The Mouth: Why it’s worth going the whole hog at French bistro at Porcine

It’s a place which forgoes a fancy fit-out to focus on food. And what food. At this unpretentious French bistro, Porcine might actually be French for sublime.

Porcine's Pate en Croute. Supplied

It is probably not dignified to admit this in print, but here goes.

There was a point in a recent meal at Porcine – we think after taking a bite of toast topped with liver parfait that had been soaking up quail juices – that we found our right leg jiggling involuntarily with pleasure, like a cocker spaniel who was getting his tummy scratched just right, such was the sensory overload of the food.

Porcine (Por-SHEEN? Por-CHEE-Nay? Poor Sign? Who knows!) is one of those little places we have been meaning to go to for ages, or more specifically during the two years it has been in business since chef Nicholas Hill bravely opened it in the midst of the recent Great Inconvenience.

Tucked in an upstairs room above a hip bottle shop in Paddington that sells interesting specialty boozes plus natural wines with sea monkeys floating in them, Porcine takes up the deliciously subversive countersignal trend of forgoing fancy fit-out to focus on food.

And what food.

Porcine's 'Tarte de Campagne. Picture: Facebook

On a recent lunch we opened with shots of gazpacho and little crackers piled high with prawns, followed by oysters a couple of ways (including with a smoked eel vinaigrette courtesy of Chef Hill’s smoked heel side hustle).

This was followed by a sort of ham made from pork belly and seasoned with vadouvan, another pork rilette sort of affair (with the only tiny miscue of the day being perhaps too many accompanying lentils), and then a cake-sized wedge of ham terrine topped with a gelatinized smoked ham consommé.

Are you starting to get the idea?

Then, more food – a ballotine of bonito with “Celtic” mustard – and a beautiful endive salad that slowly and addictively revealed its bitterness, like a Georges Simenon novel about a bad marriage.

Finally, quail, stuffed, roasted, quartered with a classically French gooseberry and verjus sauce, and of course the aforementioned cocker spaniel toast, and a duck egg custard for dessert.

This is, readers might have gathered, the sort of food this column adores and which we prefer to even the best Michelin-starred tweezer food. Honest, brilliant, classic, fresh all at the same time.

20/4/22 WEEKEND TELEGRAPH SPECIAL. MUST NOT USE BEFORE CLEARING The Procine team: Staff from Porcine, from left, Harry Levy, Keith Tarlinton, Nik Hill, Mike Bennie and Matt Fitzgerald. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Weirdly the place is not completely oversubscribed, and we were thrilled to see not one but two tables of regular solo diners who are happy to make the trip and pay the freight even with no one to share it with.

And speaking of paying, while the bill was perfectly reasonable for so many dishes, we had not counted on the extra savings that come from having no need or want of food for at least 24 hours after dining.

For if in the restaurant we were kicking like a happy cocker, once home we felt like a python who’d just knocked off a goat and wouldn’t need another meal for some time.

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