Jeff Schroeter, restaurateur, chef, and now owner of Darling Glebe at Sydney’s historic Darling Mills site, has cooked in Michelin-starred restaurants to private meals for Madonna and the late Queen Elizabeth II. He is passionate about the whole dining experience, ensuring a partnership between cocktail and food that makes your mouth sing.
Chef Jeff Schroeter is drawing upon 40 years of experience in his new venture, Darling Glebe, located in the historic – and iconic – Darling Mills site, reflecting the decades he spent in Michelin-starred kitchens and world-class dining rooms, including London’s The Savoy, The Royalton Hotel in New York, and Sydney institutions Bistro Moncur and Bayswater Brasserie.
Schroeter – who has cooked privately for everyone from the late Queen Elizabeth II to Anna Wintour and Madonna – says Darling Glebe’s menu is the culmination of everything he’s learned.
“It’s 40 years of discipline and instinct moving between kitchens around the world and bringing it home. I’m still on the pans every night because that’s where the joy is for me,” he says.
Schroeter’s cult-like Chef’s Martini makes its anticipated return to the cocktail list, which is served from the elegantly curved bar that has been curated by award-winning bartender, Charlie Ainsbury.
“It’s 40 years of discipline and instinct moving between kitchens around the world and bringing it home. I’m still on the pans every night because that’s where the joy is for me.”
Chef’s Martini × Oyster Rockefeller
The Chef’s Martini is a chef-built martini, embodying an early style revival shaped by palate, not dogma. Plymouth gin and vermouth in deliberate balance, with just enough olive brine to draw out its savoury edge without ever announcing it.
Oyster Rockefeller is an 1890s ghost, brought back to life. A recipe half lost to time, reconstructed with patience, instinct and one very determined chef.
Most modern Oyster Rockefeller recipes are heavy handed, with too much cream, too much theatre and not enough memory. This version leans into restraint. The mineral clarity of the oyster is preserved, the herbaceous butter is sharpened and the structure tightened so it feels like the original might have.
The martini meets it there. It’s not aggressively savoury, but poised. The higher vermouth ratio softens the spirit, allowing the oyster’s salinity and the green, almost anise-like lift of the herbs to echo through the glass. It’s architecture, not garnish.
Chef’s Martini
60ml Plymouth gin
30ml dry vermouth
5ml olive brine
Combine ingredients and shake
Pour into a Nick & Nora glass
Garnish with three olives
Martinez × Escargots en Cocotte
The Martinez is the martini’s more indulgent ancestor. Aromatic, rich, quietly showing off.
Escargots en Cocotte is as French as I get, or at least a rebellious moment captured. The shells are gone but the flavour isn’t.
The innovation here is deceptively simple. Removing the shells isn’t laziness, it’s focus. Everything that matters, from the garlic butter, to the tomato Provençal, spinach and pastry is concentrated into a single, sealed environment. The steam, fat and acidity are all trapped and intensified.
The Martinez steps in like it belongs to that world. Sweet vermouth and maraschino don’t sweeten the dish, they round it. They pick up the tomato, soften the garlic and turn what could be rustic into something almost plush. A classic reimagined meeting a classic that never quite behaved.
Martinez
50ml gin
20ml sweet vermouth
10ml maraschino liqueur
2 dashes orange bitters
Stir with ice
Pour into a Nick & Nora glass
Garnish with an orange coin
Sunset Serenade × Strawberry Foie Gras
The Sunset Serenade is dark, rich and a little dramatic, while the Strawberry foie gras was a mistake of the best kind. It was born in New York, refined over the years, and now entirely intentional.
Foie gras demands tension. Without it, it collapses under its own luxury. The strawberries bring brightness, the balsamic brings depth, but the real trick is balance and knowing exactly how far you can push the sweetness before it turns against you.
The cocktail mirrors that knife edge. Cherry and chocolate flirt with excess, then the verjus slices clean through it. The result isn’t heavy, it’s calibrated. Decadence with discipline. The kind that makes you pause mid bite, mid sip and quietly reassess your life choices.
Sunset Serenade
30ml dark rum
15ml chocolate liqueur
15ml cherry liqueur
10ml verjus
2 dashes chocolate bitters
Stir with ice
Pour into a Nick & Nora glass
Garnish with a cherry
Gibson × Duck à l’Orange
The Gibson has no interest in being liked by everyone. It’s a sharp suit with a briny spine.Sharp suit. Briny spine. No.
Our Duck à l’Orange is a classic, recalibrated with a modern hand. The sweetness is dialled back, the citrus sharpened, and the whole dish drawn into cleaner, more precise focus.
Traditional duck à l’orange can drift into sweetness, where it’s nostalgic, but a little blunt. This version reins it in. The citrus is tighter, the glaze is more controlled and the duck remains the main character rather than a vehicle for sauce.
The Gibson acts like a scalpel. Its briny, umami edge cuts cleanly through the richness of the duck, while grounding the citrus so it stays taut and savoury rather than drifting into softness. It’s not just contrast, it’s control. A dish and a drink both refusing to be predictable.
Gibson
50ml gin
10ml dry vermouth
10ml onion brine
Pinch MSG
Stir with ice
Pour into a Nick & Nora glass
Garnish with cocktail onions
Sgroppino × Peach Melba
Sgroppino is technically a cocktail but emotionally a gelato.
When I worked at The Savoy in London, I served Peach Melba to the late Queen Elizabeth II. There are some dishes you don’t reinvent. You honour them, plate them perfectly and let them speak in their original language.
Peach Melba is about clarity. Perfect fruit, cold cream and sharp raspberry, with nothing to hide behind. The discipline is in restraint. The confidence is in not adding more.
The Sgroppino understands that instinctively. It lifts rather than layers. The acidity brightens the peach, the bubbles reset the palate, the temperature keeps everything precise. It doesn’t decorate the dessert, it escorts it.
If a dish has already survived royalty, the least you can do is give it a partner that knows how to behave in the presence of a crown.
Sgroppino
1 scoop sorbet
30ml vodka
60ml Prosecco
Touch of malt
Build in a glass
Garnish with lemon zest