Pipit

Pipit is a wood-fired restaurant on Coronation Avenue in Pottsville, in northern New South Wales between the Gold Coast and Byron Bay. Chef Ben Devlin runs it with his partner Yen Trinh.

Devlin had been the chef at Paper Daisy before the couple opened Pipit in May 2019, their first restaurant of their own. He did much of the tiling, painting and grouting inside himself, and the first weekend was given over to fundraising lunches for OzHarvest, a charity that fights food waste. The kitchen is built around a grill that cooks on, above and under the fire: racks overhead smoke or dry ingredients, and the ash falls into a drawer that works like a small wood oven.

Menus follow the seasons and stay short so the dishes can change often. Tuna tartare gets a lift from preserved yuzu and cucumber, and buckwheat waffles shaped like little fish hold a soft mahi mahi filling. Swordfish comes off the fire onto an eggplant ragù, while eggplant also turns up raw as a tartare with peanuts, chicory and shiitake. Raw baby vegetables are served with a sharp waste paste made from kitchen trimmings, duck comes with smoked beetroot and figs, and the wine pairing is entirely Australian.

Devlin's own gyotaku prints, made by inking a fish and pressing paper onto it in the Japanese way, hang on the walls, and he uses the technique to honour local seafood in his menus. The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide has given Pipit two hats and named it regional restaurant of the year for the state. It has also won a Tweed sustainability award and was the first restaurant in NSW to reach the top rating of the international Food Made Good standard. Waste paste on the plate and fish prints on the walls come from the same habit of using every part of what the sea and the garden provide.