Take a look at the dessert menus on Sydney’s newest and most inventive restaurants – places like ACME, Automata, Master, Silvereye or Lumi – none of them have any chocolate. Instead they’ve got fennel pollen, vegetables, fermented under ripe almonds and ‘a roasted potato’.

That last creation, a ball of potato skin ice cream encased in a doughnut-like shell, is the work of Master’s head chef and co-owner John Javier.

“A lot of places do chocolate, and it’s very predictable,” he says. “But there’s a lot of sweetness that’s often overlooked in vegetables. Just to rely on one spectrum of ingredients is like shooting yourself in the foot, it’s limiting your creativity.”

The only chocolate dessert Javier and his team have run since Master opened last August had carrot in it, but even that didn’t last for long, he says.

“For us to go and do a chocolate dessert, it doesn’t fit in line with the rest of our menu because we’re doing things a bit differently around here.”

You’ll hear something similar from the head chefs of Sydney’s other progressive restaurants. Like Javier, Silvereye’s Sam Miller says chocolate doesn’t suit his style.

“I don’t particularly want to eat a chocolate dessert at a restaurant that’s trying to be creative. I don’t see the creativity. It’s a crowd pleaser, a safe one and I’m trying to push away from that,” he says.

When Miller started Silvereye late last year he purposefully didn’t hire a pastry chef. It was something he learnt at Champignon Sauvage, a two Michelin starred restaurant, he says.

“There were only three of us in the kitchen. The chef cooked the meat and then he did the desserts. He always said ‘it gives you a different flavor profile going into the desserts’ and I think that’s stuck with me.”

With a team more experienced with savoury dishes than baking and tempering chocolate the dessert list ends up revolving around the ingredients the chefs are comfortable with – vegetables, herbs, fruits and fermentations.

Miller, a former Noma sous-chef, says Redzepi’s influence has been a big part in influencing a new culinary style, a part of which has been the transformation of desserts.

One of Sydney’s veteran chefs and dessert virtuosos, Peter Gilmore, says he’s seen the trend slowly seep into the Australian dining scene over the last two years.

“All these things have a trickle-down effect. Like anything, it becomes normal after a while.”

The other aspect Gilmore considers is that maybe young or ambitious chefs are simply rebelling against the status quo, eschewing chocolate like a ’60s punk with a distaste for pop. Javier says it’s much simpler.

“It’s not ‘oh we are going to use chocolate’ or ‘we’re not going to use chocolate’. It just felt right with the dishes we came up with. If it’s more delicious this way, fuck it. Do it,” he says.