St Blaise is one of Sydney's best kept secrets. It's the only restaurant serving Dalmatian cuisine or food from the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. They also offer free flowing focaccia and Dalmatian liqueurs. Find out where it is and what you have to order when you're there!
It's a Friday night when Mr NQN and I make our way to Matraville to St Blaise. You have to know where it is and seek it out as St Blaise is hidden away down a little arcade unseen from the street. Google maps takes us to the car park which is right near the restaurant.
Owner and chef Vedran Perojevic is from Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Coast of Croatia who grew up watching his mother, father and grandmother cook.
He describes Dalmatian food as, "You cook what you have. Olive oil, garlic, wine, simple...it's Adriatic cuisine born on the coastline centuries ago long before borders like Italy, Greece or Spain existed. We all have grilled fish, octopus salad, fish stews, our versions of pasta, that's the Adriatic. These dishes belong to the coast, not to a flag."
Vedran worked as a chef in the United States and opened up his first restaurant in Zhuhai, China, then one in Dubrovnik, then eventually Sydney with St Blaise with another one opening soon in Noosa. "The first year (in Sydney), it was just me. Cooking, serving, washing dishes, reservations. People waited 15, 30, sometimes 45 minutes. Some didn't like it but that became a filter. Now I have a small team I trained myself," says Vedran.
The restaurant has an outdoor space but its an unseasonably cold Autumn evening so we are seated inside. There is an open kitchen and flag of Saint Blaise stands proudly in the dining room. He was the patriot Saint of Dubrovnik who warned against a Venetian attack in the 10th century. Pictures of Dubrovnik line the restaurant. Service is really lovely and helpful.
We start with some Crotian liquers - the Teranino is an Istrian liqueur made with red wine, sugar and spices that is typically enjoyed as a digestive. This is syrupy and aromatic and a sweet way to start the night. There's also a wine list with wines from Italy, America, Austria, Germany, France, Chile and Argentina, many available by the glass. And one of the things St Blaise is known for is the unlimited house made focaccia. In a city where a slice of bread will cost you around $10 and in this economy? Yes!
We start with the salmon tartare which is hand-chopped salmon with plenty of echallots, ginger and herbs, baby capers and spices. This is full of flavour thanks to the spice mix and we playfully fight over the last bite of this. Salmon isn't a tradition fish in Croatia and tartares along the Dalmatian coast were made with grouper, snapper and tuna but in recent years, with the lack of local supply and the pressure of summer demand salmon became more common, often coming from places like Norway. Vedran adds, "Even things like ginger, which people see as Asian, were actually used in Dubrovnik centuries ago through trade."
The "Bakalar na bijelo" or whipped salt cod pate is a very traditional dish, especially around fasting periods like Christmas Eve. The cod was originally brought by Dubrovnik merchants from the north, from places like Norway. The dip is creamy textured with a pool of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. It's delicious and moreish and we split each cube of bread and spread it on top.
I also wanted to try the roast beef with ricotta because it's not something we've seen before (you usually only see whipped ricotta by itself). It's spectacular with thin ribbons of medium rare roast meat and dabs of the ricotta with sweetness from the pickled red onion and a flavour bomb from porcini mushroom powder and basil olive oil. Make sure to mop up all that delicious basil oil with the free-flowing focaccia. The roast beef comes from Vedran's memories, "After the first autumn rains, we'd leave the coast and go up into the mountains to forage mushrooms. We'd come back with the car full and mushrooms don't wait. That same day stews, pickling, drying, turning some into powder for later. At the same time, Sundays meant roasts - beef, pork amd lamb. And always leftovers. The next days, thin sliced meat, pickled vegetables, fresh cream and cottage cheese."
The mains come with more bread, no questions asked. It's just brought even if we have almost an entire plate still left. The Janjetća Toćada or lamb ragu pasta is rich with tomato based sauce and chunks of tender slow lamb cooked Novalja style and twists of casarecce pasta. It's perfect for this cold wintry evening. It a dish that comes from Pag Island that Vedran describes as, "A strange place. On one side, you have Lun with some of the oldest olive groves in Europe. And then the rest of the island feels like the moon. Stone, wind, salt and almost no trees. The bura (wind) shapes everything there. The grass is salty, and the sheep just learn to survive on it and that's where the flavour comes from."
The black cuttlefish risotto is topped with gigantic wild caught prawns that are charred and grilled. The risotto itself has a lovely texture and it's very well balanced in flavour. Sometimes I find squid ink risotto can be too overwhelmingly rich but this is tempered with basil and wine and in each bite we get tender little pieces of cuttlefish. "It's something my mum always made for me and honestly nobody can make it like her. Mine is pretty good but hers is something else," says Vedran.
There are three desserts: tiramisu as well as two chocolate desserts. We decide to try the chocolate desserts - the chocolate tart is a buttery pastry shell filled with Belgium chocolate ganache and infused with tonka bean and coated in a gloriously sticky chocolate syrup. It's rich and decadent with an added dimension of flavour from the rose petals and lavender.
We also try the Dalmatian dessert, a house made carob and chocolate cake. This rich carob and chocolate cake is topped with chocolate ganache with a chocolate glaze on top as well as lavender and rose petals. Vedran explains that carob grows everywhere in Dalmatia and before chocolate, it was used as a natural sweetener. Carob seeds were once used as a unit of weight because of how consistently sized they are at 0.20 grams and is where the word "carat" comes from.
This is paired with a glass of Badel Korlat Aronija, a chokeberry liqueur, a tart sweet liqueur similar to honeyed berries. This warms us up even more for this chilly evening.
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried Dalamtian cuisine? Have you ever been to the Adriatic coast?
NQN and Mr NQN were guests of St Blaise but all opinions remain her own.
St Blaise
Shop 2/496 Bunnerong Rd, Matraville NSW 2036
Tuesday - Saturday 17:00-22:00
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