Set For Take Off

In Canberra’s suburbs, Pilot lands as a project with local values and big ambition

- David Matthews

The roast chook at Pilot goes like this: a big, free-ranging organic bird, cold-smoked, skin stuffed with leek and mushroom. Roasted whole and rested so the juice runs back into the meat, it comes carved and perched in a bowl of reduced chicken stock that at first glance you might call a gravy. To the left, two slices of steamed white bread and a disc of mayonnaise. To the right, a salad of butter lettuce.

Bread, mayo, chicken, salad, gravy. If you were a Sydney kid growing up east of the Red Rooster line, or a Canberra kid with fond memories of the local chicken shop, this combination will be familiar. But here each element is scrutinised, then elevated to the best version of itself. It’s the white pepper, tamari and rice vinegar seasoning the jus, the kombu in the mayonnaise, the sharpness and the savouriness of the dashi vinaigrette, the pillowy bread.

Refining fundamentals, then pushing them. This is the brief at Pilot, where each decision appears to have been made to advance the cause of hospitality in the ACT by people with genuine affection for the city. Owners and partners Dash Rumble and Ross McQuinn, and chef Malcolm Hanslow, met while working at EightySix in Braddon, before peeling off to pick up experience here and further afield – Rumble on the floor at Momofuku Seiobo, McQuinn at Pulp Kitchen, and Hanslow at Automata, Ester and Oscillate Wildly. The result of their reunion is a restaurant for the here and now, strengthened with tricks gleaned from storied establishments with international connections and reputations.