First Look: A Japanese Wine Bar With a Michelin-Credentialled Chef Hits Surry Hills

We love a venue that does the restaurant-or-wine-bar dance. And newcomer Tera Bar, a little dining room with a sake-focused drinks list and largely Australian wine selection, certainly does it nimbly. Led by a husband-and-wife team, the bar just opened on Devonshire Street, with a chef’s table experience, in a separate space overlooking the open kitchen, due to open in July.

Chef Takahiro Teramoto and his wife, Wanaka Teramoto, were previously co-owners at Kuro in the CBD; before that, they spent time in exceptional venues around the world. Chef Taka in the Michelin-starred Restaurant Pages in Paris and Florilege in Tokyo, and Wanaka at Paris’s 116 Pages. Here, though, the dining room is smaller, and the vibe is more “them”.

“We are Japanese, so we still want to incorporate a Japanese essence to the dishes,” Wanaka says. “Especially with the wine bar, we’ve made dishes that go well with sake and wine.” It’s Aussie produce in a menu guided by Japanese philosophy and French techniques.

Oysters sit fresh and pretty with house-made grapefruit shrub and deep green herb oil, while potato mochi comes with nori and tonburi, or “mountain caviar” (the seeds of the Japanese summer cypress). Toasts are swiped with chicken liver parfait, and Wagyu-stuffed croquettes arrive with a dish of tonkatsu sauce emboldened with red wine.

The drinks are designed to support the food – something particularly evident on the small plates menu. A floral junmai saké, from Saga Prefecture in Japan’s western Kyushu island, is best paired with a jack mackerel crudo shining with Campari, cucumber and bitter melon, for example. Or there’s a funky, fruity namazake (unpasteurised saké) from Niigata Prefecture on Honshu’s west coast to try with the fried shime-saba mackerel and ultra-creamy shio-koji potato salad.

Running their own operation is “something we’ve always wanted to do”, says Wanaka. “We always wanted to open a small restaurant... that feels personal and welcoming.”

“And also be close to the customer,” Taka adds.

Expect the menu to shift regularly, with plates on while the ingredients are available, making use of the best Aussie produce on offer that day. “When I order ingredients – like vegetables and fish, my special ingredients – [often] you won’t get much,” Taka explains. “So now I can do seasonal cooking, or today’s special, a weekend special.”

The wine bar’s name is both a play on the Latin word “terra” – meaning earth or land, referencing Tera’s seasonal focus – and also the chef’s childhood nickname. The upstairs chef’s table, with its fine-dining edge, takes his surname, Teramoto.

Main courses are meaty, with two dry-agers in-house. They’re being put to use on the opening menu with  duck breast – an early favourite served with a red wine sauce – and a multi-cut steak program. Plus, there’s house-made charcuterie in the works.

The soft-launch services were full of locals and fans of the pair’s work at Kuro. “[Kuro] was a bigger space, but we did a chef’s table there,” Wanaka says. “Taka gained his following there, and people are excited that we’re opening again – a lot of people came to support.”

Tera Bar
255 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills

Hours:
Mon 5pm–10pm
Thu to Sun 5pm–10pm

teramoto.com.au
@tera_surryhills