Chef Nicki Morrison’s vertical fireplace flavours every facet of this buzzing new eatery.
There’s a lot to be said for the X factor at restaurants. It’s something reviewers are drilled to take into account. Award points for food, service and ambience, but also look for that indefinable character that makes dining out extra special.
In its opening week as the newest eatery on the buzzing Smith St block, Flint seems to have the X factor in spades.
We’ve barely taken our seats in this dark, woody and moody room when the next-door table introduce themselves. Turns out one of them, Piers, fitted out the split-level space (formerly the popular Japanese eatery Peko Peko). He talks us through the decor – oregon bar top, tongue and groove work – and where to get the green leather bar stools my friend is coveting for one of his own projects. “Oh, and the food is phenomenal,” his mates assure us. “Have the kingfish!” Flint is the first solo outing for chef Nicki Morrison, who’s worked kitchens in Europe and Melbourne but most recently ran the barbecue catering business Sticks and Bones.
Hence her “passion for fire”, as she calls it. Here there’s no oven. Instead she works from a vertical fireplace cooking with charcoal and burning redgum logs.
Almost every dish she and sous chef Yukio Endo (ex-San Telmo) produce has an element of smoke, char or flame. It’s there in the smoky bone marrow butter served with sliced sourdough from Falco bakery down the street. The surf-and-turf sardine and smoked ‘nduja on a baguette slice. Even that recommended kingfish crudo, the raw fish pieces dressed in a burnt cucumber sauce with pickled beetroot, dill and roasted carrot chips. It’s a well-conceived plate with acid, salt, a slight smokiness to the sauce, earthy beetroot, crisp carrot and the fresh herbal hit of dill.
This raw-cooked-pickled combo is a recurring theme. A carpaccio-style tartare of kangaroo loin bonded with beetroot cream features long threads of pickled kohlrabi, crunchy buckwheat and grated cured egg. It’s crowned with a puffy disc of nori-lined rice cracker dusted with house-blended Chinese five spice that leaves my tongue tingling from the Szechuan pepper. It’s a party on the palate.
Elsewhere on the menu, cabbage is charred, carrot is fermented and pureed, and duck breast is smoked then flame grilled. It’s more complex than I expected; the sliced breast meat tender, the fat pleasantly chewy with lengthy, rewarding flavours. The duck is one of three shareable mains offered alongside whole NZ flounder and Black Market wagyu skirt.
The all-Australian wine list is modest in price and range but a Screaming Betty vermentino proves decent company.
There are half a dozen cult beers too, but everyone except us is ordering Flint’s house cocktails such as negronis mixed with Japanese craft gin and blood orange daiquiris. Dessert, tonight a brown butter cake with charred pineapple and a custard of smoked cream cheese, is an impossible dream after all we’ve eaten.
But next door has cake. It’s Piers’s birthday and the entire restaurant, including bar and kitchen staff, joins in the chorus. A jolly coming together of complete strangers. Flint seems to have this effect on people.
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