Firedoor
Contemporary$$$$
Primal, precise cooking with flavour to burn.
When it seems like every second new restaurant has a menu built around steak, there is still no-one who grills a better piece of beef than Lennox Hastie. The provenance and cuts change regularly at the chef’s buzzy flagship, but you can guarantee there will be something dry-aged for months to develop flavours of blue cheese, popcorn and mushrooms, perhaps, further coaxed by Hastie and his furrow-browed team in an open fire-powered kitchen.
These days there’s a shorter lunch offering headlined by incredible wagyu, while at dinner you’re in for a four- or six-course tasting menu of carefully selected produce imbued with smoke, char and sizzle.
Pristine coral trout fillet with supernaturally crisp skin and pil-pil sauce, say, deep-red swatches of kangaroo tataki, and translucent calamari circling a quail yolk in flavour-packed pork broth. After 10 years in business, Firedoor remains one of the hottest tickets in town.
Good to know: Book well in advance for the best chance at securing a coveted ringside view of the kitchen.
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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