Preview: Fred’s, Paddington

Fred’s, Paddington

Danielle Alvarez opens Fred’s on Oxford Street in Sydney’s Paddington Tuesday 25 October. She cooked at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, for nigh on four years with Alice Waters, and, after being recruited in May 2014 by Merivale, has spent the past two and a half years cooking everywhere from Coogee Pavilion to The Fish Shop while Fred’s took shape. Here, we chat to Alvarez about what’s on the menu.

Danielle Alvarez, chef at Fred’s, making fougasse

“Our house-made bread is a fougasse,” says Alvarez. “It’s like French focaccia -brushed with olive oil but not quite as oily, and even though it’s a lean dough it still has a nice chew.”

Wood-oven baked fougasse with house made butter and olive oil

“We bake the fougasse in the wood-oven each day, which imparts a really beautiful nutty flavour. We’re serving it with a nice Alto olive oil and our own whipped butter.”

Clair de Lune oysters with coriander, lime and white pepper mignonette

“The oysters we’re getting are from Steve Feletti, of Moonlight Flat Oysters at Batemans Bay, and are shucked to order. They’re such a beautiful product. Oysters are a beautiful way to start a meal – they wake up your palate with ease, and what better way to start than with a glass of Champagne and beautiful produce from not too far from here?”

Cooking with fire

“Almost everything on the menu has an ingredient that at some stage touches the fire. I love working with a wood-oven – it gives you a beautiful dry, high heat, much deeper colour and flavour. It’s so different to cooking in a regular drop-oven – everything just intensifies. We’re having a really fun time roasting the cipollini onions and the garlic in there, for example, and then using the oil that we roast them in for other dressings or in other areas on the menu. Don’t worry, though – there will be no squeezy bottles.”

Baby artichoke and cipollini onion salad; grilled snow pea and red orach salad; Fred’s fougasse

“I really love the idea of starting with a salad, then maybe having a bit of pasta or a squid dish, and then moving onto a main. It’s a really nice progression. The artichoke for our shaved artichoke salad is from two farms, Marty Boetz’s Cook’s Co-op, and Johnstone’s Kitchen Gardens on the way to the Hawkesbury. We do it with flowering mâche, the roasted cipollini onions, kombu oil, and a bit of shaved Italian cow’s milk cheese (it’s called Ossolana al Prunent – one of my favourites).

“Another salad is the snowpea salad; the peas also come out of the wood-oven, and then are served with purple orach leaves, basil and a sweet-savoury dressing made from pepita seeds, dried chilli and prunes.”

Coral trout wrapped in fig leaf

“This is one of my favourite dishes on the menu. Visually it’s just so beautiful. I find the smell of roasted or grilled fig leaves completely intoxicating – it’s this stunning vanilla scent that pairs beautifully with delicate white fish.”

Alvarez wrapping the coral trout

“The parcels are roasted in the wood-oven, of course, and come with pencil leeks, white asparagus and a sorrel beurre blanc, which adds a nice little acidity and richness to round it all out.”

Robbins Island beef cooked on the freestanding Tuscan grills

“I love having a big, beautiful steak to share. Most of the other food on the menu is à la carte and can be enjoyed on your own, but this is definitely one to share [600gm, $150]. For the last two years Robbins Island has been exporting to Japan, but they had some product that they’ve saved in Sydney especially for us. It’s grass-fed and grain-finished; I love the balance of fat versus meat. For the opening menu, we’re grilling it over the fire with a little bit of garlic butter, and it’s served with pommes Anna and some little lettuces from the Blue Mountains.”

Asparagus triangoli; casarecce with rabbit, peas, whey and society garlic; wood-oven squid with celery and preserved lemon

“We’re doing a chef’s menu option, too: five courses for $95. It might start with an octopus terrine with oven-roasted kumara, smoky paprika dressing and bronzed fennel, and then move to triangoli, which, unsurprisingly, is Italian for triangle, like ravioli. For the opening menu, we’re doing the triangles with asparagus, buffalo ricotta and green garlic, and it comes in a brown butter with Parmigiano and pistachio.”

Asparagus triangoli; casarecce with rabbit, peas, whey and society garlic; wood-oven squid with celery and preserved lemon

“Wine-wise, you’ll be able to open almost everything on the list and buy it by the glass. We want to give the guests a lot of leeway with what they want to try, and for the drinks to have just as much flexibility as the food. Our head sommelier, Caitlyn Rees, and Franck [Moreau, Merivale] have chosen a lot of unique and small-batch wines from Australia, the US and throughout Europe, and changing the wines daily is a goal. There’ll be some natural wines – which is a bit different for Merivale – and while that’s certainly not the focus of the list, if you’re excited by that, you won’t be disappointed.”

Danielle Alvarez, Fred’s chef

“The kitchen is completely open. We’ve already had some really nice feedback about how calm and relaxed the space feels and that has always been our goal. I want Fred’s to have the feeling that you’re in someone’s beautiful home. It’s only 64 seats but everyone keeps coming in and saying how big it is. The design was done by Vince Alafaci and Caroline Choker of Acme & Co, and Justin and Bettina [Hemmes] have been very involved in the design, too. They’ve all done a beautiful job.”

Lamb leg à la ficelle

“We cook the lamb leg à la ficelle, which is a nicer-sounding way of cooking something “by a string”. It hangs in front of one of our fires and if you give it a little nudge it just gently turns and turns and cooks evenly all the way around. We’re serving that with some spring vegetables like gem lettuce, broad beans, artichokes and some laver bread.”

An assortment of Fred’s desserts

“For dessert we are serving a rhubarb and Beaumes de Venise millefeuille. Our pastry chef, Rosie, makes the puff pastry and it’s gorgeous – buttery and delicious. The rhubarb gives it a nice tart finish. Another dessert is a macadamia meringue with yogurt sorbet, strawberry sorbet and chamomile cream. It’s light and fresh, which is how I normally like to finish with dessert. Also a chocolate soufflé with prune and Armagnac ice-cream for all the chocolate lovers out there.”