Fred’s, Sydney

You might not think that farm-to-table still had the power to excite, but chef Danielle Alvarez, formerly of Northern California’s Chez Panisse, is doing just that at Fred’s. Opened in late 2016 in Sydney’s Paddington neighborhood, the restaurant is doing first-class work with pristine seasonal ingredients, most of them cooked over the open kitchen’s Tuscan grills or in the wood-fired oven.

IN THE ROOM: The open cooking and dining spaces merge into one warm, oak-timbered, marble-countertopped French-country embrace. Heavy linens, muted colors, enameled sinks and broad floorboards, writes The Australian, make a visit “like stumbling onto the set of a TV biopic on [pioneering British cookery writer] Elizabeth David.”

ON THE TABLE: Most everything on the menu is cooked over a live fire, from the leaf-shaped fougasse bread that Good

Food calls “terrific, the base so crusty you can beat it like a drum,” to the lamb, cooked ficelle-style from a string hung over coals, and served with grilled gem lettuce, seaweed and baby artichokes to produce meat that is “roll-your-eyes good.” Alvarez’s close relationship with her farmers comes out in her simple treatments; “asparagus shines,” writes

Delicious magazine, “among delicate triangoli pasta lathered in burnt butter.” As do beets, according to Time Out, tossed “into the hot coals until they are sweet and tender,” then tumbled “with a pink explosion of bitter leaves.”

IN BRIEF: “One of the most likeable restaurants to have opened in Sydney in years,” according to Australian Gourmet

Traveller. — LISA ABEND