Firedoor, Sydney: restaurant review

The 500g steak is $78, and it’s worth every cent. How does Lennox Hastie weave this magic?

Firedoor restaurant. Picture: Nikki Short

You will order the beef. You may not plan to, you possibly can’t afford to, but you will order the beef. You’ll be thinking: I’m not that hungry, lunch was generous, and a few fishy things with salad is all it will take.

Technically, correct. But after you’ve sat there a while, talking, drinking, watching the furnace roar, the smoke rise from the coals and Lennox Hastie firing up a band-saw to slice pieces of beef on the bone from a massive rib-section of brownish, 150-day dry-aged meat… Once you’ve seen it on a height-adjustable stainless steel grill engulfed by flame and smoke, a rich, sweet smell filling the kitchen and dining room… Once you have seen the finished product, a dirty/glossy, chary black/brown on the outside, glistening beetroot-red flesh beneath, smelling like a sexy porcino mushroom… You will order the beef.

Firedoor is the restaurant of a chef who got his itch for cooking with charcoal and radiant heat during five years at Etxebarri, in Basque Spain. Firedoor is the scratch.

Aside from a Thermomix (antichrist to the chef’s religion of fire and smoke, but probably helpful for desserts), all the cooking is grilling over charcoal, on a range fuelled by wood, or in the massive furnace, where charcoal is produced from a variety of hardwoods. It’s industrial revolution stuff.

This is like no kitchen you’ve seen and at the bench we’re ringside: it is primitive, raw, exciting and delicious. Strangely, it is everything the internationally renowned Etxebarri, with its rather ascetic dining room and no visceral connection with the kitchen and fire, is not. New World thinking improves the Old World breed. Your interface with the heat and smoke, the smells, the perspiration on chefs shovelling glowing coals, is very real.

So let’s start with that beef: O’Connor Premium branded Angus/Hereford cross from South Gippsland, hung for five months in its own fat at Vic’s Meats in Sydney. I’ve never eaten meat like it. It’s like a solid beef stock, full of rich, almost liverish/cheesy flavour with a sweet smell and a dense, fleshy texture, the essence of aged and concentrated proteins. Hastie (pictured) serves it sliced on a nice asymmetric plate with just one optional condiment: salt. It comes with a baby leaf salad and at $78 for a 500g piece, it’s no steal. I’m pleased temptation won.

Firedoor is out on a limb. It is all about the simple application of raw heat and smoke to protein and vegetables, and the belief that there is little that cannot be improved with charcoal. And it’s difficult to argue with the Hastie haute barbecue mantra once you’ve scoffed your way through a series of dishes.

A bug tail served on a puddle of taupe mullet roe with apple and cresses, the olfactory nuance of that exoskeleton/heat/smoke combination lingering on the jelly-like flesh. I’d like more seasoning, or contrast, in that roe but there’s no denying the glory of the crustacean.

Marron killed to order that twitch on the grill as their shells turn red before their heads are filled with finger lime and sent to the diner. Superb. Exceptional pippies cooked in a sieve on the grill over smoke before being tossed with garlic, butter, young garlic stems and fresh chilli. Jeepers. Bitter, smoky grilled salad leaves tossed with lardy guanciale and toasted pecans. A fillet of gurnard, beautiful, firm-fleshed fish that is smoke-grilled and served on cima di rapa (turnip greens) with a lemony emulsion and a line of pickled carrot and fennel buds.

Oh, and some beef. The beef. The steak that may spoil you, forever.

Because the food is so not tricked up, rarely has the “produce first” spiel been so important, or transparent. Hastie has certainly nailed the gear he uses, from firewood to edibles.

His staff, courtesy of backers The Fink Group (Quay, Otto, etc) will charm you rotten but they need to get their stories straight on where the produce is sourced. Minor glitch, really. Hot in every sense.

Address: 23-33 Mary Street, Surry Hills

Phone: [phone] Web: firedoor.com.au

Hours: Lunch Fri; dinner Tue-Sat

Typical prices: Starters $24; larger dishes $40; desserts $16

Summary: Unique baptism of fire

Like this? Try… Porteño, Sydney

Stars (out of five): 4