Sixpenny Sydney
How hip are you? I ask that because the most talkedabout restaurants nowadays tend to be off the beaten track and involve ingredients and techniques that neither you nor I have heard of. Sixpenny is no exception.
Located in the former industrial area of Stanmore, now a quiet residential suburb of Sydney, it’s a modest neighbourhood restaurant offering an unusually imaginative ‘dego’ (as Aussies endearingly refer to degustation menus), borne to the table by solemn-looking young chefs.
It being lunch, we opt for six rather than eight courses, which still turns out to be a fair amount of food. But we gasp at each course as it arrives. Strips of ‘blood-baked’ beetroot coiled around a spiced venison tartare looks more as if it belongs in the Tate Modern than on a plate. There’s a nice touch of humour too: the chunky discs of mushroom on top of sweettasting mealy potatoes anointed with an oyster emulsion (yes, as good as it sounds) bear an uncanny resemblance to white chocolate buttons.
Two slivers of brined duck arrive with some tiny, sweet carrots and a drift of duck-heart katsuobushi. ‘What’s that?’ I ask the plate-bearer. He’s not sure. When I Google it later, it turns out it’s smoked dried bonito flakes – only in this instance made from duck hearts. Honestly, the menu is beyond parody – but, despite that, the end result is spectacular.
There’s another meat course of dry aged lamb rubbed with caramelised pumpkin and a toasted yeast and walnut-topped leek followed by some delicious little pellets of frozen raspberry, a strawberry soup (I think) and mead custard. Mead custard? Yes! Come on, keep up!
The 37-page wine list from sommelier Dan Sharp is fortunately more straightforward and impressively wide-ranging for such a small joint. Determined to drink Australian, we plunge bravely into the ‘amber’ (aka orange) section, for which we are rewarded with an opulent, quinceflavoured Solumodo 2014 from Ruggabellus, in South Australia’s Eden Valley, which is theatrically poured from a teapot-shaped decanter. It goes exceptionally well with the food, as I imagine do the Rieslings and the Jura whites, of which there is an impeccable selection. There’s some great Burgundy (at a price) too.
Is it worth the 20-minute cab ride from the city centre? It depends how much time you’ve got and whether you’ve been to Sydney before. If the answer is respectively ‘not a lot’ and ‘no’, I’d stick to more centrally located spots. But if you like to be in the know, Sixpenny is one of the restaurants that smart Sydneysiders are talking about. 83 Percival Rd, Stanmore, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Tel +61 (0)2 9572 6666; www. sixpenny.com. au Open WednesdaySaturday for dinner, Saturday-Sunday for lunch. Six-course menu AU$ 115 (£68) or with matching wines AU$ 190 (£ 112).