A new restaurant and bar, dubbed Apera, has opened in Castlecrag, located in Sydney’s lower North Shore.
Led by new hospitality group Table Manors, Apera is open for lunch and dinner, serving a menu that focuses on Australian produce that’s sourced as locally and ethically as possible.
The Apera kitchen is led by Jenny Shaw (Palisade Hotel, The Kitchen Nook) and Ryan Blagrove (Marco Pierre White’s The Queensbury) who met five years ago when Shaw opened sustainable café Suzie Q Coffee & Records, in Surry Hills.
Their short, but ever-changing shared menu features a selection of small plates to start, alongside rotisserie and wood-fired mains.
Highlights include Sydney rock oysters with finger lime and Tasmanian pepper; New South Wales clams with samphire and nduja oil; cauliflower with Birch’s Bay manchego, sage and Riverina hazelnuts; Cowra pasture-fed lamb shoulder with Warrigal greens and chimichurri and Bannockburn salted chicken.
Native ingredients are the stars of the dessert men, which includes red gum fired pear, lavender crumble, vanilla ice cream and iron bark honey; rhubarb, lemon curd, shortbread and river mint and chocolate mousse, mandarin, hazelnut and wattleseed praline.
“We are passionate about sustainability and will be using lots of under-utilised species of fish and cuts of meat,” says Shaw.
“We have always cared about the provenance of our food and feel that it should be prepared honestly and simply. Apera is all about food cooked perfectly with bags of love and flavour, designed to be shared and enjoyed by mates.”
Bar manager Jordan Blackman has curated a drinks list that features a strong repertoire of Australian distilleries and boutique producers, such as handcrafted sodas from PS40, sheep’s whey vodka from Hartshorn Distillery in Tasmania and amaro from Applewood Distillery.
Blackman’s signature cocktail is the Apera Negroni, with house-made woodfired beetroot vermouth, Adelaide Hills bitter orange aperitif and a sugar snap pea gin. The cocktails are perfectly complemented by a bar menu of light snacks, like Toolumka Creek marinated olives, Gembrook Farm fries and Gould’s semolina squid, saffron aioli and citrus.
Apera opens from Wednesday to Saturday and is located at Castlecrag Quadrangle Shopping Village.
