Fleet, Brunswick Heads, NSW: restaurant review

One side, diners; the other, host/waiter/sommelier (multi-tasking sorceress) and a barman. In the kitchen — which is more or less the same thing as the dining room — one cook, one dishy. That’s four staff, 20 seats.

It might be an unlikely location but Fleet may just be the most radical restaurant to open in Australia this year. The word “focus” barely scratches the surface. But is it a real restaurant, this Fleet, petite venture for a couple with bags of experience and talent but seemingly no ego? If your idea of eating out is a discreet table, a waiter you only see when you need one, and a plate of gnocchi, probably not.

But Fleet, with Astrid McCormack and Josh Lewis, formerly co-owner and sous-chef respectively at the late, lamented Loam in Victoria, caters to its audience in a very personal manner. It nourishes the body and soul. It flatters with hospitable ways, unusual wines and the kind of truly original food only a tiny place with one chef could pull off.

You sit at the slab; you admire the style they’ve put into this tiny, modern space (whites, timbers, polished aggregate flooring). It is truly like being a guest in someone’s kitchen, with your host serving at the bench instead of the dining table.

It’s a risky strategy, but McCormack is up to the task: sweet, warm, knowledgeable and wine-savvy. Remember Loam and this will come as little surprise. Her partner, Lewis, conjures contemporary food, uncomplicated but full of fresh ideas and soul, reflecting experience at Noma, the coastal location, and an obvious affection for fishy stuff and briny/astringent flavours. It’s another risk-reward scenario that pays off brilliantly.

So when his sour-ish rye and “carawhey” bread arrives with his own butter, salt and house-cured sardines in oil, all creamy and tightly fleshed, it sets a pattern. It’s a lots-of-little-dishes kind of place.

An outrageously good dip of smoked mullet feathered with dill fronds comes with crisps of potato and fish skin popping out of it, for scooping. Diced raw tuna is scattered with shaved horseradish and strands of bitter red mizuna, served with a jug of unctuous tuna bone marrow broth and shredded dried bonito, which you add to the tuna to create something special. And simple. Japanesque.

Discs of cured and smoked bar cod roe sacks (pictured) get a clean butter/roe sauce, batons of grilled leek, pickled mustard seeds and a coastal succulent, like baby pigface, for garnish. Stunning.

And a small piece of roasted and rarely seen Ray’s bream, courtesy of local fishmonger Craig “Freckle” Gream, has a surprising, springy texture and juiciness before it gets a sauce of semi-dried chopped corn (like a coarse, soft grit) and a shaving of local truffle. At the slab, of course. Truffle and fish? It works.

Even the much-maligned choko gets a run here: an infinite tangle of crunchy white ribbon tossed with lightly pickled oysters and pickling syrup. What food. Lewis makes heroes of forgotten wallflowers.

Then there’s McCormack’s wine suggestions, from an ever-changing list. Fleet has precisely zero storage room, so when it goes …

The dessert, one of just two, is a compote of preserved mandarin with a buttermilk foam, and thyme, chopped pistachio and mandarin powder scattered about. Bitter, sweet and not a hint of regret.

Attention to detail? Stunning. Service? It may be a big kitchen with a cement slab but when you come back from the loo, a crisp white linen napkin has been rolled and set down beside a new, clean handmade oyster shell-like plate. That’s focused, to a rare degree.

But is it a restaurant? It’s a great restaurant. Just remember. It’s a shoebox too.

Address: 2/16 The Terrace, Brunswick Heads, NSW

Phone: (02) 6685 1363 Web: n/a

Hours: Dinner Thu-Mon (from 3pm)

Typical prices: Smaller $15; larger $20; desserts $12

Summary: The rarest of things; something truly new

Like this? Try … Paper Daisy, Cabarita, NSW; Franklin, Hobart

Stars (out of five): 4.5

Source: The Australian, John Lethlean, 15^th August 2015
Originally published as: Fleet, Brunswick Heads, NSW: restaurant review