SYDNEY, Aug 13 — With one of the most recognisable harbour landscapes of any modern city, Sydney has been drawing hordes of visitors, year after year; not least Singaporeans, who rate as one of the top return visitors to the city.
But it is not just the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge climb that draws them back. For marketing manager and self-professed foodie Melissa Tan, who visits Sydney once a year, one of the highlights of the city is its gastronomic offerings.
“How many times do you want to do the bridge climb?” she said, adding that she visits family living there. “Being Singaporean, I like my food, and there are all these restaurants that serve different cuisines — Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, modern, or traditional — it’s like Singapore, you’re spoilt for choice.
“I know friends who make it a point to try the food — along with seeing the sights,” she added.
That visitors want taste of Sydney (in every sense of the phrase) may explain the city’s rather diverse plethora of restaurants, many of which have become destinations themselves for visitors — from renowned Tetsuya Wakuda’s eponymous outpost to the art decor grandiosity of the equally famous Rockpool Bar & Grill, housed in the (steel-framed, stone-clad) City Mutual Building.
The breadth of dining options here is indeed unlike that of any other Australian capital, and has been, for the most part, what many well-read foodies and food-led tourists have come to expect for some time.
The boutique coffee culture, for instance, began in 1990s with the first Campos Coffee store opening in the suburb of Newton, said Richard Graham of boutique tour service My Sydney Detour. This was followed by the trend of luxe bakeries offering artisanal loaves and pastry, which began with speciality bakeries such as Sonoma Artisan Sourdough Bakers (http://www.sonoma.com.au/) in early 2000, he added.
Suburban spoils
These days, many of these popular food and dining trends are found away from the madding metropolis and rooted in the suburbs of Sydney, such as Alexandria, which Graham pointed out is now the latest “hot” inner city commune, where all things quirky, edgy and original thrive.
For the adventurous visitor, jaunts to suburbs such as Rosebery, Alexandria, Newtown or Redfern offer a rare taste of Sydney’s growing food and beverage culture that are, for the moment, free from the tourist swarms.
One chef who planted her roots in the suburbs is former head pastry chef of Rockpool, Lorraine Godsmark, who opened her own cafe, Six Seven Ate, in 1999 in the small inner-city suburb of Chippendale. The success of that outlet encouraged her to open Yellow, a bistro in the densely populated suburb of Potts Point four years later. She went back into the city in 2011 to open Lorraine’s Patisserie (http://merivale.com.au/lorraines-patisserie), a takeaway store on the corner of Palings Lane on George Street; where her top-sellers include a raspberry and rosewater éclair (“eclairs are the new macarons,” said Godsmark), the cheesecake and the mascarpone cake. “These are cakes that no one else makes, they are very individual to us,” she shared.
The happening Kitchen By Mike in Rosebery (http://www.kitchenbymike.com.au) boasts a regular queue despite being located far from the city in a former factory redesigned by Australian design company Koskela. This casual and relatively inexpensive eatery serves “responsible” food prepared simply and with careful attention to seasonality; principles its chef-owner Mike McEnearney, the former executive chef at Rockpool, holds dear. “The produce (I use here) is the same as when I ran Rockpool,” McEnearney said.
A new favourite is stylishly organic Ester Restaurant (http://www.ester-restaurant.com.au) in Chippendale. Less than a year old, this two-hat restaurant, which specialises in the seasons’ organic bests cooked in a wood-fired oven (think roasted oysters or beef tartare with freshly shaved horseradish and diced oysters, or bone marrow with homemade chilli paste), has already been voted Sydney’s Best Restaurant.
You can breakfast with an ocean view at family friendly Coogee Pavilion in Coogee (http://merivale.com.au/coogeepavilion); or have a bustling brunch at coffee guru Jack Hanna’s proudly eco-conscious The Grounds Of Alexandria (http://thegrounds.com.au/).
Dinner at Finish-born chef Pasi Petanen’s hop pop-up Café Paci in Darlinghurst (http://www.cafepaci.com.au; it’s open until December 31 this year) boasts imaginative pork crackling dipped in chocolate and addictive corn and butter fairy floss; while a more lively option (both in terms of ambience and cuisine style) is ACME Restaurant in Rushcutters Bay (http://www.weareacme.com.au; there’s a sexy Filipino-inspired dish of macaroni with pigs head and egg yolk you must try).
Speaking of quality, Sydney’s drinks scene has also welcomed a new entrant. Next door to Kitchen By Mike is Archie Rose Distilling Co (http://www.archierose.com.au), the first independent distillery to serve the city of Sydney since 1853, which comes complete with a well-stocked bar.
“It took two-and-a-half-years to set up,” said founder Will Edwards. “(But) it was quite difficult to see (if it would work) because there were no distilleries in Sydney (or) in any urban centre in Australia.”
Inspired by a trip to New York in 2012, Edwards had the on-site distillery built from scratch. The four-month-old bar serves a fine selection of house vodka, gin and rye. Progress is slow, said Edwards, but he is confident the trend for locally crafted spirits is on the rise.
“Up until we were here, you really had to travel about an hour and a half to get to the nearest distillery (on The Central Coast),” said Edwards. “Unless you’re a massive spirits fan, you’re not going to make that trip. So for us, being about 5km from the city, even if you are not a huge spirits fan, you’ll still probably come down to see what it’s all about.”
Seeing what it is all about is what Tan says she’ll be doing when she pops back to the Sydney in November. We daresay she won’t be complaining about the breadth of quality dining options outside the city centre. — TODAY
