Tony Eats, a new food venture at Chuck and Son’s Brewing Co., is powered by Whole Beast Butchery in Marrickville, serving sausage rolls, beef burgers, hot smoked trout and soft serve with beef fat caramel and bacon toffee crumble.
Deciding where to eat usually involves much hoo-hah about getting bang for your buck – with added rigmarole around suiting all ages, being quality food and getting there without two trains, a bus and then a bunfight to find a table. Note also, parking.
Let me introduce to you Tony Eats, a new food venture inside Chuck and Son’s Brewing Co., powered by Whole Beast Butchery in Marrickville.
First, transport. The venue is on two train lines, three bus routes and a car park rivalling Bunnings.
Getting a table is equally easy. Based in a food truck parked on Chuck and Son’s outdoor verandah, Tony Eats cooks for the craft brewery’s entire warehouse space – five areas of indoor and outdoor tables and lounge seating.
It gets busy but I swear you’ll find a spot. Try for the train-spotting verandah or the retro couch chairs under a bank of through-the-years portraits of Chuck and Son’s co-founder Dr Charles “Chuck” Hahn, also founder of Hahn Brewery and James Squire.
Is it good, affordable, suits-everyone food? Yes. Chuck and Son’s beer (and cocktail range) is fine stuff but, from my perspective, it’s a boon to be eating produce from Whole Beast Butchery.
Tony Eats, which opened at Chuck and Son’s in July, is the joint venture of Marcus Papadopoulo and partner Amina Latypova, the people behind Whole Beast. Their butchery uses only whole carcasses, developing the flavour of beef, lamb or pork by dry-ageing the meat.
A major supplier to cafes and restaurants across Sydney, every second roll or sandwich in town seems to hold their smoked bacon and cold cuts. Visit their eight-year-old shop, its shelves and fridges laden with Latypova’s preserves, pickles, jams, sauces, relishes and take-home meals, and Papadopoulo and his butchers cut meat to your order.
Tony Eats is named after Latypova and Papadopoulo’s four-year-old son, Tony, who, his parents proudly say, eats widely and heartily. Everything on the menu is a dish Tony loves. From the biltong to the labne, from the dry-aged beef hamburger to the whole hot smoked trout, smoked chicken and leek pie and the soft-serve ice-cream topped with beef fat caramel and bacon toffee crumble – he’s a fan.
This is partly because Papadopoulo, who learnt his trade at Vic’s Meat in Mascot, develops extraordinary depth of flavour by hanging the meat. And because Latypova, who leads the Tony Eats kitchen, has created great dishes, all tested at home.
Sun or drizzle, I cannot think of a finer urban scenario than scooping Jatz biscuits through Whole Beast’s utterly beautiful labne – drizzled with smoked honey and lemon oil – as trains shoot by on four track lines below.
Planes wheel across the sky as I take on Latypova’s chip on a stick – curling golden crunchiness that rivals Easter Show offerings – before slabs of intensely flavourful biltong, dark pink and veined with fat, arrive. Then there’s sumac and pepper-sprinkled pork crackle – crisp and golden as butterscotch – and sticky pork ribs, their glimmering glaze made with Chuck’s Amber Ale.
The heft and meatiness of the Tony Eats sausage roll – Whole Beast pork sausage with natural casing, coiled inside pastry and served with their smoky tomato sauce – is meaty magic, as is the whole hot smoked rainbow trout.
Hahn, now 79 and still brewing, recommends matching the fish’s pink flesh with Chuck and Son’s Original Pilsner. I’d pair it with everything – the fragrant garlic bread, using Whole Beast’s smoked garlic, the strapping beef burger with pickles or even the hot dog, its momentous red length lolling out from a bunful of herby ketchup, mustard and caramelised onions.
This is excellent, hearty, stupendously flavourful food and prices are not mountainous. Every family I spied, every age of human in the room, was intently and exuberantly eating it. Tony’s palate is onto something.
Three other brewery food pairings to try
The Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre
Match a Hawke’s Patio pale ale with prawn toast, Mongolian lamb stir-fry and – sweet retro joy – vanilla ice-cream with Ice Magic chocolate topping, at The Lucky Prawn, the retro Australian-Chinese bistro inside Hawke’s Brewing Co. A 1980s time-capsule, it’s replete with Hawkey memorabilia, a giant prawn and mullet-friendly vibes.
8-12 Sydney Street, Marrickville, hawkesbrewing.com
Bucketty’s Brewing Co
Brookvale’s independent craft brewing and distillery scene flourishes on but head chef Martin Brito’s superior pub fare at Bucketty’s cocktail lounge and sports bar – Valentine’s and Chalky’s – steps things up. Try an English Amber Ale with Sundays’ Yorkshire pudding, slow-roasted wagyu and properly crispy spuds under splendid gravy.
26 Orchard Road, Brookvale, buckettys.com.au
Not technically inside a brewery, Brisket Boys’ outdoor Texas-inspired barbecued meat empire is a can’s roll away from Drink West Brewery in the Manufactor dining and business precinct. Order smoky seasoned beef brisket, cooked over ironbark wood for 12 hours, or a one-metre-long hot-link sausage. There’s a trophy if you can eat it in three minutes.
Tenancy 25/2115 Castlereagh Road, Penrith, brisketboys.com.au
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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