The famed Norwegian restaurant will be leaning in to local ingredients for its second takeover of Hawkesbury fine diner Berowra Waters Inn in July.
It’s been two years since Norway’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant Maaemo brought its refined Nordic fare to the bushland surrounds of Berowra Waters Inn.
For its second Australian residency, running July 24-27, executive chef Jay Boyle is leaving the Scandinavian staples behind, smoked reindeer heart included. Instead, he’ll be reimagining the restaurant’s menu using entirely Australian ingredients.
“It’s a major and slightly terrifying challenge to recreate these dishes without a single item from the Maaemo pantry,” says Boyle. “There’s a whole alphabet of ingredients we need to replace. But it’s very exciting to recreate and even elevate dishes through a purely Australian lens.”
Boyle will join Berowra Waters Inn executive chef and owner Brian Geraghty in the kitchen. With just one week before Boyle touches down in Sydney, Geraghty and his team are busily prepping an all-Australian pantry of ferments, preserves and condiments for the menu, including macadamia miso, rosella bud capers and vinegar made from muntries.
“We realised it made far more sense to construct the food around ingredients native to here,” says Geraghty. “It’s a more cohesive narrative for where the restaurant is – in the middle of the Australian bush, in a sandstone and tin building.”
Several of Maaemo’s signature dishes will be reworked: langoustine with egg yolk glaze will become marron with emu egg yolk; king crab and hazelnuts will be swapped for Hawkesbury mud crab in macadamia milk; while its famous “Oyster Tradition 2010” will feature local Hawkesbury oysters instead of Norway’s Bomlo variety.
“When you look at restaurants like Noma and Maaemo, they’re hyper-focused on provenance – they explore what it means to be of a place,” says Geraghty. “We wanted to see if we could do that here.”
Geraghty is working with a network of local producers including Tinja Farms and Newcastle Greens, as well as native food expert Nathan Lovett from the National Indigenous Culinary Institute to source rare, wild and native ingredients for the menu.
Among the produce sourced will be Atherton raspberries, which will replace Norwegian strawberries in a dessert of dried and rehydrated berries with native herbs and edible flowers.
“Dishes will closely resemble those served in Oslo, but will also be completely bespoke, taking on the unique flavours of Australia, cooked up by a couple of Australian chefs at the top of their field, in an iconic Australian setting,” says Geraghty.
Originally from Port Stephens, NSW, Boyle first met Geraghty in 2010 while working in the kitchen of Sydney’s Bilson’s restaurant. Boyle left just a year later to join Maaemo, and today is one of only three Australian chefs leading a three-Michelin-starred kitchen anywhere in the world — alongside Brett Graham from The Ledbury and Matt Abe from Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
“Back then, we were the youngest people in the kitchen. We really hit it off and we’ve remained friends ever since,” says Geraghty.
The event also coincides with another high-profile return: the UK’s three-Michelin-starred L’Enclume will also be in town, revisiting the Bathers’ Pavilion in Balmoral, two years after its Sydney debut.
Maaemo x Berowra Waters Inn will run over four days, with just 250 seats available across July 24-27. The 14-course tasting menu is priced at $420 per person, with two all-Australian wine pairings available for $220 and $340. Tickets can be purchased at berowrawatersinn.com.
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Erina Starkey – Erina is the Good Food App Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously, Erina held a number of editing roles at delicious.com.au and writing roles at Broadsheet and Concrete Playground.
