Clare Smyth + Gordan Ramsay. Jamie Oliver + Gennaro Contaldo. Curtis Stone + Marco Pierre White. Every great hospitality story has one of these moments buried in it somewhere – the young cook who starts out chopping veg under someone else’s watch, quietly absorbing everything, before eventually going off to build a career so impressive that the mentor ends up slightly nervous about sharing a kitchen with them again. That’s essentially what’s happening at Otto Sydney this August, and we, for one, cannot wait to watch it unfold.
On Thursday 13th August, Otto is hosting its first-ever chef collaboration, and it’s a genuinely lovely one: Head Chef Richard Ptacnik (main feature, left) is welcoming back Remy Davis (right) – the same young cook who started his career at Otto over a decade ago – for a single night kicking off at 6pm called A Homecoming by Fire. Since leaving the Otoo kitchen, Davis has quietly become one of the most talked-about young chefs in the country, working through some of the world’s most respected restaurants before landing at the pass of Sydney favourites Bessie’s and Alma’s. Now he’s heading back to where it all started, except this time as an equal rather than an apprentice, which is either extremely heartwarming or mildly terrifying for Ptacnik, depending on how you look at it.
“It’ll be interesting to see how we go working side-by-side in the kitchen again now he’s got all this experience – let’s see if he can teach me something,” Ptacnik jokes, which is the kind of quietly gracious thing a genuinely good mentor says about their protégé, right before quietly plotting to hold their own in the kitchen anyway.
Here’s what’s actually landing on the table, because a reunion is only as good as the food backing it up: a five-course shared menu built from the places, producers and kitchens that shaped both chefs’ careers. Expect a crudo with blood orange, tomato water and verbena to open things up, followed by a Jerusalem artichoke risotto with Manchego, walnut and artichoke crisps for something a little more indulgent. The main event is a bone-in rib-eye, served with deep-fried smashed Kipfler potatoes and BBQ snake beans – proof thatOtto’s polished Italian sensibility and Davis’s fire-first instincts genuinely make sense together. Dessert wraps things up with a crème caramel finished with Pedro Ximénez, because no proper reunion dinner should end without something sherry-soaked and slightly showing off.
What makes it more than just a nice menu, though, is the story sitting underneath it. As Davis puts it: “I started my career with Richard, and that foundation still informs everything I do… our shared approach to fire and simplicity makes it feel entirely natural.” It’s the kind of sentiment that could easily read as a press release platitude, except when you consider it’s coming from someone who’s genuinely put in the years across some of the best kitchens going around, it lands as exactly what it is – a chef publicly crediting the person who shaped him, then showing up to prove he was paying attention.
The details, for anyone already reaching for their diary: doors open at 6pm, with a cocktail on arrival followed by two hours of free-flowing wine, beer and soft drinks alongside the five-course menu, all for $160 per person. Seats are genuinely limited – this is a one-night-only situation overlooking Sydney Harbour, not a standing menu item, so if the idea of watching two genuinely excellent chefs quietly compete for kitchen supremacy over rib-eye and Pedro Ximenez sounds like your kind of Thursday, you’ll want to lock it in sooner rather than later.
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