Hubert restaurant review; Shane Delia’s tagine; baked snapper with lime

Everybody is talking about Hubert, a restaurant in a Sydney basement that evokes the forgotten art of hedonism.

Down, down, down we go, from a nondescript Sydney doorway to … fantasyland. The new/old timber panelling, the fabulous Euro booze posters, the vast, glass-cased collection of mini spirit bottles … It spirals, in full control, to a reception below Bligh Street to be greeted in a proper foyer by a captain at his dais. The wood, the lighting, the quirky Old World ephemera, the army of waitstaff, the once-upon-a-time opulence … all created from scratch.

It’s another, better — albeit temporary — world, a hybrid of classic bars and dining rooms of another era with French-ish food given a lick of new thinking. It takes 10 minutes or so to acclimatise to Hubert. I’m thinking Kray-era Soho nightclub; a friend suggests old-school Chicago bars; in either case, the proprietors, behind Sydney’s Baxter Inn and Shady Pines, have been mixing a hedonistic cocktail of liquor and fantasy for years. Eventually, you exhale, sip a martini (delivered in a frosted medicine bottle) and start having A Wow Of A Time.