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Pier

Terry Durack
Terry Durack

The one dish you must try ... Roasted barramundi with caramelised endive, Dutch carrots, bitter orange, $45.
The one dish you must try ... Roasted barramundi with caramelised endive, Dutch carrots, bitter orange, $45.Domino Postiglione

Seafood

15/20

In May this year, Pier's owner-chef Greg Doyle announced he was renouncing his restaurant's three hats in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide. It's a strange business when you can renounce something you have no control over receiving, or indeed, of keeping. What he meant, we assume, is that he was changing the restaurant's style, returning to a simpler type of cooking with correspondingly reduced prices and more appeal to local clientele.

Fair enough. Doyle's decision to down-scale had a little to do with the Zeitgeist and a lot to do with the fact that his talented pastry chef, Katrina Kanetani, had left for Hawaii and his skilled head chef, Grant King, was about to branch out on his own.

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So he took a few levels of complexity from the dishes, tweaked prices, removed the high pretension of a white-gloved waiter changing cutlery course by course, and returned to the core business of sourcing fresh fish, cooking it with care and serving it without too many bells and whistles.

Rocking up four times since last October, I've experienced the changes first-hand, each visit marked by less stagey service and less self-conscious food. You can still start with wonderfully fresh oysters, bespoke sashimi or crisp little blistered cones of king salmon or deep ruby-red tuna tartare (now $8 each), spiked with lemon and tiny salted capers. Bread is still generously thick, crusty slices of Sonoma, while the reinstalled fries ($10) are great; salty and moreish.

Mixed leaf salads ($8) are beautifully dressed, with their fair share of vinegar. It's also good to see Pier's classy, classic salmon pastrami ($26) back on the menu, the orange fingers of cured fish lightly edged with mustard seeds.

But it's weird how the fish dishes don't achieve the same strength of vision or clarity as the basics. Roasted barramundi ($45) is a good chunk of crisp-skinned fillet teamed with a decorative swipe of divinely sweet carrot puree, baby glazed Dutch carrots, caramelised endive and dabs of bitter orange-scented juices. It's art on a plate but the flesh, as it so often is with barra, is mushy with a lightly muddy flavour.

A meaty fillet of bass groper ($44) is better fish but comes swamped with a thick cloak of rich, sweet Thai curry with runnels of coconut cream and crisped herbs. Asian flavours don't seem to come naturally to this kitchen and a Chinese-style omelet ($49) has an unappetising colour and texture, rolled around chopped prawns and Asian greens in a glossy brown, overly sweet oyster sauce.

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Some dishes from King's earlier menus – bread-crusted kingfish with piquillo puree and almond foam, Rangers Valley grain-fed beef fillet and slow-roasted lobster – remain, leveraged down in form and price. The kingfish has gone from $52 to $44; the beef from $58 to $54; and the $80 lobster is now $25 per 100 grams, which could work out to roughly the same.

This is all beginning to feel a bit token – especially when you are offered a special truffle menu, as I was, with dishes running from $55 to $135.

The room – essentially an elegantly glassed-in pier – is still on the light side of clinical by day, wrapped with sparkly water views; and on the dark side of minimalist at night, the only sparkle coming from street lights staining the black water. Tables are now pre-set, with sleek cutlery, good glasses, crisp napkins and lovely Ryner plates.

The wine list I am given is quite dog-eared – the result of past diners searching for a decently priced wine, perhaps – but a spicy, savoury 2007 Three Miners Pinot Noir from Central Otago ($86) is found among the many more suitable for those big celebratory nights.

Kanetani's desserts will still be missed, although a silky smooth block of goat fromage blanc teamed with poached, sweetly pickled and whipped rhubarb ($22) is clean-tasting and deliciously tangy.

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There is much to like but not much to love. It is still an expensive, formal restaurant in a lovely setting with not much in the way of joy or engagement. Doyle has installed former Pier, Sails and Fishface chef, Steven Skelly, in the kitchen; tellingly, someone who knows the Pier of the past.

In truth, the prices could go further down, the cooking could be more direct and the service could be warmer. This may yet come to pass. For the moment, Pier feels lost in transition, between the fine food temple it once was and the popular local it wants to be.

tdurack@smh.com.au

Terry's Table Talk blog has moved, you can find it here:
www.smh.com.au/entertainment/blog/table-talk

 

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

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