When you see how Longshore plates its mussels, you’ll wonder why you don’t see it done that way more often. Oysters, mussels’ more successful cousin, are parsimoniously shucked and arranged on artful plates and beds of rock salt before being garlanded with microherbs and champagne mignonette. But mussels? We usually just toss them all in a bowl and call it a day. No longer. At Longshore, Chippendale’s seafood-focused diner, this underdressed bivalve has been given a long overdue makeover – hot pickled and stuffed with tarama, finished with pickle-brined fennel, plated up for all to see and admire.

“I love serving seafood in a chilled manner and I’ve wanted to work with Jervis Bay mussels for quite some time,” says Jarrod Walsh, Longshore’s executive chef. “And we were getting John Dory at the same time so we thought, ‘why not make a simple tarama from the cured roe and stuff [it] inside the mussels?’”

You’ll find this six-piece ditty in the snacks section of the Longshore menu. Here are the deets.

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What: A plate of pickled Jervis Bay mussels, stuffed with John Dory tarama and served with pickled fennel.

How: These mussels come from the Jervis Bay marine park, which doesn’t allow commercial fishing in its waters. “It means that there’s a rich diet for the mussels, so they have this large, sweet flesh,” Walsh says.

The mussels are pickled in a “super intense” hot pickle, which retains their taste and plumpness. When the dish was coming together, the Longshore kitchen happened to have a lot of leftover John Dory roe so Walsh figured, given the fish came from the South Coast, near the mussels, that it would be fun to pair them up. He took the leftover roe, cured it and blitzed it in a punchy, garlicky tarama. That tarama gets stuffed into the mussels, the shells are filled with bonito vinegar, then each mussel is topped with pickled wild fennel pollen, which also comes with a South Coast origin story.

“Me and a mate went fishing down near Port Kembla and saw a heap of wild fennel growing on the walking track in,” says Walsh. “So we filled up the ute with a heap of wild fennel fronds that we then pickle-brined – that added anise flavour goes really well with the mussel.”

Cost: $26

Where: Longshore in Chippendale, on Kensington Street.

@jayjaewalsh
@longshore.syd