The Vault — Restaurant in Sydney

Flicking over from an apartment display centre to a food hub, Liverpool’s former 1868 historic paper mill is now home to a quartet of restaurants & eateries, known collectively as The Paper Mill Food. Taking advantage of the beautiful saw-tooth roof line, designer Paul Papadopoulos from DS17 (responsible for Nour & Alpha) has showered the original brickwork with loads of natural light.

While the eateries &airspace are all interconnected, this review will focus upon Firepit, The Paper Mill’s premium offering, which offers table service & its own dedicated eating area running from fountain to firepit in the rear. Firepit is a very attractive dining proposition, with fake plants dangling from overhead steel girders, & a range of modular private dining rooms down one side. They are separated from the main space with glass walls that open to allow airflow. Inside them, aggregate floors are softened with plants, woven basket lights & floor-length, flowing grey drapes.

We’re seated in Parisian, red and white woven chairs in the main space. They add a pop of colour to an area that’s mostly furnished with post-industrial metal framed seats. The metal carries through to a steampunk-inspired clock with Roman numerals & its gears on display, right over our heads. Eye-catching black, white & gold tiles set apart the service areas, including the marble-topped charcoal station, where a white-clad chef is toasting focaccia batons over licking red flames.

Backed by a pair of wood-fired ovens and a rotisserie, the flame grill is the restaurant’s key attraction, so I weight my meal towards the offerings cooked over charcoal. It’s no coincidence that Wood-Roasted Oysters Rockefeller ($26/6) were named after the richest man of the day (1899), John D. Rockefeller. The warm bivalves are rich & buttery, with a big garlicky, parsley kick that needs a good squeeze of lemon to cut through & actually taste the oyster.

The 2017 Vinum Chenin Blanc ($54) is a classic oyster wine, with lemon & a bit of butter, made in Stellenbosch in South Africa. Entry-level wines scrape in just under forty bucks a bottle on the compact but interesting wine list. There is also a treat yo’self section where you can crack into French bubbly like Dom Pérignon ($230/bottle) or Perrier-Jouët Belle Époque ($520/bottle), if you’re rollin’ with homies richer than my mob.

Scraped onto charred focaccia, Wood-Roasted Bone Marrow ($18) is expertly handled. Topped with a well-dressed salad of parsley, red onion and green olive, with a scrape of hot English mustard to cut the fat, the warm veal marrow toast is rich & indulgent.

From the rolling hills of the Darling Downs, the 300g F1 Rump Cap ($55) arrives well rested at our server’s recommended medium. Served tagliata (sliced) with beer battered fries and your choice of sauce, it’s smoky (from the grill) & satisfyingly chewy, without blood pouring onto the large oval plate. Unable to choose just one condiment, we try it with excellent Béarnaise & pleasantly spicy fermented green chilli. While there are a handful of well-dressed leaves, some extra vegetables wouldn’t go astray. Charcoal Sugar Cabbage ($13) arrives beautifully blackened on faro and whipped ricotta, with a mint & lemon dressing, playing to the strengths of Palestinian-born, executive chef Nader Shayeb.

What I wasn’t expecting from Shayeb was the best Pork Ribs ($59) I’ve eaten in Australia. With rashers of surprise bacon glued to them using a beautifully balanced barbeque glaze, this smoky rack is so good, it will have you throwing away your cutlery & gnawing on the bones to make the most of your high-priced, but supremely good, baby back ribs.

Sticky fingers give you a good reason to check out The Paper Mill Washroom. With period appropriate concrete trough sinks, and gorgeous glass and metal detailing over the dunny doors, every last detail is well-considered in Liverpool’s first...

Omg! We cannot express how amazing our experience was at this place. I'll start with the moment we got there; we assumed it was open from 11am as per Google, but then the chef was ready to go by 11:15 and we were stoked. The music, the atmosphere, the design of the complex was inviting, comfortable, and warm, taking us back in time yet it being so contemporary- who knew this could be pulled off. Then the menu came; the prices did not match the quality of the food, in fact, the quality beat the price! I pay the same at lesser quality places, so now this has become my favourite. The entree came before the meal; how long has it been since we experienced the right service? Extremely long time. There was always something wrong. But here, the entree's came and they were so delicious. The wait wasn't long compared with other restaurants, and great care was taken with them. Every aspect of it was perfect- the flavours, the colours, the cooking, and I then started to think, they better get the mains right, surely they can't impress me this much. But then the mains came - we died. The art starting with the service, the presentation, the flavour, the perfect cooking and all the intricacies on the plate blew us away. The salmon may have had extra salt, but what allowed me to bypass it was the accountability that was taken, and the immediate response was brilliant to see. You don't see this anymore. So then we decided to break our diet and go for the dessert. I would never have done so, but I had to see this- they had to stuff up somewhere right? But the chef was ready; he decides to bring out his guns and the two desserts we selected were insane; brulee was his own recipe, made so fresh and delectable, then the warm fondant with the sorbet that I never used to like due it's consistancy and loaded sugar; the quality of these desserts made us finish both plates and licking our spoons. The bottom line is, we didn't want to leave and we loved the experience. This father's day was made extra special with the service, atmosphere and food that we would like to say thankyou and can't wait to come back....

Unfortunately we did not have a good experience dinning here. The entrees were very good and tasty but the mains were far from matching the price we paid for them. If it weren’t that we were hungry, we would not have eaten any of the dishes. All meals except for one were very over cooked but somehow still cold. We ordered salmon which smelled like old fish and was dry and overcooked. At the same time the skin was not crispy as if the piece of fish had been heated in a microwave from frozen. The chicken casserole was greasy and very, very dry. It looked as if it had been forgotten in the oven. The sauce had separated and all that was left was oil. The dish was meant to have mushrooms and potatoes but these were nowhere to be found. The fries were still frozen in the middle and the salad was beyond salty. Lastly, some of us ordered a tomahawk steak to share which costs a whooping $198 but sadly, after ordering it medium rare, it was served rare and in some places totally raw. It was pre-sliced so it would have been impossible to cook it all to our liking. We waited for quite some time before we got our plates and cutlery so the steak just sat there getting cold.

The service was disappointing as well. Understaffed, under trained. There were 4 waiters for the whole restaurant with about 6 busy tables. No one checked on us at any point of the meal and it was even hard to get the bill! Drinks took a while to arrive even though we just ordered beers and were right next to the bar. Dirty glasses cluttering the counter and also dirty plates on our table.

The atmosphere is cool but the service and food quality is very disappointing given how much the food costs. Sadly we will not...