The executive chef at Norway’s famed Maaemo restaurant will transplant its Nordic menu to the iconic Berowra Waters Inn next month.

The move not only adds to the tally of Michelin three-star talent headed Sydney’s way in July, but leaves the inn’s owner-chef Brian Geraghty with an unusual shopping list.

“We had an issue finding butter in Australia with the same fat content as Norway to use in the brown butter ice-cream, hazelnut crumble and coffee molasses, but we think we’ve found one that’s close,” Geraghty says.

He has also engaged a local hunter to track down wild deer heart to use in Maaemo’s congee with smoked reindeer heart and black vinegar.

And there’ll be some ingredient substitution, with marron stepping in for langoustine, for example.

The brief Maaemo takeover at Berowra Waters Inn, on July 15 and 16 for $400 a head, isn’t the only act in Sydney next month. Chef Simon Rogan and his team from three-star restaurant L’Enclume in Britain will begin a five-week residency at Bathers’ Pavilion on July 19.

It follows the Sydney pop-up earlier this year of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ 2019 award-winner, Mirazur, and the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay swing-by at Aria in May.

What has made Sydney such a hot destination all of a sudden? Visiting chefs say the city has a discerning public open to trying new cuisines and culinary techniques.

Geraghty believes it’s Australia’s produce and culinary pitch that are enticing the world’s best chefs – once put off by the distance – to say yes to cooking here.

“There’s something about our environment, the closeness to nature,” the chef says. “It also has a lot to do with where we are pitching ourselves culinary-wise.”

“The basis of our cuisine is multicultural, a bit from here and bit from there, so we’re seen as open to new things. You even have top chefs like Clare Smyth who are coming here and setting up permanent restaurants.”

Geraghty’s link with Maaemo executive chef Australian Jay Boyle goes way back. They worked together at Bilson’s, before Boyle joined Maaemo in 2011.

The inn’s owner points to a Maaemo oyster dish with a mussel emulsion as a good example of the Scandinavian restaurant’s style: “The best way to describe it is absolute salinity, clean flavour.”