The Devonshire
Editorial
While this year’s class of Sydney restaurants have been a bit too-cool-for-school with their slates instead of plates and deconstructed, recreated, new-school dishes, the Devonshire is a more mature student to have just enrolled. The restaurant’s menu needn’t strive for culinary trends of the moment, instead it’s comfortable in its classic fine-dining skin. And so it should be, with chef Jeremy Bentley’s experience at London’s two Michelin-starred restaurant, The Square.
Fashion fades, but style is eternal, and the Devonshire is stylishly simple. Dressed elegantly with one wall embellished in a pretty range of ornate mirrors, while dishes show off a creative and quirky edge. The very cute quail birds nest salad serves potato strings delicately woven into a fried nest that holds crumbed quail eggs and pieces of the sweet meat, while wispy frisée and bois boudrin sauce complement the entrée. Deliciously simple in comparison is the steamed mulloway accompanied by a subtly salty sardine vinaigrette and two savoury mussel beignets. Puffy pillows of potato gnocchi are woven with pine mushrooms and peas, while sharp parmesan gives the comforting dish a nice bite.
Afternoon tea is recreated into a night-time affair with Devonshire tea-infused crème brûlée served in dainty teacups with scone-ribboned ice cream on a bed of biscuity crumbs, and some blissfully blobby cherry jam.
Despite being the new kid on the block, the Devonshire has effortless style and grace, and needn’t evade its well-executed classics to prove itself among fellow Sydney diners.
Edwina Storie, March 2011
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