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Thursday 26th January 2017

Thursday 26th January 2017

For eight years, Finnish born chef Pasi Petanen headed up the kitchens for Mark Best at Marque restaurant, one of Sydney’s finest restaurants. During Petanen’s tenure, the restaurant achieved three ‘hats’ in the Sydney Morning Herald’s influential Good Food Guide (roughly the equivalent of three Michelin stars), and was named ‘breakthrough restaurant’ in the 2010 World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards, making number 67 in the extended top 100 listing. Petanen also helped Best write the restaurant’s coffee table cookbook, published in 2012.

‘In 2016, Petanen was named the Good Food Guide’s Chef of the Year’

In 2013, Petanen (whose career has also included stints at Chez Nico in London and Quay in Sydney) struck out on his own and opened Cafe Paci, a two year pop up restaurant in Sydney’s vibrant Darlinghurst neighbourhood. The tasting menu of progressive Finnish cooking with Asian influences included the likes of lamb leg tartare with smoked capsicum and togarashi (a Japanese spice blend).

Petanen has recently shown off his mastery of vegetarian cookery at a one-night-only guest spot at Yellow restaurant in Sydney where the menu included potato, truffle, mushroom and coffee.

In 2016, Petanen was named the Good Food Guide’s Chef of the Year, calling him a ‘chef’s chef and in possession of one of the most forward-thinking, idiosyncratic food brains in the city’.

In the charming and historic Sydney suburb of Stanmore, Daniel Puskas runs one of the most creatively ambitious and critically lauded kitchens in Sydney. Set in a characterful corner building built in 1907, Sixpenny is the culmination of Puskas’ culinary career so far. He’s worked in some of Australia’s finest restaurants including Tetsuya’s and Sepia, as well as stints in two of America’s leading modern kitchens: WD-50 in New York and Alinea in Chicago.

The name ‘Sixpenny’ is a reference to the mid-19th century Australian restaurants that served simple meals to the working classes for sixpence each. You’ll have to pay a bit more to enjoy Puskas’ ingredient-led tasting menus in Sixpenny’s intimate, minimalist dining room, but dishes such as venison tartare with boudin noir, baked beetroot and hazelnut are worth it. Puskas pickles, smokes and ferments his ingredients, some of which he grows himself, and presents them in assemblies such as Spanish mackerel with radicchio and fermented cucumber and lightly smoked duck with witlof and plum.

‘Puskas is a recipient of the prestigious Josephine Pignolet Best Young Chef award’

Puskas is a recipient of the prestigious Josephine Pignolet Best Young Chef award given to chefs under 30 making a difference to Sydney’s culinary landscape. Other recipients include Brett Graham, now chef/proprietor of two Michelin-starred The Ledbury in Notting Hill.

Obsession Menu

PASI
LANGOUSTINE
CARROTS AND TARRAGON
Pinot Gris, Lawson’s Dry Hills, Marlborough, New Zealand, 2014

DANIEL
POTATOES COOKED IN RYE
OYSTER AND CAVIAR
VAT 1, Hunter Semillon, Tyrrell’s, Hunter Valley, Australia, 2009

PASI
CABBAGE
MUSSELS AND BONE MARROW
Savennières Clos de Papillon, Domaine Baumard, Loire Valley, France, 2006

DANIEL
DRY AGED DUCK
ONIONS AND GRAPEFRUIT CARAMEL
Pinot Noir, Ata Rangi, Martinborough, New Zealand, 2014

DANIEL
MEAD VINEGAR CUSTARD
FROZEN RASPBERRIES AND RASPBERRY CONSOMMÉ
Moscato D’Asti, Pio Cesare, Piedmont, Italy, 2015

PASI
PEAR AND PARSLEY

Thursday 26th January 2017

Pasi Petanen

Daniel Puskas

Sixpenny

Obsession Menu

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