The Old Fitzroy Hotel

A chef with fine-dining chops riffs on Australian and British pub traditions in a 160-year-old watering hole

A GIG IN a run-down kitchen in a run-down pub in Woolloomooloo mightn’t have been most chefs’ idea of a solid career move, especially if they’d called the upper echelons of fine dining home for the better part of a decade. But where others saw holes in the ceiling, Nicholas Hill saw opportunity. Where some might have tried to dazzle the locals with immersion circulators and espuma guns he saw the merits in good old-fashioned cooking that kept flavour front of mind and wasn’t too bad served with a schooner. You know, pub food. Hill’s schnitty, a thin hubcap-like thing, is coated in a crumb seasoned with shio kombu-spiked chicken salt. His steak special might be dry-aged dairy cow served with a pot of dripping- and anchovy-infused butter. Oof. His Sunday roast? Rare beef served with horseradish cream in a ramekin fashioned from a marrow bone. More impressive is Hill’s ability, on the carte and on a changing chalkboard of specials, to weave British and Australian traditions in a way that still feels completely at ease in a pub with a 160-year history. So there’s the prospect of toast fried in dripping being topped with raw beef tossed with horseradish and chives, or Branstonpickle jelly capping off a pork pie tart. Then on the flip side, there’s the rissole sandwich. Meanwhile, the chicken Kiev fritter – a boned-out leg filled with garlic butter then crumbed and fried – recalls the frozen variety Grandma Norma might have warmed in the oven for Wednesday night family dinner. Doilies mandatory, of course. Hill’s cooking is proper cooking, based on flaky pastry, good terrines, sharp salads and mother sauces taken a step further. It’s also drinking food. There’s still Guinness on tap, but a pint of Grifter’s oatmeal stout makes an equally hearty accompaniment to a veal and trotter pie. New England Brewing Co’s citrus IPA, meanwhile, is a refreshing partner for a peelit-yourself artichoke or a wedge of roasted cauliflower-and-cheese tart. A blackboard of fancier natural wines on top of a straight-up list that stays mostly under 50 bucks gives the interested drinker even wider scope. And that’s the key to the Fitz. For those who want to explore the outer reaches of pub cooking, there’s opportunity aplenty. Those who just want to play darts, eat a schnitzel, shoot the breeze with locals out front and maybe catch a play at the downstairs theatre are covered, too. Here’s to the next 160 years. à129 Dowling St, Woolloomooloo 2011. 02 9356 3848. oldfitzroy.com.au. Mon-Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm.