During the 16 months since Danielle Alvarez departed two-hat Paddington restaurant Fred’s, the question has remained: what’s next for the star chef?

The US-born Alvarez has been busy writing cookbooks and delivering her popular recipes for Good Food, but it was only a matter of time before she stepped back into a commercial kitchen. And she’s headed to a national icon, taking the stage at the Sydney Opera House as its new culinary director of event venues.

“It’s one of the first places I visited [when I came to Sydney]; it’s always special whenever you go there,” she says. She first became fascinated by the Opera House as a child when an image of it popped up in a computer game. “If you’d told me I’d be working there, doing my food in that space, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The chef, who recently became an Australian citizen, will oversee the menus in the event spaces under the famous sails for the Trippas White Group. The creative director brief includes menus for private dinners, weddings and big events across the Yallamundi and Utzon Rooms, and the Northern Foyer.

Alvarez worked at famed California restaurant Chez Panisse before Merivale recruited her to open Fred’s in 2016.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief restaurant critic, Terry Durack, said in an early review of Fred’s that almost everything at the restaurant “comes touched by flame, smoke or coals.”

“[Alvarez] calmly embeds into the menu the Chez Panisse ethos of sustainable, local, seasonal and simple. So simple that you find yourself thinking about the ingredients rather than the dish,” Durack wrote.

The challenge for Alvarez is transplanting the hands-on, produce-driven approach of a diminutive restaurant like Fred’s to a large-scale operation. She’s already worked with the team on an octopus dish with macadamia puree and crispy saltbush, and oysters with passionfruit and finger lime mignonette for the canape line-up.

“They [the chefs] have been really supportive,” she says. “It’s a great kitchen with lots of women.”

To kick off the appointment, Alvarez will appear in conversation with co-author and writer Libby Travers to celebrate the launch of Alvarez’s latest book, Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking (published by Murdoch Books on November 7).

The event will take place on Friday, November 10 at the Opera House’s Yallamundi Rooms.

For tickets, see sydneyoperahouse.com