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The Gantry Restaurant & Bar

Terry Durack
Terry Durack

Dapper: The Gantry's revamped interior.
Dapper: The Gantry's revamped interior.Dominic Lorrimer

14.5/20

Modern Australian$$$

Europeans and Americans are mad about our Balmain and Moreton Bay bugs. New York chef Jonathan Waxman nearly ate us out of them on a recent visit. "They are all those things I love about crabs, sea urchins and prawns, only sweeter and more beautiful," he said. It's a great reminder not to take them for granted ourselves.

Another great reminder is the menu of Canadian-born Chris Irving, newly arrived head chef at the newly arrived Pier One Restaurant, The Gantry. The bugs get star billing on The Gantry's dedicated seafood counter, along with Eastern rock lobsters, Queensland king prawns, Sydney rock oysters, Hervey Bay scallops, and Kinkawooka mussels.

A blackboard carries the restaurant's mission of intent by listing key producers such as Andrews Meats, Joto Fresh Fish, Cooks Co-Op, Feather and Bone and De Costi Seafood. I am by nature wary, but Irving is not one of those chefs who swears black-and-blue that it's all about the produce, then proceeds to reduce said produce to a series of denatured, unrecognisable swabs and swipes.

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Balmain bugs grilled with garlic butter.
Balmain bugs grilled with garlic butter.Dominic Lorrimer

A Balmain bug ($15 half, $25 whole) is a beauty; split in half, grilled, and basted with garlic butter. No mayo (thank you, chef). No deep-frying (thank you, chef). Nothing but sweet bug meat, a few beautiful rocket leaves and a lemon (thank you, chef). Weird to thank a chef for doing nothing instead of doing something, but with Australian seafood, less is definitely more.

The single-mindedness continues with share dishes of whole-roasted Saskia Beer chicken served with baby vegetables and pan juices ($69), and char-grilled 1.2 kg Cafe Grim grass-fed "tomahawk" steak ($115).

Coorong pipis ($20 for 400g) are steamed with ginger, garlic and shallot and served in a bowl with their own steamy, sweet, briny juices. That's it. What else do you need?  

Handsome: Petuna ocean trout with warrigal greens and fennel.
Handsome: Petuna ocean trout with warrigal greens and fennel.Dominic Lorrimer
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Individual main courses are more composed. Mirrool Creek lamb chops ($35) are a chic meat-and-three-veg, with crisped saltbush, roasted garlic, wilted greens and a whole truss of roasted cherry tomatoes. It's great lamb – grassy, clean, as sweet as hay - but when cooked sous-vide then grilled as a rack and then sliced, you end up with two chops cooked one side only, with the middle one as pink as lamb sashimi. It's the only "why-would-you-do-that?" moment of the meal.

A handsome, supple, slow-cooked fillet of Petuna ocean trout ($32) is paired sympathetically with wilted warrigal greens and sliced fennel, fennel fronds and flowering fennel seeds from chef Marty Boetz's Cooks Co-Op. It works well with a side of beetroot home fries ($8) which aren't fries at all, but super-hot, deep-fried, salt-crusted quartered baby beets of great depth of flavour. It also works well with a lightly oaked, fruity, juicy 2012 Yal Yal Mornington Chardonnay from the well-paced and fairly-priced (you don't see much wine at $10 a glass these days) list.

Dessert is like the best farmhouse breakfast ever - a softly set goat milk pudding topped with oatmeal crunch, blood-red rosella juices and a heavenly square of Malfroy's Gold wild honeycomb.

Ebeneezer goat milk pudding, rosella, oatmeal crumble and fresh honeycomb.
Ebeneezer goat milk pudding, rosella, oatmeal crumble and fresh honeycomb.Dominic Lorrimer

Pier One has just spent a motser on revamping its restaurant and bar, and it's looking very dapper. The industrial-inspired space is weighted with solid timber floors and weathered wooden columns, with a raft of tables out on the pier for those extravagant harbour views. Service is a work in progress, running from matter-of-fact to sweetly clueless, but the single-minded, protein-driven cooking is confident and rewarding. It's as if the chef is saying "I'm just the messenger here". So refreshing.

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THE LOW-DOWN
Best bit: Produce is the real star.
Worst bit: Service is a work-in-progress.
Go-to dish: Ebeneezer goat milk pudding, rosella, oatmeal crumble and fresh honeycomb.

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.

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