Poly in Surry Hills is part of the Paramount Hotel with a much more casual wine bar vibe than sister restaurant Ester but is equally as delicious. I’ve been a few times- once for the amazing Scarlet prawn dish and the light comte donut but both times I’d forgotten my camera so a birthday dinner with Isaac rectifies this!

We start with the Fried potato, salted egg yolk ($14), which I’d bookmarked on Instagram and thought about since their first inception in early May. The golden cubes are made up of layers of tender potato- it was like eating the most perfect hashbrown! While the salted egg yolk topping was delicious I kinda expected a more intense salted egg yolk flavour? Although I think I have become spoilt by eating many bags of Irvins that maybe my tastebuds have become immune to salted egg yolk flavour that doesn’t punch you in the face.

The Raw beef, fried cheese ($24) is a mound of hand chopped steak tartare hiding under a parmesan wafer.

We were instructed to break up the wafer and mix but I chose to break off bits and scoopsies the tartare and woah it totally tasted like a cheeseburger! The tartare was perfectly seasoned and I loved the sharpness of the cheese.

The only word to describe the Cheese dumplings with cheese rind and grilled onion soup ($24) is: DEEEEELIGHTFUL. This whole plate was perfection, the dumplings tender pasta skin held pockets of liquid cheese and together with a spoonful of the onion soup it just tasted like a warm hug for the soul.

Instead of getting the Steak sandwich we decide to go all out and order the Short rib, burnt honey, sugarloaf cabbage salad ($60). It is a very generous portion of tender, juicy meat with a perfect medium rare centre and deliciously charred edges. We started getting the meat sweats towards the end but it’s so worth it!

Sadly the Comte donut has disappeared from the menu but there’s a Sticky date donut ($15) for dessert that is absolutely lip smackingly delicious! The donut is more a crisp cruller/churros style than a fluffy donut but oh boy that sauce! That beautiful rich, butterscotch sauce! I wanted to bathe in it but instead settled for scraping every last schmear off the plate.

Poly
74-76 Commonwealth St,
Surry Hills

Trading Hours:
Monday – Friday: 5pm – 12am
Saturday: 3pm – 12am
Sunday: 3pm – 10pm

When you mention pub food I immediately think of salt and pepper calamari, Thai food or a stodgy parmie. None of these are available at the Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomooloo now with Nicholas Hill (ex Sepia) at the helm in the kitchen which is a relief in a town with the same ol same ol on the menu. Instead, the menu is British influenced bistro food with a rotating specials menu featuring a pie of the day. Order at the bar and grab a pint before making your way past the kitchen to the mezzanine area which also connects to the theatre- warning, the place gets packed with pre theatre guests and staff will ring a bell when a show is about to start.

We start with the Hot chip butty ($10), which is only available at lunch with optional upgrades of beef dripping gravy ($4) and curried egg ($4) and trust me, get them. It arrives deconstructed style so you can sneak a chip or two while slathering your devils white bread with butter. A less OCD person would dump all the chips onto the bread but well, I wanted to ensure even chip coverage and so carefully jenga stacked the fat golden chips before adding the curried egg layer and then smothering in the rich gravy.

Carb on carb perfection! There’s also bottles of HP, Worcestershire, vinegar and hot sauce available to customise your sammich to your liking.

There’s quite a few snacks on the menu and we cannot pass up the Scotch egg($8) which is picture perfect.

Inside the crispy, golden breadcrumbed shell is a deliciously peppery sausage meat layer around firm egg white and a gloriously golden and gooey yolky center.

We score a complimentary Chicken and lardo terrine ($16) from the kitchen, a tile of chilled, pressed chicken with ribbons of creamy rich lardo on top that I may have carefully peeled off to eat separately. I quite liked the tarragon mustard which provided a nice heat to the terrine.

The Raw beef on dripping toast($14) is basically a steak tartare on toast and it’s one tasty dish! The meat is nicely seasoned and the sprinkle of finely chopped chives providing a pleasant crunch and brightness against the rich umami laden toast.

The Tripe and chicken nuggets ($8) only comes 2 for the portion which made me a bit sad because I reckon the scotch egg would be more value buuuuut they were delicious and I’d totally order them again.

If you’re a fan of the textural elements of tripe you might be disappointed with how they’re reduced to nubbins and vying for center of attention against the chicken but there’s just something about these nuggets that explode with flavour and make you wish there were 20 more.

I’ve never eaten a rissole before so was curious about the Rissole sandwich with fries ($17) and was pleasantly surprised about how soft and tender the rissole was! I would definitely return for this and loved the melty cheddar against the sweetness of the beetroot. A special mention to the fries, they were covered in some crazy addictive salt that we would gladly buy to sprinkle on absolutely everything.

Pie fillings (and sizes) rotate daily so check out their grams for what’s on. On one visit our group shared the Roast chicken and artichoke pie for two ($45) and ohhh boy the pie was spectacular and so fricken massive! I reckon it would’ve been enough for 3-4 people for mains! The chicken fat and yellow wine sauce was velvety smooth and just so delicious that I wanted to bathe in it but settled for drowning the very juicy pieces of chicken dug up from the cavernous pie. And of course the puff pastry was amazing, golden with many flaky layers.

On another visit the pie of the day was Pigs head with grilled onion and cheddar ($22). I loved the juicy meat and tiny cubes of fat that melted on the tongue with the rich gravy.

While smaller in size the pie was no less tasty and in fact I actually preferred this pie as it felt like there was a higher puff pastry to innards ratio.

The Old Fitzroy Hotel
129 Dowling St,
Woolloomooloo

Trading Hours:
Monday – Friday: 11am – 12am
Saturday: 12pm – 12am
Sunday: 12pm – 10pm

I’ve been to Banh Xeo Bar in The Cannery in Rosebery a few times now, their bun bo hue is awesome and I love their bone marrow so for my bday lunch with the fam I decided it was time for the ½ Berkshire pig head ($79.50)!

The pig head takes about 30-40mins to roast so we order some dishes to share while we wait. The Lemongrass chicken Banh Xeo ($25) has a 15mins wait warning message but it’s definitely worth the wait. The banh xeo is massive and every bit as tasty as it looked! Super crispy lacy edges and choc a block filled with fragrant chicken pieces and fat beansprouts.

You absolutely have to order the Whole greenback flounder with brown butter fish sauce, lemongrass and chilli ($41.50). It comes with a plate of the lightest, most crisp baguette I’ve ever had and was just oh so perfect for mopping up the incredible sauce, brown butter is seriously the answer to all problems in life. The flounder was perfectly cooked and oh so tender but the fam and I were sad to see that the tail had been trimmed as we love gnawing away at all the crispy bits haha

And now for the main event! The pig head was golden and crisp and the meat in the cheek was just so crazily juicy and fatty. There was enough crackle to go around our table of 5 and we fall into silence as we all sighed with carnivorous happiness.

Meaty cross section! Oh and there’s baguettes lying on the bottom of the pig soaking up meaty juices which was so incredibly rich that I had to admit defeat after a few bites.

The lettuce, pickles and sauces are replenishable thank goodness, the fattiness of the pork will of course get overwhelming so I’d recommend sharing it between 5-6 people.

To stave off the feeling of a heart attack, we wrapped pieces of pork and glorious crackle in lettuce cups and pickled vegetables before drizzling on our selected condiments- chilli sauce, sambal, lemongrass & chilli and fish sauce.

There was also potatoes roasted in beef fat! These were the most incredible roast potatoes I have ever eaten! The outside was so freaking crispy and the inside perfectly soft and fluffy and the flavour just tasted so comforting and savoury.

Banh Xeo Bar (inside the Cannery)
11/61-71 Mentmore Ave,
Rosebery

Trading hours:
Monday: Closed
Tues – Thurs: 12pm – 3.30pm
Fri – Sat: 12 – 3.30pm, 5.30pm – 9.30pm
Sun: 12 – 3.30pm

So a few weekends ago Joy mentioned a croissant shop had popped up inside the Bare Witness cafe in Rhodes and eager to re-live my croissant eating Paris days (which I uh still haven’t blogged about), the boy and I made the trek out to Agent Orange land.

We start with the Original croissant ($4), a perfectly golden specimen and the last one available from the display. The amount of layers is certainly impressive, especially considering the size of the kitchen! The croissant hits all the right check marks with a crisp, golden shell and light, buttery honeycomb innards.

The Pain au chocolat ($4.50) is a beauty and quite large for a chocolate croissant. The pastry is just as awesome as the original and has a couple of sticks of rich dark chocolate snuggled together at the base.

The Pretzel ($4.50) is a beautiful burnished croissant just begging to be devoured. The croissant pastry is a bit more denser, like well, a pretzel. The sprinkle of sesame seeds is very moreish and I reckon this would be perfect if it was a filled croissant with ham and cheese!

The butter cube immediately catches my eye with its perfect cube shape and squillions of layers. On offer that morning was a large unfilled butter cube ($9) or the smaller matcha cream filled ($5) but I’ve chosen the vanilla cream filled butter cube ($5).

But did it live up to the hype? Hmmm. Biting into the cube was pretty much impossible, it was about a cm too tall for a proper top-down bite and eating it sideways against the layers seemed so wrong. I loved the super smooth vanilla cream filling but oh how little the filling was! And the cube itself? While impressive looking with all its layers and perfect edges I felt a bit letdown in taste. I think I was expecting it to be like a palmier, sweet and crisp but instead it was basically a compressed croissant pastry and with a name like buttercube i’d expect it to be… buttery..

The Sticky nuts ($6) however blew my mind! It was exactly like a pecan pie with brown sugar caramelised gooeyness and mixed nuts encrusted on a croissant base. It has the perfect balance of sweetness with a touch of saltiness and all of the textures from crunch to chew.

And I had to get a savoury to balance all the sweets so a Spinach and ricotta ($6) croissant was procured.

The filling in this was nice and generous almost to the point where it was too much haha whinge whinge ikr but I loved this filled croissant, there was enough flaky pastry encasing the smooth cheesy spinach innards. It was pretty filling (although eating 5+ croissants will do that for you lol) and fyi it holds up pretty good reheating in the oven later 😀

Buttercrumbs Croissants (inside Bare Witness cafe)
30 Shoreline Drive
Rhodes

Trading hours:
Fri, Sat, Sun: 8am – sold out