to be a chef. She dreamt of becoming a policewoman, but when her application to join the police force was late, she changed career paths and became a chef. New York’s dining public would agree that the U.K.’s policing loss, is indeed the U.S.’s eastern states’ gain.
One of her dishes, her light-as-a-feather gnudi (Italian for nude) has even inspired a song, called “Ode to Gnudi”. The sheep’s milk ricotta dumplings served with brown butter and sage, have been likened to ravioli, but without the skin, and are just one of the reasons the no reservations Spotted Pig often has lengthy queues of hungry New Yorkers waiting for a table. Demand for gnudi is so strong, 60 portions are prepared each day.
Hoards of eager eaters also line up to soak up the Spotted Pig’s rustic atmosphere and to taste imaginative meat-based dishes such as veal kidney with pancetta, cippolini and mustard sauce or roasted striped sea bass with mashed potato and parsley sauce. Her signature burger at the Spotted Pig is featured on New York magazine’s coveted burger register which lists 82 of the city’s most notable burgers.
The newly opened Breslin Bar & Dining Room is already receiving wide-reaching acclaim for its pork fat fried peanuts, beef and Stilton pie, onion and bone marrow soup, braised shin of beef and stuffed pig’s feet.
April credits The River Café’s Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers as her mentors and inspiration. Bloomfield comments that Gray and Rogers, “enlightened my palate to fresh, clean and vibrant flavours.” She worked at London’s famed River Café and Kensington Place before relocating to New York City via California, to open the Mario Batali backed Spotted Pig in the early noughties.
April is an advocate and supporter of Share our Strength and the New York Food Bank. Accolades for the Spotted Pig’s co-owner, April Bloomfield, include April being named “Best New Chef” in Food and Wine magazine’s 2007 Best New Chefs Awards and the Spotted Pig’s single Michelin Star being awarded for five consecutive years.
The Stars of America program is the second in a series of three which includes the 2009 Stars of Europe, which featured five Michelin starred chefs. The brainchild of Crown’s Executive General Manager, Food & Beverage, Walter Wagner, the “Stars” series was created to enable a showcase of world-renowned chefs from three distinct culinary regions.
