“I love cooking with charcoal, smoking and grilling. We support small and local producers and purchase as much organic product as possible, and have virtually no food waste, due to having no cool room.”

Redclaw yabbies with tamarind and chilli paste, cashew butter, palm hearts and pomelo; raw 9+ Wagyu shoulder with grilled enoki mushrooms, duck egg cream, Tasmanian wasabi, and seaweed; and Robata-grilled Kurobuta pork with chickpea miso, flowering autumn greens, whipped onions, and powdered onion.

When Ross and Sunny Lusted opened The Bridge Room in 2011, they poured their love of Japanese robata grilling and Asian ingredients into the kitchen and their own mid-century aesthetic into the airy Nordic interior.

Everything else from there on in has been indelibly local. Ross Lusted works closely with New South Wales producers (quail from Redgate Farm in the Hunter Valley, Koshihikari rice from the Randalls near Griffith). The couple even grows succulents on a rooftop garden for the table decorations.

The menu focuses on seafood (particularly sustainable species and by-catch opportunities) and creative ways with vegetables (Sunny Lusted is a vegetarian). One of Sydney’s most civilised restaurants, it runs on craft and beauty, constantly buzzing with corporates by day and the theatre crowd at night. All locals, of course.

“Beyond Ross Lusted’s unique flavour pairings and profound knowledge of produce is an artist’s eye for design that is an integral part of his Sydney restaurant.” Delicious