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I wasn’t overly keen to eat at Allta, a new fine-dining restaurant in the CBD. My wife was away; I would be sitting alone. I love a solo mission to a wine bar or ramen shop, but this tasting menu of “elevated Korean gastronomy” was set to take four hours from “hello” to “please press the button to leave a tip”.

Few things fill me with dread as much as reading “each bite tells a story” in a press release. Everything was going to be inspired by a favourite childhood snack or “chef’s time growing up in his grandmother’s kitchen”, wasn’t it? There would be clumsy service, too much food and I would leave feeling like a foie gras goose served its last rites.

Anyway, it turns out there was none of that. Allta is one of the best new
restaurants to open this year.

Perched on Pitt Street near Circular Quay, the six-week-old operation is also a lot of fun. Soon after arriving at 6pm, you’re offered a choice of five excellent champagnes or some very nice tea. There is jazz and marble and cushioned chairs, and timber slats arch over diners like a blond wood Hokusai wave.

The show starts when the lights dim and West African funk starts pumping, and three meticulous “snacks” arrive one by one. There’s a crunchy “naeng-chae” bundle of nashi pear, carrot and cucumber batons, honed with mustard and tied with a knot of confit egg yolk smooth like a still lake. I’m sold.

Before we get any further, I should say that Allta is also the most expensive restaurant to open this year. It seats no more than a dozen guests a night, and chef Jung-Su Chang’s 15-course menu costs – brace for impact – $325 per person.

For comparison, Quay will set you back $310 for six courses, and it has three hats and one of the best views in Australia. All you can see through Allta’s windows are the bright lights of an EzyMart.

There is, however, always something happening in the open kitchen to hold your interest. At one point, I notice Jung-Su peeling floppy, palm-sized discs from baking paper and layering each one across a crimson-red heap of pickled capsicum.

The floppy disc is pounded scampi, and Jung-Su sparks up the translucent shellfish with lime zest and wild perilla leaf oil. Soy-cured egg yolk adds creaminess, and the end result looks like something you might encounter at a kids’ Halloween party. “Ewww! Smooshed zombie brains!” It’s delicious.

The money behind all this comes from restaurateurs Jangho So and Sunyoung Kim, who also own Korean party spot Funda next door. Jung-Su comes to Sydney after an executive chef stint at acclaimed Seoul fine-diner Jungsik, holding down the fort when its namesake chef, Yim Jungsik, was cooking at his New York City outpost. Both Jungsik restaurants trade in modern black-tie riffs on Korean cornerstone dishes, and that’s largely the playbook here.

If you grew up eating seaweed soup miyeok-guk, Jung-Su’s tribute to the form will likely send your nostalgia receptors into overdrive. For everyone else, it’s simply a very nice piece of wagyu tenderloin, laid over ponzu-poached seaweed with thick burnt-butter sauce.

Other highlights include curls of tender, hibachi-singed squid teamed with a glob of oscietra caviar and further enriched by salsify-infused beurre blanc; magnificently buttery toothfish on a bed of mussel-fortified “porridge” with braised daikon and nutty Jerusalem artichoke foam; and a milky guk-bap soup, built on beef shin simmered for three to four hours, and served with grilled oyster mushrooms and sticky rice.

It’s lighter than the eight-hour broths you might have encountered at Yeodongsik in Lidcombe, say, but every bit as comforting. (And if it was any heavier, I wouldn’t have made it to the other side of an ornate ginseng and white chocolate mousse, set in the shape of a hockey puck and doused in tart apple consomme.)

A small floor team led by venue manager John Kuak is impressive too, delivering a controlled style of Western European service similar to nearby Bentley Restaurant + Bar or Crown’s Oncore by Clare Smyth.

Sommelier Sebastian Brogren pours spot-on matches by producers including Larmandier-Bernier and By Farr; an instant camera is on hand for any couples who would like a souvenir photograph of the night.

Fine-diners anchored to Korean cuisine have been a growing trend in New York over the past few years, and Jungsik was a pioneer of the style when it opened in 2011. Now it might be Sydney’s turn.

There isn’t the same frequency of “sing hallelujah” moments like you will
experience at other special occasion restaurants in this price range, but just-open Allta is still finding its feet. File it under “one to watch and then some”.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine