Sepia Restaurant and Wine Bar

201 Sussex St, Sydney NSW, Australia

British lad Martin Benn is one of Australia’s rising culinary stars. Having ‘served’ time with Marco Pierre White at London’s criterion brasserie, he became head chef at Sydney’s iconic, wait-list heavy Tetsuya at just 25. Now Benn, along with local seafood moguls George Costi and Andrea Costi and business and life partner Vicki Wild, has opened up Sepia Restaurant and Wine bar. And ivery nice it is too. We visited on a rainy Thursday evening (yes, it rains in Sydney!) and the dark, rectangular art deco-designed room was abuzz with some of the city’s beautiful people, here to savour Benn’s equally beautiful food.

Starters – meaty and smoky silver lake eel with sushi rice, confit leek and liquorice powder for me, medallion-like confit of ocean trout for my guest – set the tone for one of the best meals I’ve had in this, or indeed any other, city in a long time. I would go so far as to say that my main course of butter poached blue-eye cod (trevalla) with baby fennel, pickled cuttlefish, smoked ink and bacon powder was one of the most attractive plates I’ve ever had placed before me. Little paint-like blobs of ink and baby fennel purée were adorned with delicate salad leaves, while small piles of cuttlefish (which, by the way, the Spanish call sepia) were lightly dusted in that bacon powder. A clean, and meaty fish sat proudly in the middle of all this artistry, making for a dish that was more than the sum of it’s tasty parts – something that Benn seems particularly good at. My dining partner’s lamb was a melt-in-the-mouth delight and came with crisp lamb belly (the meat itself was totally fat free) and a dainty mushroom infusion that arrived in its own mini decanter – one of several nice touches which included a chicken liver parfait amuse bouche and a bounty bar petit four.

Carnivores are amply catered for here, as are seafood fanatics, though vegetarians may go home hungry. Service was friendly and knowledgeable, especially about the international wine list, which has some interesting bottles you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere and, with more than 20 wines by the glass, oenophiles certainly won’t be disappointed. Steven Short