Stables restaurant opens in Paddington

A new modern Australian restaurant has opened in Victoria Street Paddington, just behind Oxford Street.

Over the past 150 years, the sandstone building has housed everything from a stables and a hay loft, to a leather smith’s residence, an even a blacksmith.

Now it’s been reborn as the Stables Restaurant and Bar, serving up dishes, local wines, original cocktails in a room steeped in history.

Executive chef Thomas Gripton, who has previously worked at Bentley, Yellow and Hubert, has his strong relationships with suppliers and he will be using those connections to source premium ingredients.

“The focus is on Australian ingredients,” Gripton told Broadsheet. “I want to use the best. I never want to use something just because it’s cheap. Then I do as little to it as possible. I put all the work into perfecting the main protein and make sure I don’t confuse it.”

Dishes will include butter-poached lobster served with avruga caviar and an aromatic herb jus. There is also the perfect winter dish of braised-lamb belly with miso-eggplant puree and chestnut and the John Dory fillet with smoked-eel-and-carrot broth.

While the menus is distinctly Australia, there will be Japanese ingredients such as kombu, dashi, miso, wasabi and nori.

“I spent so much time at Bentley and Monopole” Thomas Gripton told Broadsheet, pointing to what’s influenced this Asian direction. “And there was always that hint of Japanese flavour in their food. It’s what I love to eat and it helps keep the food nice and light.”

The focus on smaller Australian and New Zealand wineries combines with the use of the “enomatic” system which is a stainless-steel wine cage that prolongs the life of wine).

This allows The Stables to deploy premium wines by the glass, wines that would otherwise only be available by the bottle.

The drinks list also includes in-house cocktails, house-made syrups, freshly picked herbs and an inventive selection of fruit and spices.

Leon Getler 1st June 2018.