HOT PLATES
Our restaurant critics’ picks of the latest and best eats, updated weekly on our website: gourmettraveller.com.au
NEWCASTLE Former Vue de Monde head chef Cory Campbell has returned to Newcastle to revamp a café and a wine bar menu, with ambitious plans to open the city’s first three-star restaurant. One Two Seven Darby café will soon offer dinner three nights a week, while
Reserve Wine Bar sees the booze-friendly likes of Joselito jamón and smoked bone marrow on toast introduced, and at dessert, the very Vue-sounding rye bread and beer porridge with candied fruit.
SYDNEY
Overshadowed by the runaway success of its Bar & Grill siblings, Rockpool, opened 27 years ago by chef and co-owner Neil Perry, closes its doors 30 July. It will reopen on 8 August as Eleven Bridge with a more modern à la carte menu. Key staff such as chef Phil Wood, manager Silvio Brentan, GM Jeremy Courmadias and sommelier Sebastian Crowther will stay on, as will the date tart and chicken wings with konbu butter.
MELBOURNE
Andrew McConnell’s
Moon Under Water, the restaurant at the Builders Arms, will be replaced by
Ricky & Pinky, a new Chinese eatery (named after a tattoo parlour in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district) in late August. Archan Chan will head the kitchen, a chef who’s held senior roles at Cutler & Co, Golden Fields and Supernormal restaurants. Fish tanks will provide pipis ready to be stir-fried with XO sauce, and McConnell’s butcher Meatsmith is experimenting with making the likes of lap cheong sausage for the restaurant. ADELAIDE HILLS Winemaker Taras Ochota of Ochota Barrels has opened a “wood-oven wine lounge” in the remodelled St Stephen’s Anglican Church in Uraidla. Lost in a
Forest serves pizze topped with the likes of Brussels sprouts and speck, as well as two dessert pizze. Winemakers Gareth Belton and Justin Lane join
Ochota behind the bar, pouring Basket Range wines and Ochota Barrels’ sulphur-free house red and white, “Chaud Lapin”.