SA Weekend restaurant review — eleven Waymouth Street

Simon Wilkinson delivers one of his highest ratings of the year after sampling the signature delights at a new city restaurant from a local food hero.

The dining room at eleven on Waymouth St. Picture: Matt Loxton.

The conversation at the next table goes something like this.

Diner 1: “Where’s Callum? I thought he would be here.”

Diner 2: “Well, I’m sure Callum is very busy. He would have been here constantly at the start, helping to develop the menu, finding the right people, making sure everything ran how he wanted. Now he can step back a little.”

Which is right, to a point. The restaurant part of eleven, the bold city venture from local food personality/entrepreneur Callum Hann (who has surely outgrown the MasterChef tag) and his business partner Themis Chryssidis, can function effectively without them. The cooking is memorable. The drinks list superb.

However, I can’t help feeling that having at least one of the owners on duty, as they would normally be, would give the place what it lacks. Character. Mood. Personality. Verve. A little more confidence.

The name eleven refers to its location in Waymouth St, tucked away at the rear of an office tower. The restaurant is on the ground level, while the associated bar is spread across a raised terrace outside.

Chevre agnolotti, asparagus, burnt onion broth from eleven, Waymouth St.

It can take some time to find your bearings, even after locating the entrance and making it inside. The space between tables is narrow and, with a full house, the walls feel as if they are closing in. The music, a loud but namby-pamby collection of monotonous soft jazz, doesn’t help either. A new soundtrack would be step one in addressing the mood issues above.

But once seated and partly acclimatised (a gin helps), the outlook improves rapidly. The room is dark and handsome, with a cohesive mix of polished timber, marble, glass and other tactile materials in black, copper and deep green. The long, open kitchen is fronted by a marble chef’s table with a front row view to activity on the pass. A mix of other seating arrangements, a bar and servery fill the rest of the L-shaped room.

Chef Dan Murphy (St Hugo, Appellation) has been a mate of Hann’s since they were teens in the Barossa and helped him land his first restaurant job. Now Hann has returned the favour.

And what an inspired call it is. The contemporary French cooking is realised most often as the hero ingredients arranged on a plate with a sauce added at the table. The magic here is the extraordinary, seductive flavours to be found in liquids with the consistency of your morning tea or coffee.

It’s not all super serious. Snacks such as the milk bun with roasted chook butter and the lobster toast – a luxe play on the Chinese favourite that is a steal at $6 – are nostalgic crowd-pleasers.

King George Whiting ceviche and wakame sauce from eleven, Waymouth St, Adelaide

Strips of King George whiting are given the briefest of soaks in a delicate lemon cure so the fish is only a degree or two from raw. Tossed with the one-two crunch of pink lady apple and kohlrabi, this is the ethereal ceviche they might eat in heaven, even before a chicken and wakame sauce takes it up another gear.

Crimped pasta parcels of goat’s curd and leek are scattered with little discs of barely cooked asparagus and fronds of dill. A tea pot is used to pour over a brown broth that is made by steeping the inners of heavily charred onions and adding white soy and rice vinegar.

Themis Chryssidis and Callum Hann at their new venture elevn, on Waymouth St. Picture: Matt Loxton.

You won’t believe that three ingredients and endless hours can produce a brew that is so uplifting.

Fillets of Murray cod, perfectly cooked, mussels and turned zucchini spheres are laid around an island of nutty, chewy pearl barley that is lapped by another intriguing elixir, this time made with fish stock and yellow bean.

A small slab of short rib, lifted from its bone, is spice-rubbed, braised and finished over charcoal to develop an intense dark crust. Carrot, grilled and pureed, pickled onion and a green peppercorn sauce finish a combination that is more conventional but beautifully crafted.

Pieces of poached and dried pear, topped with a large dollop of buffalo curd, give dessert a savoury edge. A ginger crisp, glazed on one side, supplies the sweet relief. It’s all very clever.

The website for eleven kicks off with the kind of brand statement marketing people love: “Elegant … refined … modern … sophisticated … humble”. Beside the fact that claiming the first four qualities makes the final one look misplaced, I don’t think this is a restaurant that should be humble. It’s too good for that. More confidence, a little chutzpah even, will make it a force to reckon with for a long time.