Sydney Gastronome: the most recent visit

Sydney, Sydney, Sydney. I went there for four days a few weeks ago to visit my brother and my friends. We went a little berserk, food and drinkswise. Details below.

Jed's Food Store
96 Glenayr Avenue, North Bondi (map)
(02) 9365 0022

The lovely Miss N was hosting me in Bondi, and one morning we went down to her local, the ultra-laidback Jed's Food Store. I can recommend the Zapatista Eggs (Chiapas style scrambled eggs and corn tortilla, served with pickled cactus and white corn, coriander, avocado, crumbled cheese and green salsa for $16.50). For a bit of extra kick, season to taste with any of the FOUR El Yucateco hot salsas on offer.


Bodega Tapas Restaurant & Bar
216 Commonwealth St, Surry Hills (map)
(02) 9212 7766
website

Despite my obsession with Ben Milgate, Elvis Abrahanowicz and Sarah Doyle's Porteño, I'd never been to the rockabilly tapas restaurant where it all started five years ago, Bodega. New head chefs Nic Wong and Joel Humphrey have taken over from Ben and Elvis, and the food continues to impress the critics and draw the crowds.

My lunch date had to cancel on me at the last minute due to a work crisis but I was happy to go by myself. I perched up at the bar, drank Rosado and chatted up the cute staff.


I was planning on a seafood-only lunch, but the dapper waiter suggested I try a chipotle pulled pork steamed bun. I hesitated. Chipotle, pulled pork and steamed buns - thanks, Mr Chang - are three "on-trend" (ugh) ingredients that are all rapidly becoming as damn ubiquitous as macarons.

But boy, the Bodega chipotle pulled pork steamed bun ($6) shakes you by the lapels and shows you who's boss. The soft sweet bun and juicy pork neck fall apart in your mouth, punctuated beautifully by the pickled carrot and miso mayo. A must-order.


Another must-order? The signature dish, the Bodega "fish fingers" ($18). Kingfish sashimi on fat fingers of charred garlic toast, sprinkled with cuttlefish ceviche and mojama, topped with tiny slivers of raw onion. Strong flavours that somehow balance perfectly AND show off the freshness of the sashimi.


The other dish I tried was the mussels and harissa with fried bread ($20). I guess I was expecting the "fried bread" to be more charred fingers of a bread loaf, but to my surprise I was presented with a deep fried hunk of dough more akin to youtiao, the traditional congee accompaniment. It turned out to be an inspired foil for the mussels and their rich, spicy juices. Gahhhh, so good.


If I'd ordered dessert at Bodega, I'd've been all over the dark chocolate aero with beetroot sorbet and buttermilk grantita like a rash.

The Dip
55 Liverpool St, Sydney (map)
(02) 9283 8792
website

I'd read good things about The Dip (yes, named after the green liquid that nearly killed Roger Rabbit), the canteen serving up American-inspired munchies in a tiki-esque corner of underground bar/club Goodgod. Pictured below is the the Southern Smoke ($12), a 12 hour smoked pulled pork sandwich with BBQ beans, apple & cabbage slaw and spicy BBQ sauce, and Lev's Dawg ($12), a smoked kosher hot dog with chipotle mayo, fresh tomato salsa, grilled yellow peppers and American mustard on a steamed bun. To be honest this food didn't grab me the way I'd been expecting/hoping it would, as it was stodgy and surprisingly bland. Maybe we ordered badly - I hear the two desserts, the Ice Cold Guac and the Cookies & Cream, are ten kinds of awesome.


El Loco Mexican Cantina Y Barra / The Excelsior
64 Foveaux St, Surry Hills (map)
(02) 9211 4945
website

El Loco is the name of Dan Hong's Mexican cantina, grafted onto the back of pub and former live music venue The Excelsior. Before visiting I was feeling uneasy about what my grumpy Sydney friends termed the Merivale hipsterfication of what used to be one of the few small (150 capacity) live music venues left in inner Sydney... but on the other hand I'd loved the food at Dan Hong's other restaurants Lotus and Ms G's, and my friend Matt had said the El Loco tacos were the best he'd had in Australia.


Sorry Matt - we tried a bunch of tacos, including pollo, tofu and pork al pastor ($5 each), and they got the thumbs down. The al pastor was particularly disappointing, with dry, tough meat (not nearly as tender and juicy as I've had in the past prepared in this manner) and a chalky, slightly stale tortilla. I'd wanted to like them, but I didn't.


El Capo
52 Waterloo St. Surry Hills (map)
(02) 9699 2518
website

By contrast, I loved what I tasted at El Capo (the OTHER Latino-inspired restaurant starting with 'El' that opened in Surry Hills this year). On the Saturday afternoon I met up with the lovely Lee Tran Lam from the Sydney food blog The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry and we did the El Loco/El Capo double feature.


Latino but not Mexican, El Capo markets itself as serving 'good food for bad people'. The narco cinema fitout includes seats made from bundles of counterfeit drug money, and walls emblazoned with pictures of guns, cars and a rooster-headed pinup with a hunting knife. It was mid-afternoon by the time we sidled in, so we grazed on plantain chips and Colombian empanadas ($7, $10) and drank horchata almond milk ($4).


But the dish that blew both of us away was the three milk cake, which is part of the evening menu (but we sweet-talked them into serving it to us in the afternoon). It involves milk sponge soaked in buttermilk, two shmears of dulce de leche plus a host of other goodies, which have changed from when LTL first visited and wrote her review. Ours had mango purée, ice cream, malt powder, double cream, scorched meringue, fresh strawberries and blueberries plus sensational freeze dried raspberries. One helluva dessert for only $13.


Porteño / Gardel's Bar
358 Cleveland St, Surry Hills (map)
(02) 8399 1440
website

On the Friday night I went to my favourite Sydney restaurant with J and Miss N.


I've written about Porteño before so I won't repeat myself. I will say though that I'd never tried their famous 8 hour woodfired pig before, and it was EXQUISITE. Ditto for the grilled radicchio with root vegetables, pancetta and hazelnuts, ditto for the shaved fennel salad with apricot, black olives and amontillado dressing, ditto for the smoked mackerel with palm heart, avocado and pickled celery. We drank an excellent bottle of 2010 Trapiche Broquel Torrontes.


Oh and we couldn't resist the postre chaja (South American style pavlova) and the leche quemada (burnt milk custard with orange jam and chocolate ice cream).


And another thing... Gardel's Bar, the upstairs cocktail bar? Also brilliant. We went up there after dinner and downed several cocktails. My favourite was the El Niño, made by a friendly bartender who was as excited about The West Winds Gin as I am.


121BC
4/50 Holt St (enter via Gladstone St), Surry Hills (map)
(02) 9699 1582
website

While we're on the subject of excellent Sydney bars let me mention 121BC, a wonderful new cantina/enoteca specialising in biodynamic wines from Italy. LTL and I wandered in after our El Loco/El Capo expedition to stickybeak in the wine shop, only to find a Montepulciano wine tasting going on in the 121BC bar. We joined in, and I got to talk about the Palio, argue about DOCG and practice my Italian with Alan from Italian Wine Importers. Looking forward to revisiting the enoteca for a bite to eat and several glasses of wine next time I'm in town.


Grandma's
Basement 275 Clarence St, Sydney (map)
(02) 9264 3004
website

Grandma's Bar, the scene of the crime where I ordered a Mai Tai served in a tiki mug so ridiculously enormous you needed two hands to lift it. The bartender MAY have accidentally set fire to the benchtop in the process of making my drink.


Hinky Dinks
185 Darlinghurst Rd, Darlinghurst (map)
(02) 8084 6379
website

On my last night I went out to dinner with my brother Buster and his lady friends. Before our meal, we stopped in for a cocktail at the recently-opened, retro-inspired bar Hinky Dinks.


Don't know which one I loved more - that gorgeous vintage (and fully operational) fridge sitting on checkered linoleum, the rosemary popcorn that arrived complimentary at the table upon arrival, or my cocktail, El Presidente. Bacardi 8, Martini Rosso and bitters, mixed and then house-aged in American oak before being served on block ice with a citrus garnish. Ay. Hinky Dinks also has an appealing food menu: see LTL's blog for details.


Gastro Park
5-9 Roslyn St, Potts Point / Kings Cross (map)
(02) 8068 1017
website

The restaurant I went to with Buster and his friends was Gastro Park, the extraordinary new restaurant opened by former Pier head chef Grant King in the skankiest part of Kings Cross. It's billed as the playground of good food and it is exactly that - the ideas are fresh and imaginative, the culinary techniques are technical, the presentation is playful and service (especially from front of house manager Martijn de Boer and sommelier Timothee Servajean) is cheeky, charming and hilarious. It's some of the most exciting food I've tasted all year. Never mind the off-putting name: if you visit Sydney, GO.


This blog post is already ridiculously long, so I'll keep the descriptions of some of the dishes we had brief. Loved the texture that the enoki mushroom stems gave to the warm sashimi of scallops with soy, ginger & bonito dressing ($18). Another 'snack' we enjoyed was a saddle of roast wild hare wrapped in a beetroot tube, with lashings of shaved foie gras and a startling red cabbage granita ($18).


One of my favourite savoury dishes was the sweet onion purée and mushroom consommé "macchiato", topped with a juicy caramelised veal sweetbread impaled on a twig of rosemary ($9).


Two of the girls we were dining with ordered an entrée described on the menu as "textures of duck with local wild mushroom tagliatelle" ($28), including smoked duck, duck ham, roast duck and a film of duck jelly.


I didn't get to taste the saddle of lamb with textures of artichokes and mushrooms ($42) that Buster's girlfriend ordered, but I did try Buster's crispy scaled snapper with smoked potato purée, calamari crackling and ink sauce ($39). This dish has got everyone talking about the fact that rather than scaling the fish, King has made the scales themselves a feature, pushing them back and coating them in hot oil until they're crispy and edible. The calamari crackling, looking like giant black mottled prawn crackers, was another elegant touch.

It's not pictured, but the potato mash we had with Madeira sauce and freshly shaved truffle was OUTRAGEOUS.


And oh, the desserts. The five of us shared three of them. The nitro pavlova ($20) came out looking like a delicious giant clam, hiding a guava sorbet centre and surrounded by pieces of pineapple and coconut bubbles. I also loved the sticky pain perdu with caramelised apple and balsamic ice cream ($18).


But the star dessert was the white chocolate sphere ($22), which arrived shrouded in liquid nitrogen. Cracking open the sphere with a spoon unleashed two rich creams (one mandarin, one honeycomb) that started oozing across the plate. The plate was also dotted with cookies 'n cream components (some nitrogen frozen) plus a couple of minuscule violet macarons no larger than my little finger tip. A fitting climax to a brilliant meal.


Thanks to Miss N for hosting me and the rest the Sydney crew for showing me such a good time!

Margherita pizza taste test at Queen Margaret

Queen Margaret
356 Queens Parade, Fitzroy North/Clifton Hill (map)
9482 5988
Tuesday-Sunday, 5:30-Late


Not to go all Austen on you, but is a truth universally acknowledged that the margherita pizza is the yardstick by which one can judge the skill of a pizzaiolo. When I heard that new pizzeria Queen Margaret in Clifton Hill village was serving not one but THREE kinds of margherita pizza, I knew I'd have to visit with housemate J (who is both vegetarian and a margherita connoisseur).

Queen Margaret is the new venture from Robert (Cavallini) Coco. The restaurant fitout is stylish, with dark timber panels along one wall and exposed pipes and light bulbs. The walls leading to the toilets boldly spell out the origin story of pizza and the role in that story played by Queen Margherita of Savoy, first Queen of Italy post-unification.

When we got there, J decreed that in order to properly review the margherita pizzas, we'd have to try all of them. As no half/half pizzas are allowed, we explained to our bemused waitress that yes, we'd like three pizzas for two people please (for the record, we shared the QM II, then had half of the QM I and the QM III, leaving us with the equivalent of one pizza to take home for leftovers). We also polished off a very decent bottle of Rioja.


All three of the QM margherita pizzas are made with tomato and basil, of course, but the cheeses for each one differ. First of all, a word about the common ingredients: the tomato was just shy of jammy with the right touch of acidity, and the pizza base was chewy and a little bready (a bit thicker than at Ladro or Supermaxi) without being doughy. A little longer in the oven would've amped up the char factor a notch or two, but the base had a depth of flavour that I really liked (the dough is fermented for at least 24 hours).

The first of the three pizzas, the QM I, was $15 and made with fior di latte. J and I agreed that the fior di latte had an unexpected bite to it that we'd more commonly associate with a blue cheese. So far, so good.


The QM II was $19 and made with mozzarella di bufala. Ding ding ding ding we have a winner! In my opinion, it's ALWAYS worth paying the few extra bucks for buffalo mozzarella, cos it's so damn buttery.


The QM III was $16 and made with mozzarella AND parmigiano. Probably our least favourite of the three, as I'm not convinced the nuttiness of parmesan belongs on a margherita, but it was still pretty great.


The pizza menu includes more complex flavour combinations (see Joyce's review for some other options), with idiosyncratic names like 'Sock it to me', 'My only crush', 'Yeah... whatever!', 'Sally... where are the kids?' and 'The end of the affair'. Gluten free pizzas are available for $2 extra. If pizza is not your thing, there's lasagne al forno ($18) and spinach and ricotta agnolotti ($18), plus several small plates.


We're spoiled for choice when it comes to great pizzerias in this hood, but I'll definitely be back.

The Brix comes to Fitzroy

The Brix Cafe and Bistrot
Rear 412 Brunswick Street (cnr Westgarth St), Fitzroy (map)
9417 6114
website

Tuesday 6pm-late, Wednesday-Friday 12pm-3pm, 6pm-late
Saturday, 8am-3pm, 6pm-late, Sunday 8am-long lunch
(Set menu Friday, Saturday nights & Sunday lunch)


The Brix is the snappy new kid on the Brunswick Street block, run by Emma O’Mara and Keir Vaughan. It's a modern French bistro, with ex-Royal Mail Hotel chefs Joel Alderson and Daniel Dobra in the kitchen. Ainslie Lubbock, also formerly at the Royal Mail and more recently at Attica, helped put the excellent wine list together.

Emma's background in interior design has really paid dividends, particularly when you consider what the site looked like before.


I went along with my housemate J on a Tuesday night not long after it had opened, when every second table seemed to be someone from the industry (I counted three local restaurateurs and one major newspaper restaurant critic). We were seated in the narrow vestibule dotted with hanging plants which links the main room to the outdoor courtyard.


Over dinner we shared a bottle of 2009 Paul Janin et Fils Moulin-à-Vent Clos du Tremblay, a pleasantly chewy and weighty Gamay.

The à la carte menu (which is available Tuesday-Thursday) is simple: five entrées, four mains and on the night we visited two specials. Unfortunately for my vegetarian housemate there was only one vegetarian dish listed (an entrée), but when we asked the kitchen was happy to prepare a vegetarian main for him.

I had a sensational entrée special of marron poached in a rich and viscous roasted chicken broth, with very fresh roasted baby artichokes and tiles of crisp chicken skin ($17). J had the equally good shallot and Banyuls caramel tarte tatin, which was served with a dollop of fromage blanc and a baby leaf salad ($15). The pastry was buttery and crisp on the bottom, and the sweet shallots were still a bit sharp. Great stuff.


After a very very long wait between courses (hopefully just the teething problems of a new restaurant still finding its feet) our mains arrived. My main of roast beef came with smoked spring onion, leek, potato red wine and braised tendon ($32). Holy hell, the texture and concentrated flavour of those strips of mucilaginous tendon was pretty damn outrageous. J's off-the-menu vegetarian main consisted of smoked oven roasted vegetables, including heirloom carrots, spring onions, leeks and potatoes, served with a nettle sauce. He wasn't crazy about the nettle sauce, but really appreciated the quality of the young vegetables.


We shared a $14 dessert of chestnut, honey, apple and date, served in the deconstructed-mélange-of-flavours-and-textures style that's so popular these days. The chestnut purée was a winner, as were the supersoft apple meringue and chewy, candied date crumbs. We were split on the slivers of raw chestnut: J hated them, but I loved the dry crisp texture.


I went back two weeks later with T and our friend F, cos I wanted to see it during daylight and to try out the breakfast menu. The space is even better looking during the day (as Essjay and Jess noted, it's no mean feat to get that much natural light into a narrow south facing room).


The menu cover reproduces a section of the remarkable commissioned painting on the north wall of the restaurant: it looks like one of those Dutch 17th century banquet still lifes, but updated with a few choice contemporary objects (like a toy train and an electric guitar).


The aforementioned painting, in situ.


I ordered the cured ocean trout, which came with a zippy little sauce "bois bourdan" (I think it's meant to be "bois boudran", a shallot, worcestershire sauce, tabasco and fresh herb vinaigrette), and lovely soft coddled egg and brioche ($16). T got his protein and iron on with rich black pudding, fried duck egg, brioche and an apple, cider and sorrel salad ($16).


Our friend F (one of the 310Fitzroy crew - check out their brilliant new food blog here) ordered a dish you don't often see on a breakfast menu: pork cassoulet with baked egg, persillade and rye bread ($17).


Having all the floor staff wear black skinny jeans, white shirts and braces is a little precious, but the space is brilliant and I love what I've seen so far from the menu and wine list. Particularly keen to go back in a few weeks to try the five course fixed price dinner ($80 per head) served on Friday and Saturday nights. Very promising, go check it out.

And be sure to give the life sized pig statue a pat on the way out.

Epic sandwichcraft at Beatrix

Beatrix Cafe and Bake-a-way
688 Queensberry Street cnr Lothian Street, North Melbourne (map)
9090 7301
Monday: 8am-4pm
Closed Tuesday
Wednesday-Friday: 8am-4pm
Saturday-Sunday: 9am-4pm


I'd heard good things and had been meaning to check out Beatrix ever since it opened at the start of the year. But it was my friend Matt, a fervent Beatrix devotee, who inspired me to lunch there the other weekend. He'd visited Beatrix on consecutive days, SMSing me each time to rhapsodise about its sandwiches.

Our texts to each other are almost invariably food-related. It's great.


The cafe is tiny and tucked in a quiet corner of North Melbourne. Inside, the cuteness is dialled up to Frankie levels, with a collection of vintage eggbeaters adorning the back wall and sweet, friendly staff serving up the Allpress coffee, Art of Tea teas and food.

When you visit you may recognise one of the staff members as muso Evelyn 'Pikelet' Morris: when we had lunch there, a beardy young male customer was breathlessly fanboying her ("Oh yeah, I remember at that gig you were drumming with those guys. It was awesome!").

The savoury menu at Beatrix is very short, consisting of granola, a few toasties, a soup special and one or two ciabatta specials (check their Facebook page in advance for details of that week's specials). As Matt had promised, the ciabatta sandwiches were SERIOUSLY good. Right up there with EARL Canteen, Pope Joan, and the Auction Rooms knuckle sandwich.


I ordered the St Brigid, the roasted chicken ciabatta that had so enraptured Matt. It came in two sizes, $12 and $10, and included fennel mustard mayonnaise and cos-slaw. The free range chicken was succulent, the mustard mayo was perfectly balanced and the ciabatta roll (from Let’s-A-Loaf bakery, in Caroline Springs) was very fresh and neither too dense nor too chewy. A perfect sandwich.


Matt and his lady friend S shared the St Brigid and The Phoenix ($9/$11), a vegetarian option which included sweet roasted pumpkin (the provenance of which was listed on the menu, but alas I cannot recall), smoky baba ghannouj and chopped chickpea salad. I had a small taste, and loved that the baba ghannouj was smoky but not so smoky as to smother the other ingredients.


My one regret with my visit to Beatrix is that I didn't order a slice of cake to take away. Owner Nat Paull, a much praised pastry chef and baker, keeps the counter filled with amazing-looking cakes that are the main focus of the business. What can I say?? I was stuffed full of sandwich and wasn't thinking straight. But just look at those lemon squares, and that coconut buttercake. Sigh. NEXT TIME, MY PRETTIES!

Kumo Izakaya opens in Brunswick East

Kumo Izakaya & Sake Bar
152 Lygon Street, East Brunswick (map)
9388 1505
website
Monday-Saturday, 5:30pm-late


Of the handful of izakaya in Mebourne beyond the confines of the CBD, most are located Southside (En Izakaya in Balaclava, Ichi Ni in St Kilda and the South Melbourne branch of Izakaya Chuji) or in Richmond (Maedaya). See my previous Melbourne izakaya rundown here.

But now the Northside has an awesome izakaya to call its own, with Kumo ('cloud') Izakaya opening last week in Lygon Street, Brunswick East (just up the road from favourites like Rumi and Bar Idda). As a new resident of the Northside, I'm pretty rapt.


Restaurant owner Andre Bishop also ran the two Chuji restaurants, Nihonshu and Robot bar, but this is the first izakaya he's had the opportunity to build from the ground up. A trio of talented women have been enlisted: lending her fine dining nous is restaurant manager Sally Humble (former Cutler sommelier), and running the kitchen are Japanese chefs Akimi Iguchi (Yu-U and Bar Lourinha) and Eriko Hamabe (Kobe Jones and Royal George Hotel).


The fitout is extremely impressive: the corner site used to be a bank that was built in the 1950s, but the only original elements of the bank that remain are the glass wall separating the dining area from the kitchen, and the old bank vault. The bank vault is now the sake vault, but Andre laments the fact that practicalities and safety considerations forced him to ditch the vault's gargantuan sealed door.

The long communal table with framed downlights is reminiscent of a teller's counter, and the antique green lights along the bar beneath the mezzanine level are equal parts bank and State Library reading room.


Andre visits Japan at least twice a year, and is an unabashed professional sake nerd. Helping with the sake side of things is Todd Eng, aka @ToddtheSakeMan from San Francisco who is only too happy to help educate your sake palate. There are also several beers on tap and a wine list selected by Sally that includes some bespoke Mt Langi wines on tap. House wines on tap are beginning to crop up more frequently in hot new Melbourne restaurants, most notably Chin Chin.


I visited Kumo early on Friday night with the lovely Kate. To begin with, Sally brought us a selection of otsumame (drinking snacks): shichimi crispy soy beans ($6), grilled edamame with Murray River pink salt ($8) and pu-er tea infused walnuts ($10). I've noted the prices on the menu but for those keeping score at home, these three snacks were comped. I'd usually indifferent at best to walnuts, but these fragrant, tea-infused ones were freaking brilliant.

Make sure you order some.


We ordered the tuna yukke with onsen-poached (!) quail egg sitting in a crispy cup ($18) and the salad of thinly sliced seared ox tongue with tomato, wild rocket and horseradish cream ($17). Loved the yukke with its slow cooked egg, but was less convinced by the rocket and tomato in the salad. The ox tongue itself was wonderfully tender though.


A serve of kushimori (assorted skewers) included chicken skin, thigh and breast ($12). Another standout dish was the king prawns swaddled in strips of potato, fried and served with green tea salt (but at $16 for two seemed rather pricey).


But my favourite dish of the night? The succulent, incredibly rich, braised Kurobuta pork belly pie ($16).


Kumo is definitely at the chic, Den end of the izakaya scale. In keeping with izakaya tradition the servings are small (so as at Den, the total bill can creep up on you a bit), but I love that the kitchen is taking a few risks and straying away from purely traditional fare. Looking forward to returning with a big group so that we can take over the traditional tatami room at the back of the restuarant and really make a night of it!

Love love love the Duchess of Spotswood

Duchess of Spotswood
87 Hudsons Road, Spotswood (map)
9391 6016
Breakfast and lunch, open seven days


I don't often write about the same place twice, but I felt compelled to share my most recent visit to the Duchess of Spotswood (a cafe I wrote about last year). In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Duchess of Spotswood is my FAVOURITE breakfast cafe in Melbourne. Here, in no particular order, are some of the reasons why:

- The location, in downtown Spotswood (it's a fun excursion over the West Gate for us, plus there's a great vintage collectibles shop just down the road);
- The fitout of the cafe, including the huge front window, the chandelier and the eau-de-Nil painted ceiling;
- The red La Marzocco FB/70, which looks like the shiny lovechild of an espresso machine and a Vespa;
- The Small Batch (Auction Rooms) coffee expertly used with the aforementioned La Marzocco;
- The friendly staff, who will on busy mornings offer to take down your phone number and call you when a table becomes free (and then try to tweet you to alert you to your table when your phone has an OptusFail);
- The menu, right down to the puntastic names for each dish and the use of Oxford commas; and of course
- The FOOD, especially the virtuosic use of British ingredients, the sensible portion sizes (which are often on the smaller side, to take into account the richness of the food) and the always perfectly poached eggs.

Below are photos and menu descriptions of the dishes we enjoyed when T and I visited with some close friends of ours one Saturday a few weeks ago. Every dish rocked.


'The Breakfast of Champignons' ($17.50): potato and barley hash with field mushrooms, English Stilton, and poached eggs.

'Idle Tongues' ($16.50): seared ox tongue with smoked semolina, crispy pork neck, and fried duck egg.


'Prince of Wales' ($15.50): house smoked salmon fillet with potato pancake, poached egg, and sourdough toast.

'Royal Fanfare' ($18.50): salt cured trumpeter with spicy lamb sausage, home made chutney, and crumbed poached egg.


'Simple Pleasures' ($15.50): globe artichoke with sauteed potato, goats curd, and warm chestnuts - pictured with poached eggs ($2 extra) and gluten free bread.