Anason, from the team behind Balmain’s cult Turkish restaurant Efendy, is the first permanent restaurant to lay roots at Sydney’s new waterside dining precinct at Barangaroo, bordered by pop-up neighbours René Redzepi’s Noma and Belle’s Hot Chicken from Melbourne. Chef Somer Sivrioglu, an Istanbul native, is offering traditional meyhane-style dining, which means drink-friendly seafood-driven mezze plates enjoyed outdoors, as you would if you were in his home city, sitting at a table overlooking the Bosphorous.

“Turkey is girt by sea on three sides and I grew up fishing in the Marmara with my father, who had his own boat,” says Sivrioglu. “The best seafood in Istanbul is served in meyhanes – bars serving mezze plates and the Turkish spirit raki.” The chef says his menu at Anason acknowledges this tradition, with a modern approach. “Turks don’t feel the need for a complex recipe for fish; the rule is grill the whole fish if large, fry the whole fish if small, then serve with lemon and rocket. They get more imaginative with mussels, prawns, calamari and octopus.”

Kick things off with a spiced old fashioned made from applejack bourbon, pistachio syrup and served with a zaatar-dusted sliver of green apple, or an elegant watermelon gin martini made with chartreuse, mint and pomegranate molasses as you nibble on spicy lamb lahmacun (paper-thin Turkish pizza) and house-baked simit (Turkish pretzels), which are displayed in one of the authentic hawker carts imported from Turkey.

As you move through the menu, the share plates build up from a first act of pumpkin hummus with crispy chickpeas, chargrilled octopus with earthy beetroot, cured salmon pastirma with chilli oil (a play on the traditional cured beef pastirma used to fill borek pastries with cheese) and heirloom tomato salad with feta and crispy simit chips, to a crescendo of baked whole cauliflower with walnut tarator, king prawns with spicy sujuk (sausage), bonito with radish and sumac, and rich beef kofte with al dente white beans for bite.

A stand out is the mussel dolma, which require a fastidious approach. Uncooked mussels are shucked, without damaging the shells, the raw meat carefully sliced in half, stuffed with clove-spiced rice, then returned to the shell and steamed until plump and juicy. Served with a squeeze of lemon, they transport you to the briny, fishy Istanbul meyhanes that come to life at sunset as the boats come to shore with their daily catch. The kitchen plays with the Middle Eastern tradition of dolma, or stuffing, with a calamari dolma stuffed with pistachio and barberries and served with ‘avocado ganush’ the latest incarnation.

It would be easy to sit in the alfresco modern blue-and-white-tiled space, designed by George Livissianis (Billy Kwong, Cho Cho San, The Apollo) and while away the evening over a bottle of Turkish rosé or chardonnay (Turkish wines outnumber homegrown drops on the menu), but if you make it to dessert, watch out for the kebabs flying out of the kitchen – word on the street is that the Noma chefs order ‘takeaway’ after service. It seems Anason has the ‘Noma effect’.