Aloria opens atop Queen’s Wharf’s Sky Deck

Shayne Mansfield remembers digging under his grandmother’s kitchen sink to find her pickle jars. He was five, maybe six years old.

“It kind of freaked me out at the time,” Mansfield says. “But when I got older, I realised what she was trying to do – trying to grab that vegetable or that ingredient and hold it in its prime.”

Right now, Mansfield is about as far away from his grandmother’s kitchen as you can probably get. Twenty-three floors up on the Sky Deck at Queen’s Wharf, the Brisbane River and South Bank sit behind one shoulder, the city’s glittering office and apartment towers the other.

Pickling plays a big role at Aloria, where Mansfield is executive chef (he’s also overseeing the food at neighbouring Babblers and Cicada Blu).

The Star has been talking up the restaurant as the sky-high jewel in the Queen’s Wharf crown – and it looks the part with its glass brick, cabinets full of wine, and blush-pink furniture – but Mansfield’s menu isn’t about tricks, deconstructions or anything flash.

Instead, it follows his grandmother’s lead by trying to present local produce at its best, whether that’s via pickling, ferments, ageing, or the simple application of wood fire or smoke.

“We have three pickle mixes,” Mansfield says, waving towards a bunch of jars displayed prominently on a low-set kitchen counter in front of a wood-fired parrilla grill fuelled by iron bark, pecan and apple wood. “We run a sweet Japanese one, a neutral pickle mix, and my grandmother’s pickle mix.”

Aloria’s snack and entree menu features dishes such as wood-roasted oysters with a white soy emulsion; fried barra collar with fermented chilli tamarind and smoked peanuts; roasted tiger prawn with fermented chilli butter; and charcoaled lamb belly with carrot butter and pickled fennel with a fermented blueberry sauce.

For mains, you might order miso-roasted cauliflower with burnt leek, toasted yeast cream, The Falls Farm radishes and chive oil; hay-aged duck breast with beetroot, goat’s curd, fermented garlic honey and neck sauce; and a 90-day dry-aged bone-in sirloin served with confit garlic and bone marrow sauce.

It’s a menu that neatly shorthands Mansfield’s career so far, from working under Philip Johnson at E’cco, and Jason Atherton at the Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social, and the City Social, in London, and then back in Australia at local-produce focused restaurants The Long Apron in Montville and Jana Restaurant & Bar in Newcastle.

“If you’re working somewhere like The Long Apron, you’re really, really working with local produce,” he says. “I think it’s really important as a chef to work in regional restaurants because there was a massive focus in the Hunter Valley and in Newcastle, and also at The Long Apron, to use as much local produce as we could get our hands on.”

Not that Aloria is without its flourishes. There’s a caviar service that features Anna Dutch Siberian and Black Pearl Oscietra caviar, and a caviar and martini experience.

There’s also a 270-bottle wine list compiled by sommelier Damian Danaher (formerly Bennelong and The Gidley in Sydney) that ranges from approachable local producers to some rare European bottles, including a 1982 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild bordeaux that clocks in at $20,599.

“Everything here is about complementing the view,” Mansfield says. “The kitchen pass is one of the best I’ve ever worked on – there’s a lot of theatre there. But it’s really all about this location, which you can’t really beat.”