Restaurant review: Continental Deli

Nostalgia is a big part of the experience at Continental Deli Bar Bistro, to give this place its full head of steam.

John Lethlean

2 min read

12:00AMApril 22, 2017

Tongue in cheek: the Continental serves nostalgia with a twist. Picture: Jane Dempster

Marvellous word, Continental. From a pre-EU time when Eastern Europe was off-limits and men smoked pipes. An era when a chap might dash across the Continent in a rusting sports car for a break in Kitzbühel. Or a lass would head to Paris or Madrid for the galleries.

Nostalgia is a big part of the experience at Continental Deli Bar Bistro, to give this place its full head of steam. It’s a nod to times when Australia was coming to grips with New Australians from places like Greece and Italy, bringing with them their funny foods like anchovies and olives, espresso coffee, backyard vegie gardens and wine that wasn’t fortified. And so, because the proprietors of this mixed business are masters of the tongue in cheek with an added twist of attention to detail, the Conti offers an experience that looks backwards and forwards.

Thus we find ourselves washed up to the bar by a decidedly un-continental tropical downpour one steamy Sydney Thursday night. Dripping and shaking like wet labradors, we disrupt the bar long enough to sniff our way longingly past the low-hanging jambons, drying chillies and cheeses, weave through the high stools and marble bar to our right and floor-to-ceiling delicatessen items to our left, on up the narrow stairs and into the bistro, a nights-only affair: two adjoining rooms with Victorian heritage and deco-ish embellishment.

It’s very pleasant, but like Stanbuli (these restaurants share DNA with what might loosely be called The Porteño Group), the energy is at street level where cheese, charcuterie and tinned seafoods (some local and done in house, some imported and rather pricey) make a meal one continuous picnic. In continental fashion, the bar opens all day.

At the table, stiff drinks are called for. They arrive with welcome speed and an understanding smile (service throughout is exceptional, and when this lady gets a call back to audition, it will be a loss to hospitality). Thanks to the in-house canning machine, several cocktails are batched on-site, consistent, easy to serve and a stroke of genius in staff-challenged Sydney. Mad Men classics (Mar-tinny and Can-hatten) elbow their way to the front alongside house-made liqueurs and wine.

From what I understand, the menu is far less retro than it was when the Conti opened last year, and probably better for it. Gone are chops on tinned peas; arrived are things like raw tiles of kingfish with a dressing of curry leaf oil and a garnish of finger lime and bottarga. Out with the rhum baba and Bundy; in with a magnificent octopus tentacle (pictured) – burgundy, crisp-shelled, glossy – on a sweetcorn puree with thin-sliced potato salad and sobrasada, the Spanish pork-and-chilli paste. It’s the go-to.

Potato puree the consistency of sauce comes with a soft-poached egg and a confetti of salmon roe and chopped chives. A comforting joy. Figs get a sheath of lardo and feather-light shavings of Comte; green olives a curl of Ortiz anchovy, lemon and cream cheese; cos wedges a drizzle of garlicky Caesar salad cream, a fat and sublime anchovy one step up from the Ortiz, and a kind of fried onion praline.

It’s all solid stuff, and if you want to be there as a group, at night, upstairs is your only option, but the bar would be my choice. And all that snacking adds up. The aesthetic may be ’60s Australian suburbia, but the bill is definitely contemporary.