Samesyn 2.0, Torquay Review

17 hours ago

2 min read

Fine dining usually asks you to admire the produce. Samesyn 2.0 asks you to admire the absence of a bin. Graham Jefferies opened Samesyn in 2019 and had a Good Food Guide hat by 2022, then shut the original, staged at Silo in London, the restaurant built around zero waste, and reopened in 2024 as a profit for purpose business. Every dollar of profit goes to Feedme, a local charity that rescues food bound for landfill and turns it into around 6000 meals a week.

The room seats 28 and is run entirely by chefs. There are no waiters, so the person who cooked your plate delivers it, which saves one banal conversation and adds a far more interesting one. There is no general waste bin, only compost, recycling and one for oyster shells. Each dish carries at least one rescued or repurposed element, and the menu is entirely unembarrassed about it. Egg white garum on the broccoli, spent citrus in the kosho under the octopus, spent coffee beside the passionfruit ice cream and a retired dairy cow with garum butter. I applaud all of this recycling, and many a kitchen could learn from how important this is for the planet, the community and the business bottom line. Some of the country's best chefs could learn a thing or two from this philosophy.

The two hats arrived in the 2026 Good Food Guide, and the dish to order is the dry aged half Great Ocean duck with Jerusalem artichoke, apple and pickled walnut. It costs $108 and earns a pause. Jefferies has cooked a duck at this address since the first Samesyn, when a reviewer noted a breast dry aged for 14 days and a confit leg arriving with the paddle still attached. Around it the sensible plan is to order broadly. I woud opt for cured snapper with beach mustard and bull kelp, raw kangaroo with fermented chilli and an eclair of cheese and onion. The tasting menu is $105 and add the duck for $26.

Some honest caveats. Twenty eight seats make a booking the only way in. A 10% surcharge applies at weekends, which the restaurant explains by pointing at award wages, and the duck alone costs more than the lion's mane and the barramundi combined. A kitchen that cooks and serves sets its own pace, so arrive without a train to catch. You cant be in a hurry.