Tweed’s Ben Devlin joins Vivid Sydney line-up with Northern Rivers showcase

AWARD-winning Tweed-based chef Ben Devlin is bringing the produce and seasonal rhythm of the Northern Rivers to Sydney’s dining spotlight, featuring in the Regional Dinner Series and Vivid Fire Pit as part of Vivid Sydney.

Vivid Sydney will return with 23 days of light, music, ideas and food, with a renewed focus on regional New South Wales through its Regional Dinner Series, pairing Sydney restaurants with regional chefs to celebrate the state’s food culture.

Among those representing the state’s diverse regions is Devlin, executive chef and co-owner of Pottsville’s Pipit Restaurant, who will collaborate with fire-focused Surry Hills chef Lennox Hastie at his Firedoor restaurant on 25 and 26 May.

For Devlin, the event is an opportunity to bring the Tweed’s seasonal identity to a wider audience.

“I would say that there’s a real culture here of going to farmers markets, and farm stalls,” he said.

“I do think we have a slightly different understanding of seasonality here.

“That makes the food a little bit more grounded.”

 

Devlin described his cooking style as increasingly focused on sustainability, technical craft and whole-ingredient use.

At Pipit Restaurant, that philosophy extends into in-house production of everything from bread and cheese to fermented sauces.

“We make a lot of things from scratch, whether that’s our bread, or we make salami, we make 10 different types of cheese, we make miso, fish sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, and all manner of different things,” he said.

“And we layer them into our dishes to create unique flavours, which you couldn’t do unless you made those things yourself.”

Creatively, Devlin said the focus at Pipit is on using every part of an ingredient.

“We work on trying to find ways to create a good cycle that involves everything that the ingredient has to offer,” he said.

That approach has seen Devlin draw on an 18th century Japanese technique known as gyotaku, where fish are printed using non-toxic ink to create artworks later displayed in the restaurant.

“We do a Japanese style of printing called gyotaku where we apply ink to the fish, and then apply paper to it afterwards, and then you pull that back and you get an impression of the fish,” he said.

Devlin said he enjoys the technique as both a meditative and reflective process.

“I like it as a bit of a mental unwind,” he said.

“And I do enjoy that it has brought me a lot closer to the ingredients.”

From there, he said no part of the fish needs to go to waste.

“The head we can turn into a sauce, and the insides we can turn into a type of fish sauce,” he said.

“We have also kept some of the bones and we’ve turned them into Bone china, like serving vessels basically.”

For Devlin, the Regional Dinner Series is also a chance to showcase Northern Rivers produce less familiar within Sydney’s dining scene.

“Because of the caldera that we’re in, we grow a lot of really interesting produce that we see every year, but just doesn’t really travel down there,” he said.

“So being able to take things down to people and being able to present them with something that potentially they’ve never seen before, I really enjoy that.”

He pointed to bunya nut preserves, native bee honey and black sapote as local ingredients he hopes to feature, saying he wants the experience to encourage people to visit the Tweed region.

“We can show them a version of the same state that they’re a part of but that they don’t even know about, and that’ll hopefully encourage them to come up here as well,” he said.

 

Devlin said the collaboration with Hastie brings together similar creative approaches, with Firedoor’s fire-led cooking closely aligning with his own philosophy.

“He does work in the style that we kind of aspire to, like keeping it over fire, having bold and interesting flavors, but also working pretty delicately,” Devlin said.

Beyond the collaboration, Devlin will also take part in The Vivid Fire Pit at Barangaroo Reserve, where he will cook over open flames alongside other Australian chefs.

As part of his appearance, Devlin said he will prepare a kangaroo shawarma.

“It’ll be kangaroo that has been brined in buttermilk and seasoned with some wattle seed, native pepper and a bit of black garlic, cooked over open fire,” he said.

He said the scale of the event presents a different kind of challenge.

“That is like writing up a recipe that will serve more people in a night than I would serve in a week,” he said.

“For me, that’s a bit of a challenge to try and find something that’s going to work for that and then also still be fun and tasty and a representation of what we like to do.”

Despite the scale, Devlin said he is excited by the opportunity.

“It should be a really interesting and vibrant space,” he said.

Vivid Sydney will run from 22 May to 13 June.