SA Weekend restaurant review — Oceanique at West Beach

A metropolitan sailing club is the unlikely setting for a restaurant that takes pride in using seafood that the others reject, writes Simon Wilkinson.

Balcony at Oceanique, West Beach.

Whoever came up with the idiom “Plenty of fish in the sea” clearly didn’t base their research on dining out in Adelaide. If marine life was narrowed down to varieties making an appearance in our restaurants, the list would comprise little more than whiting, snapper, flathead and squid.

Which is why finding snook on a menu is a wonderful surprise for anyone who believes using some of our lesser known species is key to the sustainability of our fisheries. For those who haven’t spent dreamy summer days dragging a lure behind a tinny, snook is a slender torpedo of a fish, with a long snout and a mouth full of nasty, needle-sharp teeth.

It needs to be carefully handled and cooked as fresh as possible, which is what they do at Oceanique.

Three glistening, silver-skinned fillets are draped across the top of a bowl filled with asparagus, peas, broad spinach and fregola (either tiny pasta or fat couscous depending on your point of view), all submerged in a pool of nettle puree that is greener than the back lawn after a heavy spring shower. The fish is clean, delicate and fine-textured, and the whole dish has a virtuous glow.

But Oceanique is neither a health food store nor a pretentious contemporary diner charging above-the-odds. The most inspiring part is that such principled, high quality cooking is to be found in a metropolitan sailing club, where the most popular order remains fish and chips.

Snook

For that we can thank, first, Sam Dunning, his sister Lucy and their extended families, who saw the potential in the expanse of dining and function space offered by the Adelaide Sailing Club.

Set well off the road and overlooking the West Beach Boat Ramp, this facility was built in the late 90s with a clear brief to maximise the sea views from the upperdeck and its long balcony.

Inside, an old sailing dinghy has been plonked in the midst of the tables, but otherwise the room feels like a typical community club/pub, with a strong following among boomers and younger families. While the Dunnings took control a couple of years ago, it is the recent hiring of chefs Tobias Gush and Gordon Lee (previously in charge of the kitchen at Chianti) that has made Oceanique something special.

The pair have used the lockdown time to build on their network of contacts, so they now deal directly with fishing folk rather than relying on a middleman. Seafood is picked up regularly from the depot or airport. It would only be fresher if they were casting a line from the breakwater below.

The fish and chips at Oceanique.

A selection of dishes from Oceanique, West Beach.

The same attitude applies to vegies that are bought at the Adelaide Farmers’ Market each Sunday. Celebrations of the spring garden don’t get much better than artichoke heart, broad beans (peeled and unpeeled), peas, young onions and parsley that are loaded on to a slice of toasted rye bread spread with olive tapenade.

Whole albacore tuna, flown direct from Mooloolaba, is translated into a ceviche of rose-pink cubes tossed with an avocado puree and lime/chilli/coriander dressing. Corn tortilla served to the side are neither crisp enough to snap or soft enough to fold.

Fillets of ocean jacket trapped in waters near Coffin Bay are wrapped in a crisp batter with bubbles like honeycomb. Served with a yoghurt-based tartare that is thick with capers and gherkins, and a red cabbage and beet slaw, this is exceptional fish and chips.

Mussels from Port Lincoln and Coorong pipis have washed up on to a mound of risotto made with the liquid in which the shellfish have steamed, as well as a generous amount of butter and parmesan.

No short cuts are taken with the crab spaghettini, either. Raw blue swimmers are painstakingly stripped of their fragile meat that is cooked to order in a cream sauce flavoured with the leftover shells and coral. The shells are also used to infuse an oil that adds an extra layer of crustacean flavour.

To finish, a wedge of basque cheesecake, with signature blackened top, is partnered by batons of roasted rhubarb and a rhubarb syrup.

The supply of wild-caught fish cannot be guaranteed in the same way as ordering beef or chicken, so by this weekend the snook might be replaced by skate or tommies or red mullet.

You might even see a tuna head or kingfish wing heading out to another table. Plenty of fish in the sea? Yessiree.