Mary’s Underground owner wants chefs to stop messing around with burgers
Mary’s Underground owner Jake Smyth has a blunt message for chefs who serve tricksy versions of favourite dishes — burger off! — saying food should not need an explanation from the waiter. SEARCH OUR INTERACTIVE MAP FOR RESTAURANT DEALS
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If restaurateur Jake Smyth lived in an ideal world, no chef would be able get their hands on a burger — ever.
The owner of Mary’s Underground is a big supporter of simple, well cooked food, served alongside bold tunes from young artists.
“The moment chefs get their hands on a burger all of sudden things go wrong. People who make their own ketchup but then buy shitty beef — you’re starting in the wrong place,” Smyth told Delicious.
“People don’t want the deconstructed f … ing pavlova. They just want a pavlova.”
If it’s not already clear — Smyth likes his food served without any pretence and that’s exactly the philosophy he applies to his venues.
Earlier this year he made the decision to fold the restaurant side of Mary’s Underground and focus on live music, complemented with a menu curated specifically for each show.
“We are actually pivoting into focusing on the live music more. It was a hard decision to make but some nights it’ll be Mary’s burgers and fried chicken with people singing and dancing and jumping and other nights it’ll be a sit down dinner and show,” Smyth told Delicious.
“Nothing is more powerful in the human experience than food and music to bring people together. We are big on simple and bold flavours. Food that doesn’t require an explanation from the waiter.”
Smyth thinks all too often restaurants focus on the wrong things and lose sight of what’s important — quality ingredients and powerful flavours.
“With burgers it’s all about ratios, grass-fed beef-flavoured protein not grain fed, a good whack of salt, and the right ratio of bun to cheese to sauce,” he said.
“It’s all about eating with your hands, spilling beer on the floor, sharing food with your mates and laughing.”
This formula will come alive at Mary’s Underground’s latest offering — a medieval feast to celebrate AMEX Delicious Month Out.
The special event will have tables full of wheels of cheese, generous servings of beer, decadent pies and judges of ale, wine and whiskey.
“We are huge proponents of anything that is gonna get people into the streets and off their phones and out of their ubers,” he said.
The banquet will be on March 5 from 7pm. As well as offers running all month, each Thursday night in March delicious. and American Express, with the support of the City of Sydney, will activate across three precincts within the City of Sydney, starting on March 5, from 4pm to 7pm in Pitt Street mall with entertainment, drinks and celebrities.
DEEP FRIED PIZZAS A PROUD NAPLES TRADITION
They were the humble dishes that kept war-torn families alive in Italy and today Napoli’s pizza fritta and montanara pizzas are leaving the lunch time crowd in Surry Hills wanting more.
Pizza Fritta 180 is the latest venture of Via Napoli founder Luigi Esposito, and the chef from Naples wanted to pay homage to the food he grew up with — the food of his Nonna.
In layman’s terms the dishes on the menu include fried pizza and fried pasta but to Esposito they mean a lot more.
“This concept comes from Naples in 200 years ago. This is how I grew up in Naples making pizza with my grandmother. It has always been my dream to create something I grew up with. I was born in this,” he told Delicious.
“These dishes are from the war times where they cooked the pasta the day before and then fried it the day after. Pizza Fritta was born because in the war time all the pizzerias were destroyed so they came up with this idea so they could still have pizza.”
The two star items on the menu are: the pizza fritta which is similar to calzone, made of dough with filling like ricotta, mozzarella and more and the montanara pizza, a puffy piece of dough fried with toppings like prosciutto, caprese salad and cheese.
Then there is also the fried pasta in bechamel sauce for those who want to try something even more unique.
“We got a restaurant in Naples, the Family Pizzeria, and the feedback there was that people loved the pizza fritta,” he said.
“The biggest success for the dish was when the actor Sophia Loren made pizza frittas in the movie The Gold of Naples. Then everyone knew about it.
“Now I think Australia is ready to try this.”
FABULOUS FLAVOURS ON MARDI GRAS MENUS
With the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras around the corner, revellers don’t have to be limited to just wearing the rainbow — now they can taste it too.
Eateries all over the city are taking pride in their menus and serving colourful dishes that look almost too good to eat. Delicious Sydney has compiled some of the best rainbow treats to try this week:
Rainbow noodles
Taiwanese restaurant chain Din Tai Fung Australia is serving up colourful rainbow noodles which can be enjoyed in a spicy sauce or noodle soup, served with chicken and mushroom or seafood. The “Pride Noods” are available until March 12.
Rainbow bagel
Brooklyn Boy Bagels’s rainbow bagel is make up of several differently coloured doughs twisted together and basked. It’s only very lightly sweetened so foodies can enjoy with sweet or savory toppings. But for extra glam, you can add hundreds and thousands. The colourful creation is available at their cafe in Circular Quay or at regular farmers markets in Sydney, Newcastle and the Central Coast.
Pistachio and ricotta pancakes
The Tiny Giant in Petersham is known for it’s Instagram-friendly meals and this pretty plate of pancakes is no different. Bright green pistachio and ricotta pancakes are served with salted caramel sauce, figs, blue meringue, maple syrup, banana, purples flowers and pink fairy floss.
Rainbow crepe cake
JC & Co. Espresso and Patisserie has plenty of crepe cakes but their rainbow variation is a must try this mardi gras. It’s made of multi-coloured crepes, vanilla bean and mascarpone.
SRI LANKA’S A TREASURE ISLAND FOR FOODIES
Decades of war waged in Sri Lanka kept the nation’s unique cuisine and culture largely hidden from the Australian dining scene — but increasingly chefs are opening the doors to the island’s hidden foodie gems.
Ruvanie De Zoysa is among Sydney’s pioneers of Sri Lankan cuisine thanks to her eatery Hopper Kade in Darling Square.
“Five years ago when we started there was a real gap in the market of flavourful curries that weren’t super heavy and full of ghee. Sri Lanka had come out of civil war, so everything started to open up in terms of tourism and cuisine,” De Zoysa told Delicious.
“Last year the Lonely Planet guide also named Sri Lanka the number one place to travel and that had a huge impact too. Every other person I speak to at the restaurant has either gone to Sri Lanka and is going to Sri Lanka.”
Hopper Kade specialises in the traditional breakfast dish of string hoppers (idiappam) and bowl hoppers (appam).
“They’re both based on rice flour, appam is made with coconut milk and string hoppers are made with water. It’s vegan friendly, gluten free, dairy free. We use red rice flour which is the best in terms of fibre and nutrients,” she said.
“Traditionally you have them for breakfast with sambal and onions and chillies or you might have it with a fish curry or a chicken curry. Vegetarian options can be served with yellow split pea and potato daal. They are mostly savoury but you can make them sweet too.”
De Zoysa isn’t just passionate about eating, she’s also focused on teaching Sydney foodies how to cook the cuisine.
“You cook it in a pan called an appachetti and there’s an artistry in how you cook it. We run cooking classes too because the idea is to teach people about the joy of hoppers. I’d love to see people swapping out bread and rice for things like hoppers.”
PERFECT STEAK A MARRIAGE OF MEAT AND HEAT
Cooking a steak should, in theory, be the simplest thing in the world.
After all, how hard can it be to put together a dish that is basically one ingredient?
But as anyone who’s ever had a fail in this department and plated up something more shoe leather than chef’s choice knows, plenty hard.
To solve this mystery Chef Corey Costelloe, who has been turning steaks at the CBD’s legendary Rockpool Bar & Grill for over a decade, shared his secrets with delicious. Sydney.
While some people like posh cuts like eye fillets, Chef Costelloe isn’t a big fan as they lack the flavour and texture of other cuts. A thick sirloin or porterhouse is always good, he says, but nothing beats a great ribeye on the bone.
And while at the restaurant he cooks all sorts of exotic cuts that have been raised at boutique farms and dry aged, Costelloe says home cooks can do well just by getting to know their local butcher rather than picking something up from the supermarket.
Having picked your steak, what do you do with it?
“Don’t be afraid of the heat”, is Chef Costelloe’s advice.
“The number one thing that home cooks don’t do right is they don’t get their cooking surface hot enough”, he says, holding his hand over the long trough of burning logs whose heat will soon be used to cook a couple of hundred steaks for Rockpool’s busy lunch service.
“You really shouldn’t be able to hold your hand over what you’re going to cook on for very long.”
While obviously most of us don’t have a huge woodfired grill in our kitchen, there are some good alternatives for the home chef.
A carbon steel or cast iron pan is a relatively inexpensive option left to heat up on the hottest burner is one option, though if you’ve got the outdoor space Chef Costelloe says ceramic Kamado-style grills — which can be had for anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars — are the best tools on the market for getting that high heat necessary for a really good sear.
Questions of heat don’t stop there, says Chef Costelloe.
While in theory you could even throw a piece of frozen meat on the grill and let it defrost as it cooks, Chef Costelloe says that it’s best if steaks don’t go straight from the chill of the refrigerator to the heat of the grill or pan.
“They’ll be uneven, and you can wind up with a cold centre even if the outside is cooked.”
Before cooking, Chef Costelloe says it’s important to season the meat – but just with a good sprinkling of salt but “no pepper, because it’ll turn bitter at high temperature”.
Chef Costelloe also likes to rub steaks with a few drops of vegetable oil (with a little olive oil mixed in) to help conduct the heat.
Once the meat is on the flame, it’s important to leave it alone for a bit before turning it — probably at least a good 90 seconds.
Thinner steaks will not need much more than that after a turn or two, but if you’re cooking a thicker piece of meat at home, either slide your pan in a hot oven to finish it or move it over to a cooler region of the grill to keep it cooking without being overdone.
Oh, and that whole idea that you can tell if a steak is done by poking at it? A bit of a myth, says Costelloe, who notes that the same cut of meat from different ends of a cow can behave entirely differently.
Knowing when a steak is ready “is as much art as skill, and practice”, he says, which sets a delicious challenge up for readers.
And, of course, resting. Let the meat sit for at least half as long as you cooked it to allow the muscle fibres to relax and the steak to settle.
Finally, says Costelloe, there’s not a lot that needs to be put on the plate. At Rockpool, he serves his steaks with a wedge of lemon, a sprinkling of salt, and a dollop of good mustard on the side, which he says is all you need to show off a good steak.
Oh, and a good glass of red wouldn’t go astray either, but Rockpool quite wisely only allowed us to play in their kitchen, and not in their cellars.
Chef Corey Costelloe’s six-step guide to a great steak
1. Pick your treat: Talk to your butcher and get the best steak you can.
2. Bring the heat: Remember, you’re not just warming up soup here.
3. Temper your meat: Best not to go right from the fridge to the pan.
4. Season: Salt yes, pepper no. And don’t be afraid to give it a little rub with oil first, too.
5. Let it rest: Give your meat at least half as a long as you cooked it to settle before serving it for a more tender steak.
6. Simple sides: A spoonful of mustard, a squeeze of lemon, and a little green salad is all you need for a perfect meal.