Chef Sam Miller of Noma and Faviken to open Silvereye in Sydney
Singapore’s Burnt Ends, where Dave Pynt is chef, has made the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Source: Supplied
THE silvereye is a small bird, native to Australia and New Zealand. And Silvereye is a name you’ll soon hear frequently in connection with one of the year’s most anticipated openings, chef Sam Miller’s restaurant at the Old Clare project in Sydney’s Chippendale. Miller, a Yorkshireman, has settled in Australia and opens his first restaurant midyear. Why is this of interest? Because Miller has extraordinary form: he was Rene Redzepi’s first lieutenant at Noma in Copenhagen for years and subsequently worked as sous chef to Magnus Nilsson at Faviken in Sweden. Miller is, therefore, steeped in the lore of progressive Nordic gastronomy. Redzepi once said of his chef: “He truly is a rare talent, he is the full package. Some people are great at running a team but not so good creatively; he gives both.” Silvereye is one of three restaurants opening at the Old Clare, a 65-room hotel by Singaporean hotelier and restaurant investor Loh Lik Peng.
PENG’S Unlisted Collection specialises in creating funky hotels from restored old buildings and in collaborating with chefs such as Jason Atherton, David Pynt and Nuno Mendes at London’s Viajante. He has an interest in 15 restaurants in three countries; Miller’s will be the “most refined, most intellectual” of three he’ll partner with in Sydney. It will be a 40-seater and tasting menu only. The others are Automata, an informal restaurant headed by former Momofuku Seiobo (and Viajante) sous chef Clayton Wells , and Kensington Street Social, a 120-seat venture with globetrotting mass-restaurateur Atherton. Peng tells us Kensington Street Social will be a hybrid of Atherton’s 22 Ships (Hong Kong) and Esquina (Singapore). “I’m saying July or August, but the final 10 per cent of these projects is always the most difficult to predict,” Peng says.
STILL in Singapore, this year’s Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list wasn’t brilliant for Australian connections — unless your name is Dave Pynt, Perth-reared chef at Peng’s Singaporean barbecue Burnt Ends. It joined the list at 30. Pynt has his plate full; in the ever-expanding world of Peng (see above), Meatsmith is a new American smokehouse in Raffles Place and Pynt is executive chef. Most of the Aussies on the list slipped backwards, but expect David Thompson’s new Long Chim, at Marina Bay Sands, to make an entry on the controversial list next year.
GARAGISTES, the groundbreaking Hobart restaurant headed by chef Luke Burgess, closes on Saturday after 4½ years of pushing Tasmanian boundaries. The restaurant’s partners, Burgess and Kirk Richardson, tried to sell the business after a change in the original partnership structure. A local family has taken the lease but will not be trading as Garagistes. Burgess, from Sydney, is returning home with his partner, who is Brazilian. “I’ll have to get a job at some stage but for the time being I have absolutely no plans except to eat and drink,” he says.
CARLTON’S Town Mouse is spreading the love into central Melbourne. Kiwis Christian McCabe and chef Dave Verheul, who run the critically acclaimed small restaurant, are understood to have signed a lease in Russell Street Melbourne’s CBD for a former pho restaurant opposite the Greater Union cinema complex that will eventually be Melbourne’s QT Hotel. All we know is that it will be “wine focused”.
A FEW surprises last week as a luxury Fiji resort announced its new exec chef, leaving some of those associated with Perth’s high-profile Print Hall on the back foot. Chef Shane Watson has been fundamental to Print Hall’s reputation as one of Western Australia’s best restaurant complexes since its launch three years ago. But as of next week he’ll be back at Likuliku Lagoon Resort, where he was the opening exec chef back in 2007. Lucky them.
NORTHERN Light is heading down south, kind of. The Melbourne restaurant headed by chef Adam Liston, with his new business partner (and sous chef) Eamon Bellew, will take a hands-on consultancy role at the Wilyabrup (Margaret River) winery restaurant Knee Deep, a modest venue with a reputation for good food. Liston has restructured his creative Collingwood (Victoria) restaurant to allow for frequent stints in WA; he also has steered Northern Light “more in the direction of a restaurant, less that of a bar with interesting food”. Good news on both fronts.
Source: The Australian - 17th March 2015
