Gordon burger shop becomes an ambitious bar with a Firedoor chef stoking the flames
When a seasoned chef from innovative Sydney restaurants Firedoor and Ormeggio at the Spit chooses a new restaurant in Gordon as his next career move, you know the north shore suburb is on the rise.
Francesco Iervolino, who also worked at award-winning restaurants in his native Italy, had no shortage of opportunities but chose Bar Infinita, which opens on Wednesday, March 6.
To many hungry Sydneysiders, Gordon’s best-known eatery is the McDonald’s on the Pacific Highway, but the suburb has been quietly climbing the culinary rankings, with smart-casual Japanese diner Kame House opening there last year.
Bar Infinita owner Taran Tamana is a two-decade resident on the upper north shore, who dipped his toe in the hospitality market with Avenue Road Cafe in Mosman, cautiously biding his time before opening the handsome Gordon bar-restaurant with an ambitious food program.
“I’ve been here a long time; I knew what was missing,” Tamana says. Locals are well-versed in the Sydney dining scene and want more good food on their doorstep, he says.
Modern with retro, Italian-style touches, Bar Infinita holds its own as a design addition. Behind the deep burgundy and cream tiles is its heart: a wood oven.
Iervolino will be using all the tricks he acquired at two-hatted Surry Hills restaurant Firedoor, which won Restaurant of the Year two years ago at The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards for its fire-driven fine dining.
At the new venue, Iervolino will be cooking meat in a wood-fired pizza oven with ironbark from the Blue Mountains.
There will be nods to Iervolino’s hometown of Naples with a house-made flatbread. Tamana’s wife’s family is from Sicily, so the chef has used the connection as inspiration for other dishes, including a tuna cotoletta with a citrus and caper sauce.
The menu hits different price points from a snack of gnocco fritto with San Daniele prosciutto at $9 all the way up to a wood-grilled, one-kilo Riverina black Angus T-bone bistecca alla fiorentina at $145. There will also be a show-stopping dessert built of lemon mousse and lemon jam that resembles a lemon sitting on a bed of edible “soil” made from lemon crumb.
“There’s an old photo of my wife’s grandfather and his four brothers in suits with cigarettes next to a stuffed kangaroo,” Tamana says when asked about the touchpoints behind the venue. It was a photo the brothers sent home to show relatives what their new life in Australia looked like, and will hang on the wall at Bar Infinita.
Two generations after that photo was taken, a former burger shop in Gordon has been transformed into a bar serving house-made limoncello and Amalfi cocktails. Bar Infinita might be short of a stuffed kangaroo, but the young men in suits would otherwise approve.
Open for lunch Saturday-Sunday; dinner Wednesday-Sunday
10 St Johns Avenue, Gordon, barinfinita.com.au
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Scott Bolles writes the weekly Short Black column in Good Food.