The thing that jumps out at you the most is the anticipation. The sense that something important was happening to Sydney. That’s how it feels to reread the coverage surrounding Firedoor, just before and after it opened, nearly 10 years ago.

In 2011, chef Lennox Hastie moved to Australia from the wood-smoked kitchens of Spain’s legendary Etxebarri, a Basque asador which, under Hastie’s and chef Victor Arguinzoniz’s stewardship, became one of the most famous restaurants in the world. And for the next four years, Hastie’s every move was scrutinised for hints and clues about his upcoming restaurant.

“Every time I would look at a site somewhere, it would suddenly appear in the papers like ‘Lennox Hastie’s opening in Chippendale, he’s doing this, he’s doing that’,” Hastie tells Broadsheet. “It was hectic.”

By the time Firedoor eventually opened in Surry Hills, in late April 2015, Broadsheet was calling it “one of the most anticipated restaurant openings of the past five years”.

“After such a long period of time, there was such anticipation,” says Hastie. “There was a huge amount of pressure, and I hadn’t cooked in a restaurant in four years, so it was very nerve-wracking.”

Firedoor delivered on its promise. The fire-fuelled fine diner, where everything is cooked over flames, cleared every high hurdle of expectation that it had been burdened with. It became every bit as influential – and delicious – as we all wanted it to be.

And just like that, it’s 10 years later. In the last decade, Firedoor has celebrated highs like consistent local and international acclaim – and one breakthrough Chef’s Table episode – and withstood lows like the pandemic, lockdowns and consecutive cost-of-living crises. Next Tuesday, on April 29, is its 10th birthday.

Firedoor has always eluded categorisation. After all, the signature dish is a steak, but it’s not a steakhouse. Even the City of Sydney classifies it as a charcoal chicken shop – despite its lack of charcoal. And chicken. But after 10 years, Hastie feels like he’s closer to articulating what Firedoor is than ever before. And after buying out his long-time partners at Fink Group late last year, he now has complete ownership of Firedoor.

The only challenge facing Hastie this week is to celebrate this accomplishment properly, before he turns his attention to whatever’s next.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun, and I’m going to try to take the moment to pause and just remember how we got here and thank everyone who’s come along on the journey. Thank you to everyone who’s ever come through the doors.” Hastie says. “After 10 years, it feels like we’re just getting started.”

10 Dishes That Defined the Decade

To celebrate Firedoor turning 10, we’re awarding it Icon status on The Hot List – a category reserved for the venues that have, over their long lives, changed the way Sydney – and sometimes Australia – eats forever. And Firedoor wouldn’t have become an icon without its food.

“These dishes are the ones that have the most meaning to me and they all play on this idea that fire has never been a fad to me; none of these dishes use fire as a gimmick,” Hastie says. “Some of them aren’t on the menu now, others have changed radically, and some have been largely the same since the beginning, but it’s all about the way fire connects to these ingredients.”

Live marron, finger lime, native herbs

This day-one dish typifies Hastie’s “immediate style of cooking”. It features a marron, plucked from the restaurant’s live tank and killed and grilled to order. When the marron is killed, its blood is decanted out of its head before being reinserted, causing it “to set like a little custard,” Hastie says. It’s finished with a garnish of finger lime and native herbs. “It’s a dish that’s always encapsulated the heart of Firedoor because it’s so straightforward and simple, but it’s all in the details of how you prepare the marron.”

Murray cod, paperbark, pil-pil

It’s one of Firedoor’s oldest dishes, but it’s changed beyond recognition over the years. When Hastie began to cook with Murray cod, he treated the temperate perch like a Basque Country cod. “So I used to cook it like I learned in Spain and made it soft and gelatinous – it was almost steamed over fire.”

As Hastie became more familiar with Australia, including spending time learning from First Nations communities, his technique grew more local too. “With the Murray cod we have now, the skin is all crisp and bubbly on one half, then on the other side the fish is protected by a piece of paperbark.”

Pippies, garlic, karkalla

Pippies were one local ingredient that Hastie had no trouble wrapping his head around. When he first moved to Australia, he lived on the Sunshine Coast. “I was taking a couple of months off work after six years at Etxebarri, and my partner and I just arrived and explored,” he says. The pair would fish together, using pippies from the sand as bait. “It was such a beautiful memory for me.”

That was the nucleus of this dish, which sees pippies – meticulously individually grilled – mixed with garlic, chilli and karkalla. “Pippies are individual organisms that cook at different times, so why cook them all together in one pot?”

Tataki kangaroo, pepperberry, juniper

“We were trying to find a way in which we could celebrate kangaroo, which is obviously this incredible native wild resource,” Hastie says. “Tataki style was the one that resounded the most.”

Kangaroo briefly kisses the grill’s embers, before being thinly sliced, skewered and served at blood temperature with charred onions and a pepperberry dressing. Then, everything is warmed and smoked over fresh juniper branches. “This really just resonated with people, probably more than I was expecting.”

Grilled lettuce, guanciale, pecans

“Salad was the one thing that we didn’t grill during my time at Etxebarri – it would only be fresh,” says Hastie. Early dishes like this one were a statement of cooking intent from Hastie: no ingredient would be spared from the flames. “I thought, now that I’m opening my restaurant, I’m not bound by rules and traditions – as long as I’m using high quality ingredients to create something delicious, I can do whatever the hell I want.”

200-day dry-aged beef

2020 was supposed to be Firedoor’s biggest year yet. The Chef’s Table episode had been filmed to release later that year, and Hastie and his team had been stockpiling additional beef to add to their dry-aging program. Then Covid lockdowns struck, taking Firedoor’s beef – and nearly the entire restaurant – down with it. “It took a good couple of years to get back to any sort of levels of stock.” Now, the steak that made Firedoor famous – and launched countless steakhouse comparisons – is only available as an optional add-on to the set menu, a move that Hastie says guarantees quality and consistency. “We only take the best beef from any producer because if you dry age a bad piece of beef, it’s only going to enhance its characteristics and make it worse.”

Brussels sprouts, ham hock, potato

“This one is from the à la carte early days, and it’s quite nostalgic for me because potatoes were always a massive feature in the UK,” says Hastie. So the dish is his tribute to the trusty tuber, as well as the most unfairly reviled vegetable: Brussels sprouts. Everything gets grilled quickly, before being introduced to one another. “The sprouts get so sweet and nutty, with this gelatinous ham hock stock and beautiful Dutch cream potatoes. It’s just really hearty and honest.”

Grilled berries, smoked buttermilk ice-cream

“Incorporating our buttermilk, which has a whisper of smoke through it, into ice-cream was a no-brainer,” says Hastie. Over the years, he has refined his technique on this one, including introducing fine-mesh pans that allow him to grill delicate berries over the open fire. “Now you’ve got this beautiful richness with a natural acidity that tastes like a beautiful summer’s day.”

Grilled banana ice-cream, smoked chocolate, honeycomb

“I think this dish is going to come back this year in some guise,” Hastie says. “It comes partly from a conversation I had with Massimo Bottura years ago about using the whole banana to reduce waste.” Bananas are blackened on the grill – skins and all – before being combined with a chocolate ganache made with smoked water. Then it’s finished with a wildflower honeycomb. “This was a mainstay on the menu for many years.”

Rum baba, burnt vanilla creme diplomat, seasonal fruit

“We originally wanted something classic on the menu that was a bit of a show stopper,” says Hastie. Although this flaming take on the rum baba has now retired from the menu, it still makes a guest appearance from time to time. “I just love the contradiction of this warm wood-fired rum baba with cold smoked creme diplomat – it just works really well and always brings a smile to people's faces.”

broadsheet.com.au/hotlist/sydney

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