The closure of popular restaurant Tequila Mockingbird after a decade shocked fans of Latin American cuisine. But they won’t have to wait long for an exciting new venture to open in its former home.
Within days of the pre-Easter closure of Sydney Latin American restaurant Tequila Mockingbird, the facade of its Paddington terrace home was transformed with bright, luminous yellow paint.
“We’ve used the yellow from the Venezuela flag,” said the restaurant’s owner, restaurateur Michael Fegent. Venezuelan cuisine will follow at TQM, the restaurant rising in Tequila Mockingbird’s place when it opens on Thursday, May 8.
Fegent bills the restaurant as being the “first high-end restaurant in Sydney doing Venezuelan food”. The seed for the Venezuelan twist came more than a year ago, when Fegent was in Buenos Aires on a research trip for his Balmain restaurant, Casa Esquina.
Fegent sat at the kitchen counter at Fogon Asado, a Buenos Aires restaurant recommended by the Michelin Guide. “Everything we’d had [in other parrillas] was quite traditional, always steak and potato, but this was different,” Fegent said. Impressed, he spoke with the restaurant’s Venezuelan executive chef, Jose Garcia, and half-joked if he’d be interested to move to Australia?
It turned out Garcia grew up obsessed with birdlife, and seeing Australia’s feathered natives up close had long been a dream. The opportunity to take his first culinary love, Venezuelan food, to a new audience also appealed.
Michelin rated Fogon Asado the 36th best steakhouse in the world, but Garcia will take a less carnivorous heavy route at TQM. The menu will riff on the sort of dishes you can eat by the beach in Venezuela, like fried fish with shredded cabbage, carrot salad, and green plantain tostones. At TQM they’ll serve fried green plantain with smoked fish, and a nod to Venezuelan-Chinese cooking with XO prawns rice.
“Spicy, salty and sweet,” is how Garcia described Venezuelan food. He likens it most closely to Columbian and Brazilian cuisines, with Panamanian also similar.
Garcia joined Fegent’s expansive Atticus Hospitality (which also owns the chefs’ hatted Esteban in the city) in a wider executive chef role, so don’t count out a parrilla restaurant in the future. For now you’ll have to make do with a grilled meat dish on the TQM menu, along with a blood sausage croquette, inspired by snacks at roadside stands he ate on family road trips.
“My inspiration comes from multiple past experiences, from my favourite chefs, and from my Latin and family roots. Every time I have the chance to highlight something my mom or grandmother taught me, I try to do it,” Garcia said. “Since I was kid, I’ve loved cooking, eating, and being in the kitchen. From the age of 13 years, I knew I wanted to be a chef.”
When Fegent posted on Instagram this month that Tequila Mockingbird was closing, even he was surprised by the reaction: “We got about 800 emails, people were freaking out.”
Tequila Mockingbird regulars will be happy to hear an updated version of its signature ceviche tacos will make the opening menu at TQM, and Fegent has left a little wiggle room for the occasional Latin American border hop. “Our sous chef is Peruvian,” he said.
Fegent said Tequila Mockingbird traded well right up to its closure, but after nearly a decade he wanted a reboot. “It was my baby, my first restaurant … [But] I needed that drive again, I wanted to walk in there and be excited again.”
Open lunch Fri-Sun; dinner Tue-Sun
6 Heeley Street, Paddington
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