A decade of whimsy: NEL Restaurant celebrates milestone

Former pot-washer Nelly Robinson arrived in Australia with little more than an irreverent attitude and the dream of opening his own restaurant. Within a few short years, NEL Restaurant was Australia’s top restaurant.

The same cheekiness that threads through Nelly Robinson’s life story is front and centre at his Sydney restaurant, NEL, renowned for its visually stunning seasonal degustation menus and its intimate, relaxed atmosphere.

The restaurant celebrated its 10^th anniversary this year, a significant milestone for pot-washer-turned-chef Robinson, who was down to his last $2 the day the restaurant opened.

While building a sustainable business in the cut-throat Sydney restaurant scene over the course of a decade, the ever-bubbly Brit has also championed native Australian ingredients, partnered with global brands and guest-starred on celebrity cooking television shows.

Robinson admits he was “a child” in 2015 when he strolled into the bank in shorts and flip-flops and asked for a $180,000 loan to start a restaurant in the dusty underground storage room of a Surry Hills hotel. Amazingly, the bank gave it to him.

He then deployed a tactic he saw on a cooking show and convinced his landlord to partially finance the restaurant fit-out by paying for things he couldn’t take with him, such as the bathrooms, plumbing, stairs and a new entrance.

Despite taking huge risks in setting up the restaurant, Robinson was determined that NEL would not be a flash-in-the-pan.

“The main thing for me was to sustain enough money in the bank account in the first six months to make sure that I was here for a long time, not a short time,” Robinson says.

“I kept reading about – and I still read it all the time today – a restaurant shuts here, a restaurant shuts there. And the reason is that they didn’t plan in the first two years how to sustain themselves. We weren’t looking for awards. It was just all about pay your contracts, pay your suppliers, pay your staff.”

Robinson says the financial responsibilities that came with running his own restaurant changed him enormously.

“I think I grew up instantly at 29,” he says. “It was a moment in life where you go `oh my God, I’ve got responsibilities now for 20 souls and if I don’t get my head down and push on, I’m not going to be able to pay my staff’.”

While Robinson might not have been looking for awards at first, they found him. Two months after opening, NEL was the People’s Choice for Best New Restaurant in Sydney in the annual Time Out Awards. The following year, the restaurant was named Australia’s best restaurant by TripAdvisor, and Robinson was invited to cook for Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday celebrations.

Now, Robinson, as a chef, and NEL, as a restaurant, are regularly included in global lists of the best chefs and restaurants. The Lancastrian was recently named an ambassador for Land Rover’s new Defender model, and he has previously partnered with Etihad, HSBC and Penfolds as well as high-end jeweller Tiffany & Co. to create edible jewels.

Some early lessons at NEL involved understanding how the Australian palate differs from other parts of the world. A tempura sweetbread, which probably would have been a hit in Europe, was quickly pulled from the menu after receiving poor reviews from diners.

NEL now offers four 12-course degustation menus each year, with themes such as Fine Fast Food, Native Australian, Great British Menu, and a Once Upon a Time menu inspired by Disney Films.

Each dish is a whimsical work of art, even though Robinson revealed he got an E in art in high school. Robinson said the balance of flavours is more important than the presentation, and some of his team’s beautiful concoctions never make it onto the menu.

From November 18 to December 23, Robinson and his team are inviting diners to enjoy The Story of Christmas degustation menu, which brings together nostalgic flavours, reimagined classics, and forgotten traditions from across the globe. Each dish is thoughtfully crafted with a story behind it.

Menu highlights include Summer Pine – a savoury sorbet of pineapple, green chilli and coriander wrapped in dolmades leaf and the French-inspired Noel Terrine – a rich duck terrine layered with foie gras, truffled chicken mousse and blueberry jelly. The devilishly indulgent Cherry & Custard Tart is a Christmas-spiced custard nestled in a delicate pastry shell, topped with juicy cherries soaked in warming mulled syrup, finished at the table with a flurry of icing sugar ‘snow’.

Each of NEL’s menus feature native Australian ingredients, such as anise myrtle, salt bush, pepper berry, strawberry gum and wattle seed, all sourced from proud Gamilaraay and Wonnarua man Corey Grech, who runs Native Botanical Brewery out of Ballina.

Native Australian macadamia nuts, spanner crab, eel, and kangaroo also make occasional appearances.

“I’m passionate about First Nation ingredients,” Robinson says. “I travel a lot for work, and I take them all over the world; they’re just so delicious.”

Whether it’s designing a cannibal-themed menu for a collaboration with Paramount+ to mark the third season of Yellowjackets or preparing a 12-course menu atop Mount Kosciusko, Robinson loves pushing boundaries.

His first menu featured a dish called “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow.”

“It was a coconut snow dish with a chocolate rice pudding underneath, and then you would put your own yellow passion fruit on the top of it, which would turn the snow yellow,” Robinson says.

“And that dish was built around my mother as a child, saying, `Nelly, when you go out in the snow, just be careful. Don’t eat that yellow snow, because a dog peed on it or a human’.”

Robinson recalls the exact moment his passion shifted from football to cooking at 14.

After knocking on the back door of a fancy restaurant five minutes from his home and asking for a job, Robinson was hired as a pot-washer.

Robinson says his only other job option in the rundown former cotton mill town of Blackburn, in Lancashire, back then was to become a milkman.

One day, a chef asked the teenager to help make mashed potatoes. Surrounded by the banter and the buzz of a busy kitchen, Robinson was scraping potatoes through a sieve when he suddenly realised he’d found his happy place.

“I was mesmerised by it all,” he says.

The following year, he was offered not one but two apprenticeships at the Michelin-starred Northcote Manor. The head chef wanted to take him on as an apprentice, but so did the front-of-house manager, saying Robinson’s cheekiness would appeal to the customers.

Robinson chose the kitchen and worked in restaurants around the world before coming to Australia at 25 and getting a job at the Sydney Opera House.

For more than a decade, Robinson has used his refined culinary skills and sass to wow diners in Sydney and around the world. NEL’s tagline, “fine dining with an irreverent attitude”, sums the situation up perfectly.

“I can’t believe I’ve had 10 years in a restaurant in Sydney and am still independent,” Robinson said. “It’s remarkable. It really is. I still ask myself every day, `Is it real?’”

Learn more at www.nelrestaurant.com.au