FIREDOOR

Sydney

’DEAR GOD, THIS IS BEEF AS YOU’VE NEVER EATEN IT BEFORE. PRETTY MUCH EVERY MOUTHFUL THRILLS’

Nothing tastes more rancid than a half-baked culinary gimmick. And a restaurant that cooks everything over different varieties of wood might seem a little, well, ambitious. But Lennox Hastie, the British-born chef/proprietor of Firedoor in Surry Hills, spent five years at Asador Etxebarri in Spain’s Basque Country. And what Etxebarri doesn’t know about cooking over glowing coals just ain’t worth knowing.

All that experience has paid off, because Firedoor is a smoke-scented pleasure palace, where two custom-built wood-fired ovens sit alongside four handsome grills, and an Australian-made Aga cooker. And the woods (from apple and cherry to ironbark and pecan) all add their own idiosyncratic allure. The room is large and high-ceilinged, with aged wooden pillars, open kitchen, and exposed lighting, giving it an unforced industrial edge. Service is sweet, slick and genuinely enthusiastic; the food ranging from great to sublime.

Because despite all these macho open flames, Hastie is a chef of great art and restraint. Where you’d expect unthinking charcoal punch, you get delicate poise, an innate understanding of the griller’s art. Pipis (small clams) come with the merest sigh of smoke, and pert garlic stems; marron (a lobster-like crustacean) is barely cooked and wears the lightest of applewood scents, tart pomelo accentuating its inherent sweetness; and 141day aged rib of beef is lavishly, almost lasciviously marbled, with a crunchy crust and the most intensely bovine depth. Dear God, this is beef as you’ve never eaten it before. Pretty much every mouthful thrills. Book well in advance, or prepare to queue and queue.