Silvereye, Sydney: restaurant review

Pine cones? For dinner? It’s not the only surprise at Silvereye, the ultimate cashed-up hipster diner.

TWAM-20151128 EMBARGO FOR TWAM 28 Nov 2015 NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION Silvereye restaurant - baby turnips Pic : Nikki Short

Pine cones? For dinner? If nothing else, the New Foragers have broadened our horizons; and Silvereye’s Sam Miller is a New Forager of the first order.

A small piece of lamb arrives, naked on a hand-made plate. It’s juniper-smoked and sprinkled with pickled, minuscule Monterey pine cones, the result of a little Pinus radiata infanticide during a recent foraging trip. A first for everything.

A small native bird lends its name to this restaurant in Sydney’s Old Clare Hotel redevelopment, chic feather in an otherwise gritty Chippendale cap. It’s bankrolled by Singaporean hotelier Loh Lik Peng and fronted by Miller, a former Noma veteran who also worked alongside Magnus Nilsson at Fäviken in Sweden. In the pantheon of New Forager gods, they get no bigger.

Given Noma fever has gripped Australia (the Sydney pop-up was reportedly fully booked in 90 seconds at $970 per double), you’d expect Miller’s bespoke, beautiful timber and mottled plaster dining room to be jammed at $175 per. Or $140. (They are your only choices.) But despite the hype, it’s actually not. We arrive to a mass greeting from the kitchen brigade (everyone gets this) and a slightly divisive night-long playlist of Herbie Hancock, the pricklier stuff. It’s a metaphor for the restaurant.

Miller’s food is spare, clean; it employs lots of bitter notes, briny succulents, ryes and malts, subtle fermented flavours. And a few indigenous ingredients, like the wattle seed that comes in a cracker snack with pork fat in the batter. Interesting. The snacks are the first wave, randomly arriving with relaxed professionalism rather than pretentious diner “education” often associated with restaurants like this. They sum the place up.

A seemingly raw white asparagus spear, peeled and split, dressed with Douglas fir salt. Just-cooked baby turnips in macadamia cream with olive oil, their stalks still raw and attached to malt tempura battered/fried leaves dusted with lavender salt. Clever.

And a whole redspot whiting skeleton, head and all, fried so as to be edible, which is pimped with its own cold-smoked flesh, watercress cream, sea succulents and smoked oyster cream in the head cavity. This fish is the wow moment for me, the point of collision between inspiration and satisfaction.

For while I enjoy everything here – the lightness, the rawness, the emphasis on vegetables/herbs, the astringency of many elements, the “natural” aesthetic of the dining room that showcases it all – the food doesn’t rise often enough to levels of extraordinary pleasure. I mean, a chilled wakame broth with green peas, soft green almonds, ice plant and seaweed will have you admiring its creator, but won’t have you moaning.

Ditto wafers of salt-baked beetroot with a blackcurrant sauce, camomile buds and a variety of earthy/anise aromas from fresh herbs. Or meaty cobia served with an acidic fennel spinach sauce and a mound of fennel cooked in whey, beneath a sheath of lardo. You know, it’s all pretty nice.

But memories? The oxtail meat, dressed in blackcurrant wood oil and blackcurrant leaf salt, served with a blueberry and radicchio compote and a chard sauce, is a definite: familiar gelatinous, sticky and comforting meat qualities with surprising vegetal minor notes.

And that morsel of lamb shoulder with juniper and pine? Gristle marred the experience.

Desserts follow the same clean and precise herbaceous/bitter route. The standout involves white peach, mint jelly, peach sorbet and dehydrated berries. Frozen mango with thyme, and caramel ice cream thrills less. It’s an engaging but uneven journey.

These are early days for Silvereye, currently Australia’s ultimate cashed-up hipster diner. Its evolution will be interesting.

Address: 20 Broadway, Chippendale, Sydney

Phone: [phone] Web: silvereye-restaurant.com.au

Hours: Dinner Tue-Sat

Typical prices: Short $140; long $175

Summary: Yet to take flight

Like this? Try… Momofuku Seiobo, Sydney; Orana, Adelaide

Stars: 3.5 out of 5