Paper Daisy, Cabarita Beach: restaurant review
Is salad a “dish”? Or merely an accessory to throw light relief into the mix? In the hands of most – lacking the imagination and exceptional produce to do something special with ingredients neither meaty nor starchy – it is nearly always the latter. And there is nothing wrong with eating a perfectly dressed green salad alongside your coq au vin.
But salad at Paper Daisy works differently. Here is a menu with greens, reds and other vegetal colours that pushes to the front of the queue and shouts, “Excuse me!”
Paper Daisy is the restaurant attached to Halcyon House, an old seaside motel near the NSW/Queensland border at Cabarita Beach, reimagined as a Palm Springs-meets-Gypset boutique resort (that’s gypsy-meets-jet-set, btw, a bona fide thing). Way cool.
At one end is an open kitchen where former Esquire (Brisbane) head chef Ben Devlin prevails; in the middle are bare timber tables, blue canvas banquettes, chairs, all with glimpses of the pool through olive trees and palms; the décor is eclectic, but clever. There’s a lounge area and a bar with windows that open to the veranda; beyond the pandanus, a beach.
So, alongside two outstanding starters we have a salad of such beauty, such outrageous deliciousness, as to redefine the category. Torn, super-fresh crimson radicchio; naked orange segments; pickled, acidic fennel bulb and stem; dill fronds; toffee-shelled candied fresh walnuts; and an orange gastrique, the dressing, of perfect olive oil, orange juice and quality chardonnay vinegar. A revelation.
Across his superb menu, Devlin dances with sweetness in a considered fashion like Nureyev: lightness, power and poise. Beneath pieces of beautiful grilled juvenile squid tossed with a few wild leaves you’ll find a sweet/savoury paste of green onion and black garlic. Inside hand-made agnolotti you’ll find a sweet-ish house-made ricotta; they’re tossed in a beautiful bowl with more ricotta, wild rocket, a dash of fresh chilli, olive oil and a combination of shaved mojama (air-cured, salty tuna) and shaved, sweetish macadamia.
You could stop at the house-made sourdough served with hand-churned butter and macadamia paste and quit so far ahead it’s not funny. Such lightness, freshness, finesse. Did he learn that at Noma?
Another vegetable dish comes with the fish: chopped broccolini in a sesame cream dressing, scattered with seeds and peanuts and served with fresh white bean curd and oyster salt. The fish is dusky flathead, chargrilled in paperbark with lime leaf and seaweed, and a smothering of molten white onion finished with more onion, this time chewy shreds, burnt/caramelised/salty/sweet. It’s brilliant.
A big wedge of cauliflower, grilled with sweet/savoury black-as-squid-ink fermented garlic paste, sitting in a puddle of sour-ish milk kefir, seems right for a small piece of crisp-shelled lamb belly. It’s sweet-glazed and served with capers, horseradish cream, two different pickled cabbages and meat juices.
Dessert may be more selfish. The best is a set cream made with NSW-grown vanilla, scattered with various dehydrated and fresh things: olive oil, Buddha’s hand, macadamia powder, something chewy and tangy. It’s excellent. “Winter honey with macadamia & milk” is more like a bombe, with frozen lemon curd, Italian meringue, cream, nuts and honeycomb, all in a beeswax bowl. Less successful.
I’d have said so by now if the service were not professional and pleasant; the wine list won’t excite buffs but there’s something there for most. For a brand new venture, built from the ground up, it’s a winner. Devlin is a clever cook; Paper Daisy a triumph. Sweet, in fact. But in a considered fashion.
Address: 21 Cypress Cres, Cabarita Beach, NSW
Phone: (02) 6676 1444 Web: halcyonhouse.com.au
Hours: Lunch, dinner daily
Typical prices: Entrees $20; mains $26; desserts $14
Summary: A rose by any other name
Like this? Try… Esquire, Brisbane; Brae, Birregurra (Victoria)
Stars (out of five): 4
Source: The Australian, John Lethlean, 1st August 2015
Originally published as: Paper Daisy, Cabarita Beach: restaurant review
