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Ester’s stone-grey, pared-back dining room is where hatted chefs go for a three-bottle lunch, and where basically everybody, Nigella Lawson included, loves the contrast of hot, craggy rolls of fermented potato bread against trout roe, kefir cream and dashi jelly.

Chef Mat Lindsay opened the restaurant in 2013, and it’s been a bolthole of invigorating, singular dishes ever since, each one touched by a wood-fired oven that specialises in coaxing novel flavours from familiar ingredients.

New hits on the otherwise sleepy Chippendale block include twice cooked pork belly glazed with burnt honey and set in a husk of roasted leek with macadamia cream, and duck dumplings braised in a handsome claypot with a broth that speaks of smoke, fish bones, pepper and tamari.

This is also where everyone should visit for a “crepe brulee”. That’s a creme patissiere-filled pancake with a surface that’s all snap, crackle and “how good is this?”