By Annabel Ross
It's not enough just to listen to bands at Melbourne's Sugar Mountain Festival of music and art. Organisers engaged the audience's other senses at the event Southbank event on Saturday with a pop-up restaurant.
Sugar Mountain is Melbourne's hippest large-scale festival, so it's no surprise that their "immersive restaurant experiment", Sensory, has attracted some of the buzziest names in the business to enliven the ears, eyes and tastebuds.
Feast for the senses: Visitors to the immersive Sensory restaurant at Sugar Mountain Festival had to wear laser goggles to see their food – including this dish of mango and cocoa nibs with caramelised whey – while listening to deafening bass vibrations.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
This year it's chef Peter Gunn and his team at Ides restaurant in Collingwood; Daniel Arsham, a New York-based artist who has recently collaborated with US singer Pharrell Williams; and S U R V I V E, the Texan outfit behind the score of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things.
It's a highly stimulating triumvirate, from Arsham's glaringly white interior (later juxtaposed with a dark room necessitating glowing night vision goggles) to an electronic score that is by turns relaxing and rousing, to Gunn's inventive menu with an emphasis on sweet and sour elements.
Guests are served onion, mustard seeds and sour plum broth in a glass at the Sugar Mountain Festival's Sensory restaurant.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
Simple wedges of cos lettuce positively sing with the addition of lemon oil, salt and pepper and a chardonnay vinaigrette, while pickled onion and toasted sesame seeds come to life doused in a sour plum wine.
At one point the white room's central table is lifted to reveal a box filled with blue sand which is slowly combed with rakes by girls in purple jumpsuits, long fringed headbands covering their faces. It's surreal, but strangely calming.
Before we put on the night goggles we eat our main course in the dark, and it's disconcerting. For one, it's hard to find the food on your plate when you can't see what's in front of you. Secondly, and most surprisingly, darkness has the effect of somehow changing the taste of food in your mouth. It amplifies the flavour while at the same time distorting your perception of exactly what it is that you're eating. Trout can start to taste like Don Strasberg once visual cues are taken out of the equation.
Still, the overall experience is a memorable one, and we didn't come here for a run of the mill meal, did we? For something more ordinary, you needed only head to the hipster food trucks selling everything from 8-bit Burgers to nut-free vegan soba noodle concoctions to coconut water cocktails.
Food for thought: Rainbow trout with blood orange and zucchini fritters served at Sensory restaurant, part of the Sugar Mountain Festival.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
Sugar Mountain caters to its clientele – trendy types with discerning tastes – with a roster of excellent music from headliners including the Avalanches spanning genres from electronic to folk to hip-hop. The site dotted, on the grounds of the Victorian College of the Arts, includes an "augmented reality environment" accessible via a phone app.