Hush hush: Inside the Tent
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)The clandestine can be an overrated quality when it comes to restaurants. On the one hand, there are places with the effective mysteriousness of, say, Sessions Arts Club. On the other, there are those ersatz speakeasies where the belaboured secrecy of it all — the entry buzzers, the hidden doors and the minimal signage — becomes a sort of self-defeating faff. The more elaborate the veil, ultimately, the more impressed you need to be when it is whipped away.
So let’s start by saying The Tent — a hush-hush new venture from acclaimed Filipino-Australian chef John Javier — utterly succeeds when it comes to intrigue, visual drama, and the kind of transportable, illicit atmosphere that suggests Eyes Wide Shut masks and newly formed throuples disappearing into shadowy corners. Locate its discreet wood-panelled door, head through a little reception area draped in heavy, velvet curtain, and you’ll find yourself stepping into a moonlit fantasy world: glowing planetary orbs dangle from the ceiling, dim table lamps pick out attractive faces hunched in the red-hued half-light; and, up above, a blanketed constellation of pin-prick LEDs gives the impression of a starlit sky glimpsed through faintly Bedouin scraps of canopy.
