Ester, Chippendale

It was love at first sight when I first spotted a pic on Instagram of the Bone Marrow with XO sauce ($15) at Ester (52 Meagher St, Chippendale). Marrow is one of those things that makes my life worth living. That and bacon. And chocolate.

ANYWAYS I’d been feeling healthy lately and my arteries were beside themselves at the prospect of gloriously fatty bone marrow so a dinner was booked with an equally marrow crazed human. We fall silent as we dig out the molten, gelatinous, fatty nubbins from the beef bones. The amount of XO sauce was a bit overpowering and I ended up scraping it off and eating it later and kinda wishing I had a bowl of rice to eat it with haha the bone marrow did come with a bowl of house baked bread but we chose to savour each quivering mass by the forkful. I’m still having dreams about it…

And of course we just had to get the Chicken Liver Pate ($15), which was a pleasingly shade of pale pink and ridiculously smooth. Best slathered thick enough to see teeth marks onto the warm crisps, it didn’t even need the mandarin chutney accompaniment.

Our waitress was very enthusiastic about the Pig tail ($22), “it’s triple flattened!” Each piece had uber crispy edges but unfortch it was a tad chewy in the middle and my ineffectual hacking meant I ended up picking it up and gnawing away. The pickled cucumber packed one helluva mouth-puckering punch but was balanced with the smoky oysters and slippery black fungus.

I used to be firmly in the anchovy hate camp and it was only recently I found I just couldn’t get enough of it! So the Steak, bagna cauda, radish ($30) was ordered mainly because I wanted the bagna cauda- a creamy sauce made with anchovy and olive oil and while it did not disappoint I must admit I was hoping the steak to be a bit more tender. It was still tasty though, just not as mind blowing as the previous dishes.

A meal is not complete without dessert! We order the Three Milks ($11) and had automatically assumed it was a tres leches cake but instead what arrived was a mighty fine wobbly ricotta pannacotta (teehee try saying that 5 times, fast), sheeps milk foam, buttery biscuit crumbs and best of all- a schmear of sweet dulce de leche. I steered clear of the rosemary because I have issues with herbs in my desserts but the dulce de leche was scraped clean long before the other components because hell, who doesn’t love the caramelised deliciousness of dulce de leche?

Aaaand a scoop of the Salted Caramel Semi-Freddo ($4) with a sprinkle of black sesame crumbs is the perfect balance of salty and sweet and is just plain awesome. Service was fantastic, there was always someone around to answer any questions or to automatically fill our glasses of water, none of the ridiculous hipster ‘tude that seems to be infiltrating restaurants nowadays! We’ll be back for more marrow!