How It’s Made: Attica’s Whipped Emu Egg

Zabaione (Italian custard)
White-wine vinegar, pineapple, sugar, Belgrove Distillery rum, chicken egg and emu egg, whisked in a Kitchenaid for 15 minutes and cooked by applying a blowtorch to the outside of the bowl. “It gives us more control,” says head chef Matt Boyle. “If it’s getting too thick we can pull back; if it’s not thick enough, we can really turn the heat up and whip it harder, faster, longer.”

Fruit spice
This is something rarely found at Attica: a store-bought ingredient. “It’s a unique seasoning,” Boyle says. “It’s ground-up stone fruits such as berries, apricots, peaches and tropical fruit.”

Ice-cream (underneath the zabaione)
A “pretty traditional” ice cream made with egg yolks, sugar, milk, cream and Daintree Estates dark-chocolate, and churned in an old Italian machine.

Emu nest
Emu feathers and two types of wood wool. Other times, the nest has been made with grass and twigs gathered from Attica’s kitchen garden.

Emu egg
Sourced from Marburg, about an hour’s drive from Brisbane. Shewry personally makes the hole in each emu-egg shell using a Dremel rotary tool – a two-minute process. “I’m pretty sure he's scared of one of us cutting our fingers off,” Boyle says. After each service they’re handwashed by the chefs (rather than dishies) and stored for the next evening. “One thing that really sucks is, some of the guests think it’s cool to smash the egg,” Boyle says. “It’s quite devastating when the waiters walk back with a crushed shell in their hands.”