Okay, here's a secret, but you'll have to be quick. Keen to eat at Oncore by Clare Smyth, Crown's three-hatted restaurant, but don't want to wait three months for a reservation? Book a table in the bar. At the time of writing, there were bar seats available most days and you can order the same fried chicken once served at a royal wedding.

Oncore opened in November last year with a tasting menu built around familiar British flavours and over-the-top technique. Smyth spends most of the year at her London restaurant Core, but works closely with Sydney-based chef Alan Stuart to deliver seven courses so satisfying that $340 a person still feels like good value.

The attached bar has always been a cracking spot to keep the party rolling after lunch or dinner, a place of soft lighting, marble and leather, and plush chairs that are very hard to leave. I should mention views to the Opera House and harbour headlands, too.

There was never much of a food offering but, during a recent visit to the restaurant, I spied craggy bits of fried chicken coming out of the kitchen. The golf ball-sized nuggets weren't listed on my menu, though. The scoundrels! I had to know more.

"We've just started serving a few bar snacks," ever-reliable restaurant manager Michael Stoddart explained. "However, like everyone else, we're having trouble finding staff, so we're not advertising the food in case the bookings become too much." (But surely Oncore can cap the number of online reservations it takes each day? The bar doesn't accept walk-in guests and there's a minimum spend requirement of $75 per person.)

The fried chicken ($8) is made to the same recipe Smyth – who is a very big deal in the UK – developed for a midnight snack at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Do we like Harry and Meghan or not? I can't remember. In any case, I like their southern-style fried chook very much, brined overnight in buttermilk and mustard powder so it's super punchy and juicy. A crunchy batter gently kicks with chilli powder and paprika.

Fork out the extra $12 and dollop your fried chicken with caviar. There's also a caviar-topped sandwich ($25), although "sandwich" is a stretch – it's more of a dainty, buckwheat crepe cake with egg whites and yolks separated, gently cooked and layered. Parsley, shallots and creme fraiche make an appearance, too, and it's a whole caviar service in one bite.

Oysters Rockefeller ($14 for two) are tastier than any I've had in their native city of New Orleans. There, the oysters are suffocated in a pureed green sauce. Here, Sydney rocks are glossed with a lemony, parsley-loaded butter and each bivalve is covered in kelp oil-enhanced breadcrumbs – infinitely more sympathetic to the oyster's essence of the sea.

Other snacks are from the full restaurant carte. There's a jellied eel tart spritzed with malt vinegar at the table ($8); smoked duck wing rubbed with vibrant spices and zipped up with orange zest ($10); and a pea and mint gougere ($10) that tastes like a French country garden.

The signature Core apple ($15) is here, too – pink lady mousse encased in brandy-spiked gel and tinted red and green to look like a toffee apple. Flawless.

At this price point, the cocktails should also be precisely tuned and militantly consistent. They're not. There's salty and there's briny, and then there's the "Classic" ($28) house creation with olive leaf gin, black garlic and oloroso sherry essence. Truly bracing stuff and borderline undrinkable.

A "Corpse Reviver No. 2" ($25) is just lemon and cold water with gin in the background, and none of the absinthe notes that make the old Savoy Hotel tincture sing.

Kudos to a spot-on rye and cognac sazerac ($25), although it still might be safer to stick with wine. The cellar is one of Sydney's most formidable, with a few entry-level options by the glass ($22 for a textural 2020 Millton Te Arai Chenin Blanc) and many well beyond the price point of food writers with a finite expense account ($380 for a pour of 1998 Chris Ringland Dry Grown Shiraz – gadzooks!).

I haven't scored The Bar at Oncore, but only because there isn't quite enough food to evaluate it as a restaurant under our points system.

Consider this a friendly suggestion for your summer must-do list instead. Fried chicken, champagne and sweeping views of the harbour are a perfect Sydney afternoon. Just keep it to yourself, so I can still book there, too.

Open Lunch Thu-Sat; dinner Wed-Sat

Vibe High-end snacks and three-hatted service in the sky

Go-to dish Core fried chicken with caviar ($20)

Drinks: A knee-weakening list of Old and New World vintages, cocktails and high-roller whisky

Cost: About $160 for two, excluding drinks

Terry Durack reviews Oncore by Clare Smyth

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine