• Danielle Alvarez recipes

Sydney chef Danielle Alvarez has announced she will be stepping down as head chef of two-hatted Paddington restaurant, Fred's, where she brought a vision of "simple, delicious food around a fireplace" to life.

US-born Alvarez developed the concept of a produce-driven restaurant "where friends and family could gather to celebrate life" alongside Merivale chief executive officer Justin Hemmes as they sat around his kitchen table more than five years ago.

Fred's fast rose to prominence for its pared-back, woodfire cooking, served by linen-clad waitstaff in an intimate, open kitchen setting.

"Without a doubt, developing Fred's with Justin … and then bringing it to life, has been the greatest and most satisfying achievement of my professional career," Alvarez says.

"It has been an incredible journey watching this dream of feeding simple, delicious, high-quality food to people in a beautiful setting surrounded by an open fire come to fruition.

"I am so proud of the place it is today, cemented in the Paddington and Sydney community."

Alvarez will serve her last dish at Fred's on May 15, saying she will "take some time away from the front line to focus more on the creative aspects" of her career.

"As with all creations there must come a time where the baton is passed on to the next person to lead a new chapter," she says.

"I can't wait to see how Fred's continues to evolve."

Chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald Terry Durack described Avarez's cooking as "calmly embedding the Chez Panisse ethos of sustainable, local, seasonal and simple" by celebrating both the ingredients and the direct nature of fire, smoke and flame.

In the 2020 Good Food Guide, the restaurant was awarded two hats for its "show-stopping" dishes, which included a yellowfin tuna, grilled rare and served with a caramelised miso-licked eggplant as a "perfect example of that Alvarez flex".