Silvereye

Too long, too expensive, too much food. Not everyone is a fan of the degustation menu. "There is a panic in the middle when you don't know how far you've come, and when you are going to get to the end," says Sunday Times critic AA Gill. "You start crying. I have begged them to stop."

So it's a brave restaurant that opens from day one with two pricey 11- or 17-course menus on offer. The second of the three mooted restaurants in the Old Clare Hotel, Loh Lik Peng's ambitious Unlisted Collection Sydney project, Silvereye has a character all its own.

The timber-and-sandstone refit of the old 1940s corner pub is ravishingly effective, its curves picked out by a sweep of ceiling light and a swirl of banquette seating. Totally charming: tiny hand-painted portraits of silvereyes (small native birds) flitting around the walls.

Heading up the open-plan kitchen is Yorkshire-born Sam Miller, former sous chef at Faviken in northern Sweden, and senior sous chef at Noma in Copenhagen. Heading up front-of-house is former Noma dude James Audas, who is a vital part of the dining experience. So this is clearly a post-Noma exercise, as is much of the contemporary dining landscape.

Both long and short menus begin with a young chef approaching the table with a plate-sized, gossamer-thin wafer. "Pig and wattle," he announces.

The batter is made from pig's feet, apparently, then fried and dusted with wattleseed. More crispness ensues with mini smorrebrod of sweet little fry-and-dry sunflower and geranium crispbreads, topped with sliced pickled zucchini and dried zucchini flowers.

There is nothing to do but settle in and go with the flow, from a clever crisp-and-creamy cannoli fashioned entirely from parsnip (stunning), to a stand-out dish of red spot whiting, its skeletal form deep-fried until crisply edible. Unlike a similarly fried herring dish at Faviken, the bone has been dressed with its own lightly smoked flesh, watercress cream, beach plums, and tiny little beach succulents that claim it for this great Southern land. As an idea, it's heroic; as an execution, it's fresh, floral and feral.

The kitchen manages a good pace early, slowing up as it gets busy, when gaps of about 18 to 20 minutes appear.

Random highlights: a bowl of tiny, bright-tasting broad beans and peas with sea lettuce gel and crunchy, fleshy iceplant; and a precise brick of sous-vide North Queensland cobia, with fennel shavings cooked in yoghurt whey and cloaked in a silky, salty film of cured lardo.

Some dishes challenge with the bitterness of radicchio, cherry blossom or beer; and some, like "shrimp in a box", and strawberries warmed in marrow fat are, frankly, weird.

A pink frolic of rosewater vinaigrette, rose oil, sunflower seeds, aerated yoghurt and freeze-dried raspberries called The Big Raspberry has, like a Kinder Surprise, a treat inside.

Fans of natural wines and small European and Australian producers will have a ball with the wine list and the matching wine selection, which pairs, for instance, a complex, savoury 2014 Ravensworth seven-month skin contact white blend from the Canberra District with the cobia.

There are some truly great young chefs cooking in Sydney at the moment, and Miller is one of them. Silvereye is a beguiling mix of Scandinavian ethos, Australian produce and culinary derring-do delivered by engaging staff in a charmingly blond, new-age dining room.

Never mind that it offers the longest degustation in Sydney. It only occasionally feels like it.

THE LOWDOWN
Best bit Bitter, sweet, raw, vegetal ... a walk on the wild side.
Worst bit It's a bread-free zone and low on carbs.
Go-to dish Red spot whiting.

Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.