Restaurants are focusing on one or two dishes and doing them well
WHEN it comes to menus, bigger no longer means better.
Sydney Taste
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RESTAURANTS are downsizing, focusing on one or two things and doing them well rather than trying to be being everything to everyone. The latest is new eatery Bistecca, which opened this week at 4 Bridge St, City.
It only serves one cut of beef — the T-bone or bistecca in Italian — along with a cicchetti menu, Venetian-style small snacks and sides for the steak.
Inspired by the restaurants of Florence, co-owner James Bradey had the vision of choosing one thing and doing it to the best of his ability.
“When travelling with my wife and daughter in Tuscany, we went to a restaurant that only served bistecca and I thought, this is it,” he says. “It’s the best steak because it’s cooked on the bone and you get two cuts of meat on it — the fillet and sirloin.
“Meat always tastes better when cooked on the bone. If you want something a little bit lighter, tender and less fatty you have the fillet and the sirloin is richer, full of flavour and with more bite to it.”
In Italy, the meat is usually cut three fingers thick, cooked over charcoal and served blue, but Bradey is adapting his version to local palettes.
“When it’s cooked blue, the fat doesn’t break down, so we will cook it medium rare. The fat has enough time to break down but it’s still moist and pink,” he says.
“We will cut it slightly thinner too, no less than 40mm and 600g.
“We are cooking it over an open fire using charcoal as a heat source, with oak and hardwoods for flavour and olive branches for a bit of smoke. It will be sealed on all four sides; bone, fat and open sides over a grill, then rested for a bit and finished in the oven.”
Bradey believes sticking to a single cut is specialising rather than a gimmick.
“I’d rather go somewhere that does one thing extremely well rather than one where the menu offers seafood, pizza, pad thai and a bowl of soup and trying to tick every box,” he says.
362 Oxford St, Paddington
The only protein you’ll get here is seafood, but if you’re lucky enough to dine on the day the barbecue broadbill is on the menu you won’t miss meat. Served on the bone, it’s the seafood equivalent of a bistecca.
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