After coping with years of light rail construction, The Bishop set to close
For years Crown Street wine bar The Bishop endured the havoc caused by construction of the CBD light rail. Now, one week after the tram started taking customers, owner Erez Gordon has given up and will close the venue. Read why.
Sydney Taste
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Despite standing his ground during the construction of the long-delayed CBD light rail, owner of The Bishop Erez Gordon will close his Crown St wine bar tomorrow, less than a week after the trams finally started taking passengers.
The Bishop had been open on the strip since 2012, then called Bishop Sessa, at a time when Crown St was one of the most trendy and desirable strips in Sydney.
But the success sparked a subsequent rent rise, which was followed by council works turning the street into a building site shortly before years of light rail construction began.
Mr Gordon said his lease was up, his landlord refused to budge on price and so even though the timing seems so wrong, for him it felt right.
“The irony is not lost on us, but by the same token I’m not that sentimental a bloke that I’d let that get in the way of what I deem to be a sound business decision,” he said.
“The amount of goodwill and positive vibes our business produced was amazing.
“Now I’m going to spend some time being a consumer – I can sit down at a restaurant and buy a main meal for $35 dollars and I think ‘there is no way they are making a profit off this’.
“Consumers are getting ridiculous value so I will enjoy that for a while.”
TWO 1.8KG STEAKS IN FOUR MINUTES
Competitive eater Jesse Freeman has won yet another insane eating challenge, demolishing two 1.8kg tomahawk steaks with chips in little more than four minutes — wearing nothing but budgie smugglers.
The challenge was for the Charity Tomahawk Challenge at Smokey Sue’s, raising money for men’s mental health charity Gotcha4Life. There were 14 competitors on the day competing for the first prize of $1000 and all the tomahawks were donated by Jacks Creek Beef. The day raised almost $5000 for charity and no doubt, the cholesterol levels of everyone who competed.
SYDNEY CHEFS SHARE THEIR CHRISTMAS TIPS
Christmas lunch can be a stressful occasion for many of us. So we asked seven of Sydney’s top chefs for their expert tips on how they handle the festive fuss. Here are their top tips.
Jacqui Challinor
Head Chef, NOMAD Up The Road
Be prepared and plan your menu well. There is nothing worse when entertaining than being stuck in front of the stove all day when there is fun to be had. I tend to stick to food that requires minimal intervention or can be prepared earlier and just reheated. Things like slow roasts or rotisseries are favourites of ours on Christmas Day because you can get them going and just check in on them every now and then.
My all time favourite Christmas leftover snack is a toastie of ham, Bouche D’Affinois, pickled onion and lots of black pepper.
Hamish Watts
Founder Applejack Hospitality
Christmas morning at our house (after the kids have opened their presents of course) is a combination of traditions from my family and partner Sarah’s. Sarah, being English, prioritises starting Christmas morning with a drink and my rubber arm is easily bent. We start with a mimosa (or as Sar calls it, a Bucks Fizz) of fresh OJ and bubbles of the French variety. We then have a breakfast of Christmas ham and de-shelled soft boiled eggs on toasted baguette with lashings of butter and loads of salt and pepper as per my dad’s family tradition.
Zacharay Tan
Devon and DOPA Don and Milk Bar
We don’t really have any specific Christmas traditions — my family and I are big on seafood and vegetables, so we will usually do DIY rice paper rolls with heaps of king prawns, and DIY hand sushi rolls with fresh tuna, scallops and salmon sashimi.
We like to use leftovers creatively over the few days following Christmas. We will put together leftover roast sandwiches and our prawns and fish can go into a stir fry.
Mitch Turner
Head Chef Bannisters Port Stephens
Brine your bird! Brining your turkey or chicken will guarantee a juicier, well-seasoned bird.
And don’t be afraid of seafood. It is so simple to cook a whole fish, and because it’s cooked on the bone the meat retains a lot more moisture and flavour. Cooking fish in the oven is a lot less complicated than barbecuing, but possibly a little less fun.
Cameron Johnson
Head Chef Bathers’ Pavilion, Balmoral
One of my favourite things at Christmas is a really nice imported panettone and just having chunks either toasted or fresh. I usually get one of my Italian chef mates to bring one back for me — Matteo Zamboni (Jonah’s) is a good one for this. Fresh seafood is always essential — I head to Pittwater on the northern beaches and grab a couple of kilos of the most amazing prawns from this lady that sells fresh prawns from her pimped up trailer, Prawn Pod. Take these home and pair with a homemade cocktail sauce.
Ed Sargent
Executive Chef, 4 Pines Brewing Company
Once my wife and I moved out to Australia 4 years ago (at Christmas time as chance would have it) we essentially ripped up the Christmas rule book and began our own family traditions. It’s not that I didn’t love the English traditions we had in my family growing up — decorating the Christmas cake with marzipan animals, setting fire to a Christmas pudding laced with brandy — it was just that none of them seemed particularly appropriate in 35 degree heat. Now we always have salmon, no matter what else goes onto the table. Some years I will smoke it, other times I cure it with my own spice rub of sugar, salt, lemon, juniper, star anise and coriander. It’s served with a cooling yoghurt and compliments champagne perfectly.
Sandro Di Marino
Head Chef, Coogee Wine Room
I was born in the Italian countryside in the middle of nowhere and as young boy and eventually chef, I learnt that great meals are all about context. For my grandma, Christmas was the time to make her special dessert “Fritti di patate”. It’s a typical ancient fried sweet from Abruzzo using a leavened dough made from boiled potato, lemon zest, milk, eggs, flour and, of course, Trebbiano white wine like any respectable sweet from Abruzzo. Grandma never used a measuring cup or scale, she just relied on her hands, eyes and many years of making it. Once the dough was leavened, the sweets were fried in a big black iron pan of oil on the fire and then dusted with sugar and served hot. It’s a beautiful tradition that the family still loves today.
HOW TO ENJOY A CHRISTMAS FEAST WITHOUT THE WASHING UP
It turns out an increasing number of hosts this silly season would like to wish you a Merry Christmas — just not in their home.
The number of diners eating out on Christmas Day has been steadily increasing for the past decade, with more of a steep spike in the past five years, according to figures from online booking companies.
Online booking platform TheFork has experienced a 354 per cent increase in Christmas Day bookings in the past five years, while OpenTable went through a 36 per cent increase in reservations from 2017-2018.
Many venues open for the big day are completely booked out including Bathers’ Pavilion Balmoral, Anason Barangaroo, Gowings Bar and Grill Sydney and Watson’s Bay Boutique Hotel.
The trend towards taking the festive feast to outside eateries makes sense: it avoids the heavy lifting of buying and cooking expensive hams or turkeys (which often end up as uneaten leftovers) as well as the problems with massive clean-ups, which can involve tricky seafood waste like stinky prawn shells in mid-30C heat.
Best of all, rellies prone to a dust up are less likely to misbehave in public (hopefully).
The Fork Country Manager, Gary Burrows said in his experience, Christmas Day is an opportunity for diners to become a part of a new family while also taking that stress out of the day or observing alternate cultural practices.
“For restaurants on TheFork, Christmas Day is an opportunity to open their ‘homes’ to their dining community,” he said.
“For diners it can be a lifesaver to take the stress out of what can often be an overwhelming day.
“Of course there are also communities who don’t celebrate the day, and so there are some restaurants that trade pretty much as normal on Christmas Day.”
According to group director of culinary at Event Hospitality and Entertainment, Adam Petta, like so many things, dining out on Christmas Day first gained popularity overseas.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen Christmas lunch at QT Sydney’s Gowings Bar & Grill book out earlier and earlier — this year, we were fully booked almost two months ago,” he said.
“Dining out and having an incredible culinary experience, instead of shouldering all the responsibility and effort of hosting Christmas Day, is certainly now a trend in Sydney that has followed in the footsteps of Europeans and the US.
“People today are so time poor and at the heart of it, the holidays are about brilliant food and great company.”
Mother of three Carole Walton staunchly agreed with the notion that heading out for Christmas meant more quality time with her family.
As for the argument of tradition, she said this was her new tradition.
“The last couple of years my family have enjoyed dining out for Christmas Lunch. If anything it contributes to the very essence of Christmas tradition, which is about family. Dining out gives me that opportunity to relax and enjoy this special time with them, without the hassle and stress of doing it all myself.”
Restaurant and Catering Association CEO Wes Lambert, whose company represents 45,000 venues Australia-wide, said one third of venues represented were open on Christmas Day.
He said even if price per head to dine out costs $200-$300 for an adult and about half that for kids, that figure can be in line with what people would spend in addition to doing all the work themselves.
“When you’re comparing whether you cook at home or whether you have a group go to a restaurant those costs are coming more in line,” he said.
MATT COPS CHOP AFTER RENT
Parramatta business locals are blaming sky-high rent for the closure of Matt Moran and Solotel’s venue Chophouse Parramatta.
This Saturday will be the last day of service with the recent news coming as a shock, considering the high calibre of management.
However, when rent is $22,000 a month, not taking into account additional costs of staff wages, quality produce, utilities and equipment — the margins are incredibly tight.
For comparison, a prime site in high density Potts Point is currently on the market for $11,600 per month.
The steakhouse opened October last year following the successful decade enjoyed by Chophouse Sydney.
The menu offered higher end steaks: the most expensive was $63, but the steakhouse also offered a lunch special of steak frites with a drink for $28, with all beef Australian sourced.
Property consultant Edwin Almeida said the rent at Parramatta was “ridiculously high” considering the suburb was still largely under construction.
“Six or seven years ago I said Parra is going to overprice itself, considering everything that is going on and it’s meant to be Sydney’s second CBD,” he said.
“I think over time it’s going to be cheaper to move back into the city and if they’re not careful that’s what will happen and Parra will have missed a big opportunity.”
Solotel CEO Justine Baker did not specify rent as a reason for shutting up, but said the western branch of the business had not seen the same success as the original CBD location.
“Following the success of the Chophouse brand in Sydney’s CBD, we were excited about
bringing the concept to Parramatta,” she said.
“Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite panned out as we had planned and now, we think the best way forward for the Chophouse brand is for us to focus on the CBD venue.”
Ms Baker said the group would focus on their other Parramatta venue, the Albion Hotel on George Street.
ULTIMATE HANGOVER CURE
The Mouth
There’s nothing funny about a hangover, as pretty much half of Australia will tell you on any given day this holiday season. But there is something funny about reading about them.
The American author Tom Wolfe once described a fictional journalist very much the worse the wear being blasted awake by a ringing telephone and feeling like his entire head was an egg with the shell peeled away: “If he tried to get up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.”
Hilarity, right?
British writer Kingsley Amis once had a character in a similarly bad way: “His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by a secret police. He felt bad.”
Ouch. But for The Mouth’s money, the most poignant big of hangover literature comes from a song.
Specifically Kris Kristofferson’s tune Sunday Morning Coming Down, where the weary, stumbling victim of his own good times is wandering the streets and catches “the Sunday smell of someone’s fryin’ chicken”.
It’s a near-perfect line, not only as a reminder of Sunday and family and faith and everything else that takes a knock on a Saturday night, but because if you’ve overindulged, what’s better than some fried chicken to soak it all up?
And that brings us – and The Mouth – to your nearest outlet of KFC.
Which is not a bad place to spend a lunch hour if you’ve been on a rollercoaster of firm/client/team/family jollies, all with delightfully open bars.
If you’re game enough, you might take a box back to your workplace (though there might be questions, especially the dreaded, “didja bring me some, hur-hur-hur?”).
But you may as well dine in. If you’re in a state, you don’t need the wait – or the carry. And you might even get to sit under a giant Greta Thunberg-style mural of the Colonel himself (“you have stolen my chickenhood!”).
The Mouth is going to be honest: Don’t get anything here but the original recipe.
At the counter, you’ll be tempted by the various sorts of burgers on offer, but none of them look in real life like they do on the poster. They will only make you sadder.
Likewise, steer clear of the fries, and unless you need to spak-fill some gyprock, you do not want the little cup of potatoes and gravy.
But the chicken? Well, it’s actually better than you’d think.
It’s nothing like the great fried chicken (think Thirsty Bird) on offer around Sydney, and it has not so much been brined as fracked (that is, injected with water and bunch of other additives). But it is juicy, and salty, and greasy, which is, if you’re in a bad way, all the trinity you’ll need right now.
It’s certainly like nothing you could make yourself, but you’re hungover and getting frying oil all over the kitchen won’t get you out of the doghouse.
Instead, just hoe into a three-piece box, muddle through the day, get home, have a big glass of water, and try again tomorrow.
Merry Mouth-mas!
LICENSED No
CARDS All major
OPEN Check local times
PRICES Affordable
VEGETARIAN You’re kidding, right?
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Check local
NOISE Fast-foody
PRO Nothing like the Colonel
CON Why you’re here