With key talent from Fred’s and Ester in the kitchen, South End is the kind of place you want to order a second bottle and all the desserts.
European$$$
For all the attention Newtown and Enmore’s restaurants have received over the past few years, King Street’s southern section has largely been left out of the action. Australia Street is home to Westwood Pizza and four hatted restaurants from the Continental Deli team; Enmore Road has become Sydney’s go-to strip for small bars; up near The Marlborough Hotel, Ante and Cafe Paci are two of the most singular places for food, wine and sake in the country.
However, the St Peters end of King Street – and I say this with much love for Fiji Market and Ladda’s Thai – has long been light on places where you want to order the cheese course, all the desserts and a second bottle. The MoshPit is a cracker for local music and hanging out with blokes who look like Hoggle from Labyrinth, and the Botany View excels at live jazz, but surely there’s also a market for hyper-seasonal European dishes executed with beautiful technique? Yes, says the team behind South End, there is.
The main guys cooking are Hussein Sarhan, who once led the farmhouse-y kitchen at Fred’s in Paddington, and Alex Tong, a former sous chef at Chippendale’s Ester. They opened South End in October with hospitality gun Paul Guiney, one of the fastest crumb-sweeper draws in the west. Tablecloths are ironed and flatware is gold-rimmed, and good-humoured staff keep the vibe easy-going. (Also note the Jamaican ska soundtrack and googly eyed hand-blown carp decanter from Italian glass artist Massimo Lunardon.)
The space – all forest-green, oatmeal-white and joinery the colour of Dairy Milk chocolate – may remind you of the dining room at Stanmore’s three-hatted Sixpenny, which is to say very handsome and very Australian. If the walls could talk, they’d sound like Richard Roxburgh.
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South End’s a la carte menu is as poised as it is broadly appealing. In late spring, there was a chilled almond, melon and cucumber ajo blanco soup – smooth as sea glass – made for those humid, grey afternoons that nowadays constitute too much of Sydney’s weather. A potato rosti is dense and crunchy, topped with curds from Marrickville’s Goldstreet Dairy and fiercely fresh snap peas. Fingers of zucchini are fried in the lightest of batters.
Sarhan’s salads were a highlight at Fred’s and they’re a drawcard here, too. In November, green beans jostled with new potatoes, real-deal rocket and a vital pesto alla Trapanese; two weeks ago, on the hottest day of summer, guests were refreshed with tomatoes from Living Earth Farm in Young, purple basil and white peaches of exacting ripeness. Meanwhile, I’ve enjoyed first-rate mussels in a broth of leeks, pastis and creme fraiche on one visit, and fregola, fennel and saffron on another.
“South End Cafe”, the site’s former tenant, is still painted on the restaurant’s awning, and I wonder how many people approach the bar and ask for a takeaway iced latte after fondling daybeds at the nearby antique stores. Guiney does keep a few stools free for walk-in guests, though, and the rosti is a beaut two-and-done snack with a frosty martini or something thoughtful, flinty and white from the small-producer wine list. A longer innings may include pasture-raised lamb rump from the Pyrenees Ranges, marinated in rosemary and thyme and roasted to a deep, consistent pink.
For fish, there could be wild-caught blue-eye and pipis in a bouillabaisse broth that takes three days to build and would make a Marseille fisherman weep tears of Pernod and joy. There could be an expertly pan-roasted fillet of hapuka with basil butter in a radiant squash and heirloom zucchini ragout. A passionfruit millefeuille showcases deft pastry work, but if you only order one dessert, make it the ethereal sabayon-folded chocolate tart “a la Bernard Pacaud”, the haute cuisine master behind Paris restaurant L’Ambroisie.
This is a restaurant for anyone who cares more about inspired seasonal cooking than trends. It’s a place to remind us what a tomato or peach or tenderloin of grass-fed beef should taste like. It’s somewhere to order a second bottle and ask about the amaro list, too. Plus, you can pick up tomatillos at Fiji Market after lunch. All aboard for St Peters Station.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Intimate space run by folk who care dearly about hospitality
Go-to dishes: White Pyrenees lamb rump with braised Roman beans and olive tapenade ($54); potato rosti ($12 each); pan-roasted fillet of wild-caught fish with squash and zucchini ragout ($56); chocolate tart a la Bernard Pacaud ($25)
Drinks: Smashing little classic cocktail offering; independent producer-led wine list with exceptional pours from Australia and Europe
Cost: About $220 for two, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
