Walk into Pheast, on Waverley's Bronte Road shopping strip, and you'd think it had always been there. A fat pumpkin sits in the front window, glossy jade plants peep from ceramic pots, and trailing ivy curls down from vintage shop scales.
All of which is a little surreal, because the little neighbourhood diner only opened in February, and the chef/owner hasn't cooked in Sydney for 16 years. So what's the story? And in a city traditionally obsessed with shiny, new playthings, why would you want to look as if you have always been there?
Because – insert pet theory – Sydney diners are changing; digging down a bit deeper, looking for good food in all sorts of places. Pheast is proof of the changing demographic: two girls, with a BYO bottle of wine; a young couple with a baby, and a family of four, with bicycle helmets. They look as if they've been coming here for years, but they can't have.
Peeking in the kitchen, chef and owner Amanda Gale looks as if she's been cooking here for years, too. Gale was one of Neil Perry's young-gun chefs in the 1990s, before working in Bangkok, The Maldives, Bali and Bhutan with COMO Hotels and Resorts. Most recently, she opened Nava for Soho House in West Hollywood – and here she is in downtown Waverley, her little restaurant lined with pin-ups of illustrated ingredients instead of celebrities, with an espresso machine against the wall instead of a negroni bar. Nice.
Even nicer, she's borrowed the tandoor oven from India and put it to work with the Middle East. There's gorgeous flatbread ($8) that's all darkly bubbled, with za'atar and sesame seeds clinging to its hills and valleys. I strongly suggest you team it with burrata ($22), so you can slather the curd-filled cheese and its ripe persimmon, torn radicchio, fresh mint and pistachios on top.
The shortish menu of share plates is heavy on the veg; the highlight being a long wedge of meltingly soft and smoky butternut pumpkin ($18), dressed with flavour pops of creamy feta, sweet burnt onions and pomegranate.
A whole, but headless, pan-roasted yellow belly flounder ($36) is beautifully cooked, the juicy flesh parting like white piano keys, the skin darkly crusted with fried capers, garlic, chilli and marjoram. No sauce, no fuss, just two wedges of lemon on the side. Just as single-minded is Gippsland farm-raised poussin ($28), served as meaty, roasty chunks under a torrent of mint and parsley salad, pomegranate and pickled rhubarb. Gale isn't big on gratuitous sauces and relishes; leaving it to the intense, dry heat of the tandoor to seal in the natural juices instead.
Keeping the Middle Eastern vibe going is a small flourless orange and almond cake ($10) that doesn't really need its decorative almonds, grapes, more pomegranate (it's in season), and a tart scoop of yoghurt sorbet.
Pheast feels a throw-back, but it might actually be more of a signpost to future inner suburban contentment. Staff are sweet as pie, napkins are fine linen and the food is real. A license is on the way, but there's no rush, and in the meantime it's BYO, which is just fine. I like everything about it except the name, which makes me phear a phollow-up of phood-related phoneticisms. But that's phine, too.
Pheast
302 Bronte Road, Waverley
Phone 02 9387 6020 pheast.com.au
Open Dinner Tue-Sat 5-10pm (BYO only)
Cost About $140 for two
Score 14.5/20
The low-down
Best bit: Lovely little local doing real food.
Worst bit: Not sure the high communal table works.
Go-to dish: Clay oven flatbread ($8) with burrata, persimmon, grilled leeks, radicchio, mint, $22.
Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.