John Lethlean’s restaurant review: Moon Park, Redfern

Good Moon rising: Moon Park restaurant in Redfern, Sydney

Introduce him to a young female Korean-Australian fellow chef, also learning the ropes under a contemporary regime. And see where it all leads, in terms of cultural interplay, culinary cross-pollination. Now, make them both redundant.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and when Claude’s in Sydney closed, Ben Sears and Eun Hee An were out of a job. So they gave themselves one. Moon Park, in Redfern, has all the hallmarks of a more-dash-than-cash first restaurant for a couple of interesting young chefs. Sparse fitout, low-rent location, Velvet Underground on the sound system (these kids weren’t even born when John Cale first amped up a viola) and a crowd that knows it’s onto something new and exciting. It’s an irresistible story.

Just don’t go expecting “Korean” food; not the traditional sort, anyway. Their elegant, light and subtle (sometimes too subtle) food is almost certainly unique, the result of a partnership bringing different ingredients to the table to create something wholly new. So let’s just say it has Korean leanings; and a peninsula that can produce both Samsung and Kim Jong-un’s haircut just has to be interesting.

The waiters are run off their feet a bit, although their product knowledge is good when they get around to you. Cucumber kimchi with fresh nashi is exactly what’s promised, a highly refreshing bowl of lightly fermented cucumber batons with a nutty perilla seed paste, crunchy wafers of pear and some purple shoots. At $5, it’s typical of the outstanding value for money here.

A seed (linseed, sesame and perilla) biscuit comes with smoked eel, a whipped savoury cream of rice and pork and a few nasturtium flowers and leaves. A crisp-based potato pancake with golden fried edges — they do several pancakes here — is smothered in a mackerel floss and scattered with perilla leaves, a herb you’d recognise from Japanese and Vietnamese food. With a dark soy-based, chilli-spiked dipping sauce, it is as delicious as it sounds.

A series of very gentle, light, clean dishes follows … Poached eggplant with tofu-like set custard, pickled garlic scales (flower necks) and discs of poached lotus root. A most unusual plate of fresh tofu with pickled Asian mushrooms, acorn jelly cubes and fried Brussels sprout leaves. “Noodles” of finely shaved calamari in squid ink and black bean with various bits of greenery, florals and pork crackling. And a nice piece of John Dory in a fish broth with pearl barley, fresh bean shoots and radish. All this is enjoyable, well cooked and built with quality produce.

There’s no “wow” moment; just plenty of “that’s nice”. The kitchen here just does not play the big fermented flavours/garlic/chilli card; for the diner, it’s all a matter of appropriate expectation. Sugared baby doughnuts with fig leaf milk granita and a berry parfait are terrific; what the kitchen calls “Moon Pie” is even better: prune, marshmallow licked with flame, ginger jelly and salty/sweet cracker. Light and fun.

Which pretty much sums this place up. It’s a culinary crucible that will constantly change and surprise, fuelled by hospitality rather than tragic hipness. It’s great value. I’d go back tomorrow.

Source:  The Australian - 19th April 2014