There must be more than 24 hours in chef Ben Devlin’s day. How else could he find time to bake (excellent) sourdough bread, culture the (even better) butter, cure (superlative) duck salami, fashion (first-rate) Stilton-style blue cheese and still manage to forge the ceramics and hand-print the gyotaku artwork on his restaurant’s walls? Pipit might come off as a modest, small-town 30-seater, but it turns out to be a monument to Northern Rivers produce. Ultra-crisp crudités arrive with a piquant “waste paste” made from kitchen scraps. Dainty dragon fruit tartare shows up under a thicket of shiso leaves, imbued with the earthy sweet-sourness of beetroot and umeboshi. It’s all steered by clear conscience and intuitively good sense, particularly in the sensitive cooking of dry-aged Spanish mackerel over wood fire or the thoughtful offer of half-glass pours from a proudly Australian wine list. A destination, sure, but a heck of a ride, too.
