HUNGRY IN SYDNEY
Fantastic, creative food in a casual environment is the city’s new wave of dining, writes Anna King Shahab.
The beauty of fast-growing Sydney is that if you leave it a while between visits, there are hundreds of new places to get fed and watered the next time you set foot there. Here are eight places that filled my stomach and soul with joy on a recent visit. 1 Popular Potts Point upmarket bistro Yellow
(yellowsydney.com.au) turned a new leaf in February this year, converting to a fully vegetarian menu, with vegan options too. They offer a tasting menu but as we’d sneakily already pre-loaded with pate and crostini at sister bar Monopole ( monopolesydney.com.au), we reined it in a little and ordered several dishes a la carte. It was still more than enough food because the flavours and textures at play here more than make up for the lack of meat: chef Brent Savage really knows how to work umami magic with vegetables. A favourite was the smoked cabbage — a generous mountain of it, tender, smoky and flavoursome, doused in a creamy sauce and topped with cavalo nero powder. Who said cabbage was boring? 2 Chef Somer Sivrioglu has wowed with his Anatolian cuisine at Balmain’s Efendy
(efendy.com.au) for years, now he’s opened Anason (anason.com.au) in the new Barangaroo precinct. Somer has drawn inspiration from Istanbul’s many meyhanes (literally “wine homes”: havens of local wine, enjoyed with delicious mezzes and plenty of conversation). Dishes range from things to dip sesame-crusted simit rings into (strained yoghurt with chilli and burnt butter was just perfect) to more meal-like (half lamb shoulder with freekeh). The cleverest thing is to order the Bosphorus feast at $65 and just sit back as the delicious food rolls on: Sivrioglu is a master of making diners feel looked after. The all-Turkish wine-list is a nice touch. 3 Haymarket is already home to Chinatown but now we’re seeing diversification in the hood with “Thai Town” thriving in Pitt St. Housed inside Jarern, a Thai grocer’s, you’ll find the fast, bold flavours of Boon Cafe (booncafe.com) — Thaitinged cafe by day with a fully Isaan (north-east Thai) menu in the evenings. Any place that offers 13 takes on som tam (green papaya salad) is a place I have time for. 4 “Right, let’s get some pork rolls” was the battle cry heard from one bloke to his friend as the train pulled into Cabramatta station: clearly, many folks on this train had schlepped the hour or so from the city to fulfill a serious Vietnamese food craving. Cabramatta, out west, is home to the largest Vietnamese community in Australia. On a Saturday, dozens of street sellers hawk their fare out of big poly tubs — regulations be damned! — and slightly more permanent carts set up outside shops. Summer rolls, brightly coloured desserts, green mango slices shaken with chilli sugar and of extravagantly stuffed banh mi. Of pho specialists, each have their loyal fans, happy to queue an hour or more at the door. I can vouch especially for the restorative powers of the rich beefy broth Pho Tau Bay. 5 Sydney gets the modern pub right: big spaces, nice-looking but practical fit outs, long craft beer lists but old-school options for anyone who requires them, interesting food and often, a big effort to keep kids entertained leaving parents free to spend. Marrickville has more than its share of these pubs and this time around we gave The Henson (thehenson.
com.au) top marks on the parental sanity