Fino Vino: where simple is beautiful

A regional champion shows off a new bag of tricks in its first venture to the city, writes Simon Wilkinson

Fino Vino. Picture: Tait Schmaal

The little square canvases of Bridget Ohlsson show that it is possible to turn the simplest things into something quite beautiful. An apple on the table, a cup and saucer, become images that are of great depth and warmth.

Seeing these paintings again, spread across the recently opened Fino Vino, feels like bumping into an old friend. After all, they were part of the charm of the original Fino, the little cottage at Willunga that more than a decade ago was showing Australia what a regional restaurant could be.

But that was then… and this new dining room and wine bar, the first city venture for David Swain and Sharon Romeo, is no nostalgia piece.

While neither of the pair are there when we visit, some things are familiar. The design, by studio -gram, has deliberate echoes of the original in its rough-edged finishes, spare decoration and dimmed-down lighting. A menu in which each dish reads as a shopping list (“Kipfler, kale, egg yolk”) still requires a leap of faith. The selection of drinks, and the manner of their delivery, lives up to expectations.

But this is a different time, a different place and a different clientele. And Fino’s founders, who still also oversee a much bigger operation in the Barossa, are in no mood to look back.

Swain points to the plates that are plain and white for the first time, as opposed to more rustic ceramic bowls. But sitting at a bar facing the open kitchen, I notice chefs shaking sieves for a dusting of coloured powder, tweezers placing Lilliputian leaves, pipettes dispensing a final drip of flavoured oil.

Supplied Editorial Mushroom, potato, chicory at Fino Vino

Fino food used to appear as if the ingredients fell together almost by chance in the way that nature intended all along. This time there is more obvious technique, more refinement, more ambition from Swain and head chef Joe Carey (Brae, Victoria) who is running the show on this night.

The aim, as always, is to source as much as possible within the state and to make everything from scratch, including the charcuterie that hangs curing on one side.

Nearby are strings of habanero peppers that are dried and pulverised to make a fiery sprinkle for a snack of rice crackers. They are partnered by chilled wedges of apple cucumber coated in a dust of sea lettuce that’s like eating a savoury green melon.

Nothing is wasted. Wilted silverbeet leaves wrap parcels of bulgur wheat and vegie offcuts like oversized dolmades. With a potato skin wafer balanced on top and a pine nut cream beneath, it’s more worthy than wonderful.

Supplied Editorial Flatbread, oyster cream, peas at Fino Vino

That job is left to “mulloway, green tomato”, a dish that shows how the thinking has shifted. The old Fino would have been content to find the best fish and serve it raw. Now the fillet is wrapped in kelp to cure for at least three days, sliced and laid by a puddle of green tomato juice “seasoned” with kelp water. Drips of lemon verbena oil add a citrus note that drifts in an out like a fragmented memory.

Sourdough pikelets are smothered in a mortar of oyster cream holding a stack of zucchini discs and late-summer peas. Shreds of preserved lemon and sea blite add the finishing touches.

Serving sizes build the further we go.

A vegan ensemble features gently grilled ears of oyster mushroom, crisp leaves of cavolo nero and chicory strips that have been arranged around a central mound of squiggly worms of roasted potato flesh put through a ricer. The pasty spud is disappointing but it does give extra body to a mushroom broth of terrific depth.

Supplied Editorial Mulloway, green tomato at Fino Vino

Batons of duck breast, roasted on the crown and finished on the grill, are the stuff of carnivore dreams, a combination of provenance (Nature’s Chicken, Forest Range) and the kitchen which air dries the birds for three days. They come with grilled baby leeks and strips of larger leeks that have been (under)cooked in whey.

Through the night we’ve watched the pineapples that have hung above the grill since early afternoon, their sweet juices intensifying and exteriors blackening as they are brushed now and then with a rum syrup. One slice with a dollop of sabayon and our craving is satisfied.

For this brand, which has always been committed to South Australian produce, bringing fruit from interstate is a landmark moment.

On another level, however, the dish is classic Fino: turning the simplest things into something quite beautiful.

FINO VINO

82 Flinders St, city

8232 7919; finovino.net.au

OWNERS David Swain and Sharon Romeo

CHEFS David Swain and Joe Carey

FOOD Contemporary

SMALL $12-$26

MAIN$28-$34

DESSERT $14

DRINKS A typically well-constructed mid-sized list of mostly local labels supplemented from further afield where necessary.

OPENLUNCH Tue-Fri DINNER Mon-Sat

SCORE 15/20