Ingredients that taste like themselves, service that neither coddles nor evades, a knock-out wine list, and a room that brings joy. It’s not rocket science. Yet, so many restaurants never quite get it right. This is what we’ll call deliciousness, and it’s everywhere at chef Danielle Alvarez’s Fred’s.

The lovely Paddington destination feels like a home kitchen, albeit a dream-on home, with bowls of produce on marble benchtops instead of stainless steel prep containers. Bring friends. The name ‘Fr_e_ds’, with spaces intact, is meant to invoke the word ‘friends’. Cute. But bring friends to Fred’s you must. It’s a place for sharing food, a place with personality and intimacy.

Everything centres around a fire, and the food is the product of a sublime, sustainable harvest. It’s old-world cooking via California’s Chez Panisse to Sydney. Soft slow-cooked ocean trout tastes of the sea, prettied up with nutty broad beans, radish and wild fennel. Baby turnips are a forgotten vegetable allowed to shine in their bitter, sweet, tender crunch, matched with thin slices of buttery fried Southern squid, snow peas and black garlic vinaigrette. What a delight to find a puddle of earthy white bean puree under deboned chicken Marylands instead of the oh-so-common cauliflower.

There’s something wholesome about this welcoming 60-seater. The food, the open fire in the kitchen over which a lamb leg hangs, the beautiful wood lining its floors and the uncluttered room, the oil paintings, the generous food and the female head chef are a reprieve from smears on plates and degustation menus and the harried waiters of so many modern restaurants. There’s substance here, without self-important seriousness, it’s welcoming without being desperate. The place, like any good friend, is just so terrifically likeable.

Must eat dish: Southern squid
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