You all know Peter Gilmore from Quay, the epic Circular Quay restaurant that was our runner-up Best Fine Diner at last year’s Time Out Sydney Food Awards. Oh, and his other restaurant, Bennelong, won Best New Restaurant in the same awards. He’s also a regular on MasterChef, and an all-round stand-up guy. So if you haven’t heard of him, what sort of rock have you just climbed out from under? He’s one of Australia’s – nay, the world’s – greatest chefs and he’s pairing up with another world-class chef, Lennox Hastie of Firedoor, for two nights only on Monday August 22 and Tuesday August 23, to cook up the dinner of a lifetime. Firedoor, incidentally, was runner-up Best New Restaurant at the awards. These guys got cred.
Hastie, by the way, spent no less than five years working at the tenth best restaurant in the world (according to the prestigious World’s 50 Best Restaurants list) – Asador Etxebarri in the Basque region. So he’s no spring chicken in the kitchen, and at Firedoor, as at Etxebarri, everything is cooked over fire right in front of your eyes.
The dinner will take place at Firedoor in Surry Hills, and will include dishes like XO-grilled pippies and tartare made from 180-day aged steak. Marron will be paired with rich mushroom chawanmushi and the sort of complex, umami broth for which Gilmore is renowned. There will even be a riff on Quay’s Snow Egg, which will be smoked to befit Hastie’s fire-charged style.
Each of the eight courses will be matched with a drinks designed by Quay, Bennelong and Firedoor’s lauded sommeliers.
This dinner is the first in a series of Fireside dinners taking place at Firedoor, where Hastie will cook alongside some of the world’s greatest chefs. Stay tuned for the next one. But in the meantime, Gilmore X Hastie is selling out super fast, so book it up if you want to see true culinary creativity at work.