Nomad (Surry Hills, Sydney)

Yay! My first post of 2014 is about a great new restaurant in Surry Hills. My meal at Nomad occurred a couple of weeks before Christmas and as usual, I am a little behind with my posts.

By the way, my new year's resolution is to be more on the ball with my blog posts. One can only try but no promises! :)

Nomad has a 2 session seating policy with fixed times. Not sure if it is only for Saturdays but as mentioned before this is becoming rather prevalent. I have a friend who dislikes this policy intensely and absolutely refuses to go to restaurants who has this. I actually don't have an issue about it and ultimately I am there to enjoy the meal and the company. How do you feel about restaurants with 2 fixed time sessions in one evening?

When I walked into Nomad, I was struck by the openness of the restaurant. There was a warehouse like feel to it. It was like being in a loft. I loved it. Everything was open, even the kitchen. On one side was the stack of wine bottles and next to it was the drying area for the small goods. On the other side was shelves of bottled pickles. At the far end of the hanging small goods was the cheese room.

Our seating was for 6.00 pm and I liked the fact the restaurant was open before 6 to allow us to sit down and peruse the menu in good time.

As I was being seated, I was asked if I wanted tap water or sparkling water. Before I could answer, I was informed that it would cost me $4 per person for unlimited sparkling. Well, that decided for me, so I chose sparkling. I really like it when we diners are told of the prices before we decide on drinks and on specials.

So here is a list of the spread we had. I think we ordered just a little too much but I wanted to try everything. A common problem, as usual. :)

We started with the snacks which are categorised as small in the dinner menu.

Wood fired sourdough with black salt butter.

House made Nomad charcuterie - a selection of lardo, beef cheeks, ox heart pastrami, mortadella and chorizo. The lardo was just a tad to lardy for us but we loved the ox heart pastrami and beef cheeks. I also enjoyed the mortadella.

Foie gras and chicken liver parfait - the dish of the night as far as I am concerned! Although I am not normally a fan of the foie gras, it did lift up the flavours of the chicken liver parfait. The crunchiness of the pickles provided the requisite texture to offset the smooth and creamy parfait. Altogether they make a good combination of flavours and textures.

Cured ocean trout pastrami - this was one of the specials of the night. Not quite what we expected but it was a relatively nice dish. A bit hard to live up to the splendid Chicken liver parfait.

We then moved on to the Share plates which are categorised as big in the dinner menu.

Nomad jersey milk haloumi with pine nuts, raisins and barbecued zucchini. The haloumi had a nice texture and the sweetness of the raisins was a good match to the savouriness of the remaining ingredients. Very Middle Eastern flavours!

Wood roasted pork with silver beet and mojo potatoes. The pork was deliciously tender and had a lovely crackling.

I desperately wanted to try their desserts but we felt so stuffed. I seriously needed to walk for at least half an hour to be able to fill anything else in. So no desserts this time. :(

I would like to mention that we took our time eating through all the dishes. We did not feel rushed even though we knew we had to leave by 8.15 pm. And the wait team did not make us feel rushed at all.

And last but not least I want to give a shout out to the team who were so warm and friendly. Osanna, the young lady who waited on our table was so lovely. She certainly made a difference to our very enjoyable experience at Nomad.


Nomad
16 Foster Street
Surry Hills
NSW 2010
Website: restaurantnomad.com.au

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