Cook with Costi launches new take on surf and turf in Sydney
Two Sydney food icons have joined forces to offer a concept never seen before in Australia. Your eyes and bellies won’t be able to resist.
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ULTIMATE SURF AND TURF ON THE MENU
Prepare your eyes and bellies for the ultimate surf and turf by way of a concept never seen before in Australia.
Sydney food icons Craig Cook The Natural Butcher and Steve Costi Seafoods have joined forces to create Cook with Costi — a joint retail and dine-in meat and seafood venue at Broadway.
Opening Monday, they will be bringing modern takes on classic items including a scampi burger (only available for a short time), prawn cocktail, crispy fried school prawns, Cloudy Bay diamond clam popcorn, gourmet smoked hotdogs, minute steak and salad, and double beef cheeseburger with panko-crumbed prawns.
What is even better is that all meat and seafood is sourced from Australia or New Zealand with everything clearly marked, and all staff are educated on the provenance of items.
CORRUPTION MEANS ICONIC CIRCULAR QUAY SITES UP FOR GRABS
Two of Sydney’s landmark sites are up for grabs for the first time in 40 years, and corrupt former Labor politician Eddie Obeid is to thank.
The waterside Circular Quay sites where Sydney Cove Oyster and Portobello currently trade are up for tender now.
In the past, owners were awarded an automatic lease renewal if they were good tenants but that has been replaced by a more rigid tender process.
Obeid was convicted of misconduct in public office in 2016 after gaining lucrative leases on the sites secretly owned by his family and in 2007 failing to disclose those interests while lobbying a senior bureaucrat for favourable conditions for tenants.
He was sentenced to five years behind bars with a non-parole period of three years.
Because of Obeid’s dodgy dealings, Alessandro Fuscaldo is at risk of losing his position and business, Portobello, where he has traded without issue for 36 years.
He said he would apply for the tender but as the winner is typically the highest bidder, there is a strong chance he will be ousted.
“It used to be if you did all the right things, ticked all the boxes and did things like pay on time, make upgrades to the building it allowed us to automatically re-tender,” Mr Fuscaldo said. “But it changed after Obeid. They wanted to make sure it was all done fairly and by the book.
“We’re definitely going to tender, we’re going to give it our best shot.”
The next term is 10 years with a minimum rent of $150,000 a year plus a percentage of earnings.
INDIGENOUS FURY AT EATERIES’ USE OF NATIVE FLORA
Bush tucker wars are raging, with indigenous Australians furiously declaring that the gastronomic growth in using native ingredients on high-end menus is simply treating sacred ingredients as a cash-grab.
Native ingredients — such as sea succulents, karkalla, saltbush, finger limes and wattle seed — are now used in a number of top Sydney restaurants.
Bundjalung man and SBS’s On Country Kitchen host Mark Olive said while he was happy such ingredients are mainstream now, he did not agree with the lack of respect some growers and sellers had for native culture.
“There are non-indigenous people and businesses looking to make a quick buck from Aboriginal ingredients and that is the part I’m not OK with,” he said.
“These ingredients are an important part of indigenous culture and history and people need to know the stories behind it all.”
While he was happy with farms and nurseries being run by non-indigenous people, he encouraged them to “put an ad out there to see if there are any young indigenous people … interested in horticulture and get them involved”.
“It’s about giving back and respect,” he said.
Native flora is vitally important to indigenous people because, as both food and medicine, it kept them alive and thriving for 60,000 years. With more than 300 Aboriginal cultures, every group has plants that are specific and special to them.
Co-founder of Australia’s first indigenous rooftop garden, Yerrabingin at South Eveleigh, Clarence Slockee said native plants are a $20 million industry but only 3 per cent went back to Aboriginal people.
He used the 2010 example of Texas-based company Mary Kay Cosmetics attempting to place a patent on Kakadu plums, a sacred Aboriginal ingredient.
“What I would prefer is people respecting the rights of first nations people,” he said.
Native online market Bush Food Shop owner Marilyn Williams has been operating for 11 years but claimed she was now being frozen out of the industry.
Ms Williams is not indigenous, does not have indigenous employees and does not contribute to any indigenous causes or charities.
She claimed there was a list of preferred suppliers of native ingredients that she was not on.
“I think that while Mark might be upset and there are a number of other people who are upset, they’re trying to close the door,” she said.
“Aboriginal people have been told they need to source from Aboriginal businesses and they have been given a list, from which we are excluded, of people they should deal with.”
Ms Williams is not on the list on the website of Supply Nation, a national directory of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses established to stimulate the indigenous business sector.
There is also a paid website that Olive recommends called Bush Food Sensations, where businesses that sell native ingredients can buy a membership to be listed.
Indigenous awareness is a primary focus and its board must be 51 per cent Aboriginal.
Ms Williams said she did not buy and sell exclusively from indigenous growers because some suppliers had trouble with logistics in the face of overwhelming demand.
“When I’ve got customers who are wanting particular ingredients — at the moment there is quite a push on a number of ingredients in large quantities — I need a quick response,” she said.
“I get calls from people who say ‘I’ve got this and that’ and I say ‘That’s great, how are you going to get it to me?’. They could be a four-day drive away.”
RESTAURANTS DOING IT RIGHT
Fire door, Surry Hills: Cuttlefish & karkalla
Quay, Circular Quay: Red pea flowers with wagyu
Hunter & Barrel, Barangaroo: Wild spice rub beef skewers
Paperbark, Waterloo: Saltbush with sorghum and broad bean
Botanic House, CBD: Betel leaves, toasted coconut, finger limes with scallops
STAR CHEF KARAM CALLS FOR MORE FINESSE IN LEBANESE FOOD
From growing up in his home country of Lebanon to leading one of the best kitchens in Sydney, Dany Karam has definitely had the best of both food worlds.
Despite the hectic pace of his work as executive chef at The Star’s Black Bar and Grill for the past five years, he has continued to make an effort to find the most authentic Lebanese cuisine that reminds him most of home.
Karam says Baba Ghanouj Lebanese in Dural and Zahli in Surry Hills are two of the best in greater Sydney for their authenticity.
“A lot of Lebanese places serve the mezze and all that but not many serve the home-cooked meals too,” he said.
“The mezze would usually be served at the beginning and then would come with a main meal, whether it’s grilled skewers, braised meat with rice or that sort of thing.
“I like to see the authentic food with good service on the table. One in Dural does that, it’s called Baba Ganouj, and Zahli in Surry Hills does good food and it’s authentic.”
One thing Karam said he’d like to see more of in Lebanese restaurants is finesse.
“I like to see a modern touch to the dishes. Nour in Surry Hills does a really great job of that, but the full service I’d like to see done more.”
While Black is a steakhouse, Karam integrates the Lebanese culinary customs he grew up with into the cooking methods.
One example is the use of strictly seasonal vegetables for the spring menu. He joked that in Lebanon, if zucchini was in season his mum would have to find seven different ways to use the vegetable because they would be eating it every day.
The dish of heirloom beetroot with goat cheese, zaatar, micro red sorrel, and the blood orange tart with burnt meringue and viola flower use seasonal ingredients — perfect to have alongside Sydney’s most expensive steak at $600/kg.
CARNIVORE CARNIVAL HEATS UP
Vegans might want to steer clear of the Hawkesbury this weekend as the Showdown in the Showground Barbecue World Championship fires up out west.
Organiser Black Bear BBQ expects more than 15,000 people over two days — huge considering it’s only the event’s second year, but the venue change from Moore Park to Hawkesbury seems to have paid off.
Punters can expect all the best meat from all over the world, from deep south low’n’slow to smokin’ hot and saucy, to Brazilian flame barbecue, as pitmasters turn up the heat in Australia’s richest barbecue comp.
On Sunday, teams will fight it out to be crowned the barbecue masters and pocket $50,000 cash.
There are also competitions for kids, eating competitions and a live butcher session.
Black Bear BBQ co-founder Scott McCoy said he expected the event would go through 10 tonnes of meat.
“What I’m most excited about is … all of it really,” he said.
“There’s so much going on and we’re really expecting some numbers — we’re getting quite surprised at how well it’s kicking off actually.”
Tickets are available through blackbearbbq.com.au.
THE MOUTH: PUB COOKS UP NEW WAY TO KEEP OLD CHARM ALIVE
Cities are like sharks. On the one hand, they need to keep swimming to survive, thrive, and grow. But on the other, if they grow too big or too fast, then people are going to get wary about being consumed in the process.
Sydney is a perfect example. While we all know in our heads that the place will never go back to its sleepy pre-Olympics idyll, with an official population growth rate of nearly 11 per cent per year, it’s no surprise that slowing this down was a topic that has dominated recent election campaigns.
So while The Mouth is no town planner or professor of urban demography, he does worry about these questions as much as everyone else. And he thinks he may have found a way forward in a pub that is doing what all of us should aspire to. Namely, hold on to our funky, unique heritage while at the same time providing a destination for excellence.
Which brings us to Woolloomooloo: Not the tarted-up end by the water where pretty young things play at the Tilbury and slightly more seasoned citizens dine along the wharf (your odds of seeing John Laws at Otto are better than any horse that ran in the Cup).
No, instead we’re back a couple of streets from the water in the decidedly less glamorous part of the suburb at the Old Fitzroy Hotel, a bar and bistro attached to the little theatre of the same name.
And we’re just going to throw it out there: This is the best damn pub meal The Mouth has enjoyed since an epic chicken parma in the town of Gloucester five years ago.
The Fitz was recently taken over by new investors who, rather than gut the place of all its old charm and turn it into a family-friendly hipster craft beer theme park with plenty of room for little Atticus and Phoebe to tear around, have kept it decidedly local and charmingly crusty. Good. Yet in the kitchen they have installed a genius in the form of Nicholas Hill, who used to cook at the much-lamented, world-class Sepia.
Even better.
Left to reinvent the pub’s menu, Hill has come up with gold: Rich, runny Scotch eggs. A fried potato scallop encasing an actual plucked-from-the-sea scallop. A schooner glass filled with deep-fried pig tails (once you get the trick to pulling the bones out in one go, you’ll want to eat them all day).
A hand-cut beef tartare on bread fried in beef drippings. Chicken hearts (be brave!) atop gem lettuce and peaches and a liver parfait so light and foamy you could shave with it.
Main courses are brilliant, but less challenging. Classic schnitties and fish and chips are done with a light touch, beautifully tender but not deconstructed or divorced from what they are supposed to be in some obnoxious “cheffy” way.
A rissole sandwich. And a Sunday roast that’s entirely enjoyable even on a 30C day on the surprisingly cool back deck.
On the whole, it’s both quirky and old and genuinely Sydney (playwright Louis Nowra is one of the regular barflies). And on the other, it has refreshed itself for the future.
Something The Mouth reckons we could all aspire to.
VERDICT: ****
LICENSED: YES
CARDS: ALL MAJORS
OPEN: LUNCH WED-SAT 12-2.30pm, DINNER MON-SAT 6– 9.30pm, SUN 12–9pm
PRICES: MAINS UNDER $30
VEGETARIAN: SURE, BUT YOU’LL MISS THE PIG TAILS
NOISE: LOCAL PUB
PRO: NEW WAY FOR OLD SCHOOL
CON: NOT MUCH OF A WINE LIST
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ON THE BOIL
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SPILL THE BEANS
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Originally published as Cook with Costi launches new take on surf and turf in Sydney
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