What’s cooking? A pinch of spice is more than nice at Sultans Kitchen
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry) is one of the tastiest shows at this year’s Brisbane Festival.
There aren’t many shows where you emerge and say the play was as good as the food, but A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry) certainly passed the taste test.
Telling the multi-layered story of his family’s past while cooking his grandmother Mehmeh’s chicken curry, Joshua Hinton recalls his heritage, sprinkled with a message so needed right now – that we are all not as far apart culturally as we think. And that food unites us all.
The Australian singer-songwriter unpicks his origins going back generations by skilfully weaving into his conversation audio interviews with his grandmother while the aromas of turmeric, garam masala, cinnamon, chilli, tomato and chicken float over the audience like a spell.
The spice bottles from his onstage kitchen become integral parts of the story, with photos of his family emerging from the spice rack to become characters in his grandmother’s recollections. Kitchen utensils magically becoming war planes in war stories.
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Joshua’s brother Dominic is also on stage throughout, on guitar and supporting his brother by controlling multi-media shots from a range of angles around the kitchen to highlight crucial elements in the evolution of the curry. This all reveals aspects of Joshua’s identity, living between cultures.
For Brisbane lovers and appreciators of Sultans Kitchen, a staple of the Paddington foodie scene for more than 40 years, this is somewhat compulsory viewing to see the incredible challenges that the founders of this Brisbane institution overcame to build this restaurant.
Hinton is a skilled storyteller as well as musician, wrapping up his culinary journey around the world with an original song sung with his brother, satisfying all the senses before the audience steps outside to partake of the chicken curry that formed the backbone of the tale. It was a beguilingly simple device executed perfectly, and a night to remember.
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry) plays the Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, until September 20.
brisbanefestival.com.au/events/a-place-in-the-sultans-kitchen