Hits and misses amid unfussy French fun at Sans Souci’s Chez Pascal

At Chez Pascal, a neighbourhood French bistro nestled at the Paris end of a Sans Souci shopping strip, The Mouth finds hits, misses. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need. what.

Chez Pascal’s fare is unfussy, rustic, and delicious. Picture: Supplied

When The Mouth was a young person naive to the ways of the world, there was an American sitcom called Three’s Company that occasionally helped fill the hours on sick days between Price is Right and Jerry Springer.

The conceit seemed edgy but was impossibly stupid (the male lead had to pretend to be gay to share a house with two female friends because the uptight landlord didn’t want a mad shag-a-thon happening in his apartment complex).

Anyway, the gent in question was an aspiring chef called Jack, and he would sometimes speak of his dream of opening Jack’s Bistro, as if the word “bistro” in the mid-70s was enough to conjure up cafes on the Left Bank and taking down a drunken Hemingway with one punch.

We can only imagine that young Jack would have been absolutely swept away by the glamour of Chez Pascal, a neighbourhood French bistro nestled at the Paris end of Sans Souci’s Rocky Point Road shopping strip.

I mean, this place has everything.

Firing up in the Chez Pascal kitchen. Picture: Supplied

Original after-Toulouse-Lautrec cancan girls on the wall.

A jolly chef who wears whites and toque and comes out to bellow “EEEEZ EVERYONE HAFFFINK A GOOD TIME!” at the dining room.

Prawns await their Pernod. Picture: Supplied

Genuinely cool old silver wine tasters embossed with Paul Bocuse’s image to hold a little scoop of intra-course sorbet.

If you could smoke there, you’d think Hawke was still PM (if only).

For better or worse, the 70s vibe also carries through to the food which, shall we say, falls on the rustic side of things.

Which is to say there are hits and misses.

Why is there basically no cheese on that onion soup, despite the broth itself being technically perfect (this may be to answer the question, we admit)?

That said, we were delighted to see pheasant on the menu (in Australia!) even if it was perhaps a tad over, and with a berry sauce that needed sharpening to save us from diabetes.

A sort of creamy chicken affair was straight home cooking – this ain’t food for the Hubert Insta account – as was a starter of prawns and cream and Pernod.

Desserts? Well, the tarte tatin came swimming in syrup and the crème caramel was too loose.

And yet it wasn’t a terrible time. In fact it was fun to be somewhere where people weren’t letting their food get cold to get the perfect angle, and where the dress code ranged from sport jackets to Champion sweat shirts.

If there was a local like this around Mouth House, we’d be regulars, just because it’s as unfussy and un-Sydney as you can get, and sometimes you need that.

But dammit we’d want more cheese on the soup.

— The Mouth is an anonymous critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.