Previous SlideNext Slide

The past eight months have been an exercise in patience and care for Jean-Paul El Tom, Alex Kelly (Marrickville’s Baba’s Place) and Sixpenny’s Dan Puskas. The chefs ganged up halfway through last year to buy Randwick’s 40-year-old Hungarian restaurant Corner 75, calling their new venture a cultural preservation project.

During the renovation, everything was pulled off the walls – including the treasured jersey of Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskas (no relation) – restored and painstakingly put up again. It’s not a museum, mind. The team has also added their own thumbprint. Staff uniforms are designed by Sydney-born label Song for the Mute. Toilet walls, a celebration of fruit and blooms and beaming suns, are hand-painted by artist Timothy Vernon Moore.

Sommelier and restaurant manager Alice Tremayne offers a Hungarian and Eastern European-heavy wine list that doesn’t skimp on by-the-glass options. Cocktails follow suit. Check the Corner Martini, made with rakia and Georgian gin. Service across the board is informed and relaxed, kind and calm. Unfamiliar with Hungarian food? They’re here to help.

From the start, the challenge was not to alienate Corner 75’s regulars while allowing the kitchen team, led day-to-day by Carley Scheidegger (formerly of Fred’s in Paddington), to colour outside the lines. The process started by referencing outgoing owner Paul Varga’s menu, well loved and unchanged for decades, and continued deep into legendary US-Hungarian restaurateur George Lang’s 1980s cookbook, The Cuisine of Hungary.

For my part, I took my mate’s dad Robert on one of my visits. He’s Hungarian and has been eating at Corner 75 since the 𝄒70s. As much as I’d enjoyed myself previously, I wanted to see it through his eyes. Maybe what I liked about the reprisal was what he’d consider too much of a departure from the original.

Happily, Robert really enjoyed himself. The big difference to him is how elaborate the dishes are to look at now. Some of the mainstays we order aren’t instantly recognisable, which he proves with a series of Google images of Hungarian cheese scones. Rich, short, crumbly and finished with a little garlic and honey glaze, it’s an elevated take on a table staple. What of the flavour? “It’s good,” he says.

Langos, that classic fried-to-order Hungarian bread, is served hot, puffy and salty with a blob of cultured sour cream for dipping. If you want to wave your wallet around the room, consider the supplementary Yarra Valley caviar for an extra $20. Robert likes it so much, he boxes up the spare bread and takes it home.

Whipped sunflower dip, inspired by the fields of flowers chef Jean Paul El-Tom saw on a research visit to Hungary, is framed by crisp witlof petals filled with spears of cucumber, pickled chillies and boiled potato, all dressed with the sweet nuttiness of first-pressed sunflower oil.

You don’t need a full deck of friends to eat here. With respect to the chicken paprikash, which would easily feed four (the juicy, meaty Sommerlad-breed bird is roasted until the skin is deeply golden and dressed in creamy paprika sauce), you can easily dine solo.

On one visit, I spot Varga happily sitting in the corner at the bar with a cheese scone, LP’s pork sausage and a beer. He waves away a lager Marrickville brewery Wildflower has custom-brewed for Corner 75, preferring a Dreher Gold from Budapest. A purist.

Want to order a tiny bowl of chicken and matzo ball soup? You can. It’s only $10, and the broth is rippling with schmaltz, made on the carcasses of those Sommerlad hens. You can order a tiny goulash, too. This, I find a little too enthusiastically seasoned, so I’m grateful for the doll-size portion.

I’m also grateful because I’ve ordered a schnitzel chaser. Fried to order, the breaded Borrowdale pork is so puffed up it looks like a set of freshly rumpled sheets. Nokedli, a sort of boiled noodle made from fresh batter, are doused in brown butter with a hint of nutmeg – a perfect sidearm, along with a splash of sour cherry hot sauce.

The dessert list is brief and traditional. Maybe it’ll be a slice of retro-fabulous Esterhazy torte or on the (very slightly lighter) side, a slice of apple strudel with sweetened cream. Word is, the pastry is so stretchy, the entire kitchen has to clear out while it’s being made.

Corner 75 is definitely this season’s hot ticket, with the noise levels and hard-to-nab reservations to prove it. I imagine for many regulars, it’ll be an adjustment. The new menu is a departure. It’s far more restaurant-y than the OG but it still feels like a nurturing, family-style experience. As I heard a waitress say to a neighbouring table, “some people arrive disappointed but leave happy”.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.