Restaurant review: Blanca, Bondi Beach

Blanca comes with an intriguing back story, that of chef owner Tomi Bjorck.

John Lethlean

2 min read

12:00AMMarch 25, 2017

Fun, loud and sassy: inside Blanca. Picture: Jane Dempster

I hate Bondi Beach. Makes me feel old, fat, short of hair. Too shackled. It rubs sea salt into all my significant neuroses. It’s no place for anyone over 50.

But at least it doesn’t make me feel hungry. Campbell Parade is a boulevard of ghastly sub-mediocrity — franchises and chains flogging sugar, fat and artificial flavourings.

You’ve got to take the higher ground. Head up Hall Street, a gentle incline to stretch the ageing calves, past the Messina phenomenon, past Bills, and your nose should pick up Da Orazio, maybe the loudest restaurant in the world but one with more Italian brio than a red Ducati with Termignoni pipes, and some of the best pizza outside Naples.

Now there’s another interesting joint. Blanca comes with an intriguing back story, that of chef owner Tomi Bjorck. He’s the Jason Atherton of Finland, except his thing is Thai/ModAsian, which he picked up yonks ago working at Longrain in Sydney. Bjorck went home, opened five big restaurants in Helsinki and Stockholm, did all the telly stuff and became a food star. Killed it.

But he never forgot Sydney, or Bondi. So he sold down a significant stake in his Nordic empire and came back here last year with a pocket full of euros to find a site and set up with his wife Minka and mate Samuel Cole, a former Heston Blumenthal chef. Blanca is the result. What a result.

A white-on-white dining space with an open kitchen down one flank, Blanca is fun, loud, sassy and home to some really interesting food that puts a bit of Japan into traditional Euro ideas. Just about every waiter is Scandinavian; ours is Swedish, dark-haired — the Girl With the Mandala Tattoo — and so on top of the task. It’s these little bites of interaction with the staff that add value to the experience. For a new place, it is surprisingly together: professional, without the po-face.

And the food? Nokia meets Sony. There are snacks and the rest; at $69, a seven-course tasting menu is a much better way to chat with a friend than poncing around with menu choices for half an hour.

The first offering sums up the bowerbird Blanca approach: a kind of mini Japanese miso-flavoured beef tartare peppered with crunchy pieces of pickled veg, dressed with wasabi mayo, the piquant Japanese seasoning yuzu kosho and toasted nori … all on a sesame leaf you roll up like a Thai betel leaf. Brilliant.

Equally so bonito “pastrami” (pictured), the fish cured in limey spices, blow-torched and served with an intriguing dressing of citrusy yuzu, soy and brown butter, and ribbons of dashi-pickled kohlrabi, all scattered with a kombu powder.

The menu swings from these delicate morsels to rugged pork ribs in miso caramel with ground crackling which you wrap with baby gem lettuce, an almost Vietnamese approach. Excellent. Between, you’ll see a wonderful squid ink steamed bao with soft shell crab, XO mayo, cabbage and vinegar. Kinda Korean; particularly good.

Octopus — terrine and grilled tentacle — with a Spanish Romesco sauce is one of a few dishes here I’d label merely “pretty good”; the other is a white miso marinated piece of salmon with a dashi butter sauce. I know aquaculture is important, but farmed salmon … we can do better.

The set-piece dessert is a white choc/matcha mousse with almond cake, strawberry sorbet, crushed pistachio and fresh berries: fresh, bold, fun, cleverly executed.

At Blanca, I feel right at home. Back on Campbell Parade, it feels like a different world. It is.