by John Newton Hernandez Hernandez:
Who doesn’t know that great institution on Kings Cross Road (#60), Café Hernandez, which hasn’t closed its doors in 30 years … don’t think they even have a door. Where else can you buy 500g of coffee beans to go or hot chocolate and churros at 4am? Now there’s Hernandez Café Restaurant a 1 Burton Street (Ph 9380 9006), which may stay open all night during Mardi Gras, but they’re going to think about hours long-term. The coffee is there, the churros and chocolate are there and the paintings by the owner’s wife, Paquita, are there. And so is a full lunch and dinner menu featuring simple fare like ricotta and spinach ravioli, lamb risotto and BLTs. No paella. Ah well, see how they develop. They’re licensed and all the wines from a short menu are available by the glass.
Fred & Joe’s food store & restaurant:
It was open, then it was closed, and now it’s open, just up the road from the original Hernandez beneath the Élan apartment block. It’s a big, handsome food store and a wide-open café with views down the hill towards Rushcutters. Owner Fred Moujalli came out of wholesale fruit & veg, joined forces with partner Natalie Shapiro (Joe left very early on) and hired chef Ant Ewart, who’s been around the area for a long time, perhaps most notably at the ever-popular Macleay Street Bistro. The menu looks good enough to eat and the locals will lap up the fresh fruit and veg and other good-looking stuff in the food store. Stop by for parmesan-crumbed veal with celeriac coleslaw or poached chicken open sandwich with a roasted tomato and cornichon salad & tarragon mayo. Dinners only during the week, lunch and dinner weekends. 3 Kings Cross Road, Ph 9018 0180 Trust the market:
No, not the one run by blokes in striped shirts and women in pencil skirts in O’Connell Street – that’s very dodgy – but the one run by blokes and sheilas with dirt under their fingernails, ie farmers’ and produce markets. Those places where you can buy food from the people who grow or make or raise the food without having to pay the myriad middle people who get between you and the producer when you buy at a supermarket.
And if you want to find markets you can trust around the country – and even in New Zealand – you’ll need the Guide to Farmers’ Markets 2007, compiled by Australian Farmers Market Association chairman, Jane Adams. It’s a valuable addition to the library of anyone who travels and cares about fresh local and seasonal food. Grab a copy at your local bookshop or go to www.farmersmarkets.org.au and order online for $25 including postage. And I promise that’s the last time (for a while) I bang on about fresh, local and seasonal. At least a month.
Good and fast:If you’ve ever been to Barcelona, chances are you came across Boccata, a small chain of fast-food restaurants that will remind you of the very big chain. Same row of smiling kids behind the cash register. Same food slipping down slides behind them. Same lightning service. Only one difference. They serve good food. Crunchy baguettes with pate or good quality jamón, salad, manchego cheese – along with two grades of wine, house wine or Rioja, beer or soft drinks for the kids.
Yoshinoya has been on Oxford Street for a while. They’ve been in Tokyo since 1899 when one Eikichi Matsuda opened its ancestor, a gyudon – literally beef bowl – joint in the Nihonbashi fish market. Yoshinoya is the direct descendant and one of 1000 like it around the world. What’s gyudon? Paper-thin slices of beef stewed in wine and served on top of rice. You can add pickled ginger, soy or a raw egg. And I reckon the regular bowl at $4.40 is the best-value and best-tasting fat food in town. Prove me wrong.
When Yoshinoya started all they did was gyudon, but now they’ve added chicken teriyaki, udon noodles and other very pleasant Japanese fast food offerings. I have nothing against fast. As long as it’s good.
Before the tomato…
It’s hard to imagine Italian food without tomatoes – but that’s what it was like until old Chris Columbus bought them back in the 15th century along with chocolate and chilli and the potato and lots of foods we take for granted.
And that’s the task faced by Alio chef Ashley Hughes and his team when they cook a Roman banquet on March 15 – the ides of March: to put together a meal using the kind of ingredients they used in Rome. That’s stuff like ostrich, lovage and garum.
It’s a historic date for more reasons than one (remember poor old Julius Caesar?). It will be the first time the Food Media Club has thrown open an event to the general public, so you’ll get to rub togas (in a manner of speaking) with the likes of Lyndey Milan, Alan Saunders and other food writers, broadcasters, stylists and chefs.
It should be a fun night. According to the poet Ovid, the festival held on this date was one of “revelry and licentiousness”. Best leave the chariot at home. To book, call the club secretariat, Ph 9427 4810 – quickish as places are limited – and have ready $125 a head. 3-5 Baptist Street, Redfern.
| | Best beers. Winning wines: We just got the results of the inaugural Sydney Royal Beer Competition and they’re very hard to read – smudged, stained and blurry. No, really, some very fine beers got up. The strongest class, according to the judges, who had to struggle through 95 beers – hope they either spat or left their chariots at home – were the dark lagers, all of which one a medal. Red Oak from Sydney and Little Creatures from Fremantle performed best, winning four silver and six bronze and two silver and one bronze respectively. And my local beer (brewed down the road) and Sydney Eats sponsor Malt Shovel brewery – aka James Squire – won four bronze. Bewdy. 
And then to the wines. “Chardonnay is back on top,” shrieked the press release from the Sydney Royal Wine Show. Probably because it’s being made a lot better, I’d say. I haven’t tasted the 2004 Eileen Hardy Chardonnay that won Best Wine of Show, but I had a Belgravia Chardonnay from Orange the other day – 2005, I think – and that was an absolute ripper, with none of that flabby oakiness of the 90s chardies. The 2004 Mildara Coonawarra Shiraz got the gong for best red and – watch for this one – the 2005 Coonawarra Estate Riesling got best under $15. I’m just ducking out for a crate.
Ripples across the harbour:How he got it past the locals – a notably stroppy lot – we can only guess, but Bill Drakopoulos, the brains behind Aqua Dining and lower-case ripples at North Sydney Olympic is building two places: a restaurant – lower case ripples at Chowder Bay and AquaMine, a function centre in a heritage building on Sydney Harbour Federation trust land at Chowder Bay near Clifton Gardens. We’ve only seen sketches of the additions (by architect Sidney Koh), but it looks pretty spiffy in the best possible sense of the word. Anthony Redondi is the designated chef of the “affordable Italian cuisine” that’s planned. Watch for it around May. It had to happen:Recently opened on Ramsay Street, Haberfield, smack bang in the middle of Little Italy: I Thai on Ramsay. We haven’t tried it – have you? Let me know.
Where’s Danny? We first noted Danny Russo long ago at Misto in Kent Street – he opened it (it closed recently). Then he popped up at l’Unico in Balmain, then went to Lo Studio in Sydney and we hadn’t seen him for a while. We like Danny’s food – especially his squid ink tortellini stuffed with crabmeat and his zampone (stuffed pig trotter) – and wondered what he’s been up to. Plenty. He’s joined the ranks of consultants (the “I know better than you” club) and is helping out the people who are rebuilding the Beresford on Bourke Street in Surry Hills and David Cowdrill, who is opening Pizza Mario 2 behind St Margaret’s, also on Bourke Street. They’ll be doing “simple Italian pub food” at the Beresford, according to Danny, and we’ve already mentioned Pizza Mario (October 06), which will be a 100-seater with antipasto added to the menu. Busy boy. Still, we’d like to see him in his own joint. Meanwhile, when he’s not running around consulting, you’ll find him eating the “killer” cannoli at Dolcetti, 294 Great North Road, Abbotsford. Allora, prosciutto:
It’s not often the Spanish get the march on the Italians in the marketing stakes, but it happened with the race to get cured ham into the country and onto the market. As recorded in this column last month, Spanish jamón has already hit the stores and won hearts all over town. Now it’s prosciutto’s turn.
This week, I tried two prosciutti (one prosciutto, two prosciutti): a 14-month matured San Daniele from the province of Friuli Venezia Giulia in the north and a 16-month matured parma from Emilio Romagna. Is prosciutto better than jamón? Is Penélope Cruz more beautiful than Monica Bellucci? It’s all about personal taste. To my palate, prosciutto is more delicate, sweeter and lighter. Of these two, I prefer the parma, which has more complexity and sweeter fat (eat the fat – it won’t kill you). The best jamón – Ibérico – is bigger and wilder in flavour with more of that wonderful nutty sweetness of the acorns eaten by the little black-foot piggies.
Both prosciutti come from the venerable Italian house of Levoni and you can try them at Norton Street Grocer in Leichhardt and Bondi, IGA Lamonica in Haberfield, Mr Stuzzichini in Ryde and Livoti Deli in Dee Why. And, yes, I prefer Pené.
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