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Luke Benchmark Restaurant & Oyster Bar

Terry Durack
Terry Durack

13/20

There are a dozen good reasons to visit this smart, simple new restaurant in Sylvania Heights - and they are all oysters. Either plump, juicy Sydney rocks, or bright and briny Pacifics from Port Stephens, depending on the weather, season and what the supplier, Emery's Oysters from Kirrawee, has sourced.

But wait, there's more. The Benchmark Dozen tasting plate ($38) holds not just a dozen oysters but a dozen different treatments. There are six coldies and six hotties, from the Kilpatchi with bacon and barbecue chilli plum sauce to a well-balanced Tokyo with soy, wasabi and pickled ginger and a deep-fried Panco with Sichuan pepper, lime aioli and a monster crunch.

This is a concept that could go horribly wrong. An oyster is an excitingly pure, beautiful food in its own right. Why do more? But young chef and local boy Luke Collins has made it his personal mission to set a new benchmark for the dining scene of Sutherland shire. In his hands, the oysters take on their adopted flavours without losing any of their essence or character. Good cooking can really only ever enhance simple, natural produce; it's poor cooking that turns it into something else. These oysters are still oysters and it's fun to work your way through the variations. No surprise, then, that after just three months of trading, Collins gets through up to 80 dozen a week.

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The menu also lists six alcoholic oyster shots, running from sake, wakame seaweed and soy; to rockmelon, Cointreau and crisp pancetta; and vodka and cucumber lime jelly - and yes, you can have a selection of all six of them, too. Not that you should.

The rest of the mainly modern Mediterranean menu makes much of NSW produce, including Cowra Gold lamb, Southern Highlands eye fillet, Macleay Valley rabbit and Hunter Valley quail. Collins and his wife, Jill, keep things personal - the blackboard reads ''Luke and Jill welcome you to Luke Benchmark'', and Jill has an oyster variation named for her (the Jillian, with champagne hollandaise and caviar).

The dining room is a smart but simple space, with 12 well-spaced white-clothed tables, white brick walls, a bottle-lined service bar to the rear and wooden venetians softening the impact of the Pacific Highway. Order bread and you get a large, beautifully made, lightly warm, round loaf, with butter, sea salt and a lightly mossy olive oil from Pukara Estate in the Hunter Valley ($7). It's a nice touch but it would be nicer if they could bury the price so it's inclusive.

There are non-oyster entrees (baby squid with watercress soup, and scallops with cauliflower puree and pancetta) but most diners do the oyster thing and move right along to a main course (lamb shanks with potato gnocchi, eye fillet with fried bone marrow).

A fillet of south coast blue eye cod ($34) is a good size, well-matched to a creamy bed of butter bean puree and an earthy forest floor of sweet confit shallots, sauteed chestnut mushrooms and whole roasted garlic cloves. It doesn't need any extras but a bowl of hand-cut chips tossed in rosemary and sea salt ($9) doesn't go astray. A dish of roast duck with truffle and chive mash ($35) hasn't quite got it together; the mash is dense, the meat feels tight and the skin bears strange grill marks. Best on the plate are the three roasted beetroots, pickled in balsamic vinegar, which are seriously delicious. When everything else has been so capable, the duck strikes an odd note.

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Care is evident throughout the extracurricular activities, from a professional cocktail list to the making of Toby's Estate tea and coffee and the suggestion of ''Luke's winter chilli-infused sherry'' ($5) as a digestif. Apart from the missus, staff can be a bit slow to anticipate, seemingly always playing catch-up.

From the 24-strong, mostly Australian wine list, a glass of the house white - a no-fuss, no-mess 2009 semillon/sauvignon blanc from the Barossa ($7) - goes well with the oysters, and a fruit-driven 2008 Innocent Bystander Pinot Noir bridges the gap between duck and fish with ease.

Puds are terrific, if a bit exxy at $14-$18. A sticky fig and date pudding with butterscotch sauce and mascarpone ($16) is light and fluffy instead of dark and stodgy, slaked with enough Cointreau and brandy to make it interesting.

This is not your big-budget, high-level opening; and nor does it offer harbour views or an actual oyster ''bar''. But it's excellent news for the shire (and thank you to those residents who wrote to suggest it). For a small-budget, suburban first-restaurant, it has many charms. Dozens of them, in fact.

tdurack@smh.com.au

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Terry DurackTerry Durack is the chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food.

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