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Just open: Cirrus

Sharnee Rawson

Cirrus opens in Barangaroo on September 15.
Cirrus opens in Barangaroo on September 15.Dominic Lorrimer

Rene Redzepi, your Noma Australia site is in good hands. Restaurateurs Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt – whose three Sydney restaurants including Bentley Restaurant and Bar claimed a collective five hats at the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards – will open Cirrus tomorrow, with a menu primarily focused on sustainable seafood, woven with native Australian accents and a "spectrum" of international flavours, with snacks and share plates. Expect to see "luxe ingredients such as caviar, lobster and whole mud crabs, all cooked in a unique Australian way", says chef Brent Savage. "We're making our own native pastes, including a sour one with muntries​, native ginger and pepper berry, for whole roasted snapper finished with fried saltbush and native basil."

North Queensland mud crabs will be steamed and tossed with green garlic and tarragon sauce, kingfish dressed with pickled turnip and black bean, and high rollers will be able to dip pearl spoons into Yasa (Abu Dhabi), Sterling (US) and Oscietra (Russia) caviars.

Vegetables have equal billing: whole roasted cauliflowers with sesame paste and savoury granola, and salad burnet with white asparagus. Just here for the snacks? Expect a constantly changing menu along the lines of cos lettuce hearts with whipped mullet rose, pickled onion and anchovies, or fat leatherjacket cheeks, served like scallops, with a cucumber and buttermilk infusion.

Sommelier Hildebrandt will focus more on whites for the wine program, having completed his role as chief speedboat procurer for designer and architect Pascale Gomes-McNabb. "Pascale always does one element which is a bit out there, and Nick found this vintage 1950s speedboat called Alvin, so it's going to be hanging from the roof," Savage says.

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