Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

Shortgrain, the bar space beneath Surry Hills’ Thai restaurant Longrain, shut its doors at the start of the year. Situated 90 seconds around the corner from the Two Thousand offices, we poured out a little liquor as we mourned not being able to buy the fried chicken wings / greens ten dollar lunch combo, then waited anxiously for the new restaurant to open inside the space.

First of all, the bad news, relevant only to cheap Two Thousand writers and their interns: the new restaurant doesn’t do lunch. They’re working on a takeaway dinner menu to launch later in the year. The good news? Pretty much everything else about Subcontinental, the new restaurant and bar beneath Longrain is good news!

While Shortgrain offered snackier versions of the Thai dishes served upstairs, Subcontinental changes it up pretty drastically with a South Central Asian menu, as the name suggests. While decent Indian food is hard to come by in the inner city, so too is decent (or any) Sri Lankan, Bengalese or Nepalese cuisine, and it all gets a look in on the Subcontinental menu.

The space hasn’t changed much, save for the portraits of smiling turbaned men which hang over each of the booths, watching you fuck up the pronunciation of half the dishes. The house made pappadums are great for snacking on as you sip on a G&T, something you’d never consider ordering before a round of curries, but after learning that there’s a different G&T on each night at Subcontinental, you get on board. Which begins a theme of realising what the restaurant is trying to do and just going with it.

The crisp Pani Puri aren’t quite as exciting as the ones you’ll find in Harris Park but, they’re probably the only ones you’ll find in the city. Filled with tamarind water at the table and eaten in one gulp. Ever seen buratta on an Indian menu before? You’ll see it on your plate with a light green sauce and herby orange salad and it’ll be gone before you even work out if it makes sense. If you order the pork belly curry expecting a soft brown mess, you’ll be surprised by an excellent piece of roast belly, complete with crackling, half-submerged in a dark and spicy broth. Order a Tandoori lamb cutlet and try your hardest not to pick the thing up and eat it with your hands.

While there’s a good deal of decadence on offer, it’s just as easy to keep things cheap and classic with a simple vege curry, a bowl of basmati and a chapati to eat it with. The addition of fresh, sweet pineapple to the raita makes it a must-order, and the biggest misstep on the menu (a beetroot pickle that tastes like little more than raw beetroot) is very easily remedied (there’s a classic mango & chilli pickle which is ten times better).

Subcontinental is a welcome addition to the series of Surry Hills streets that are forever half-closed due to road maintenance. It speaks volumes that the Longrain team were able to close and open an entirely new restaurant in about one tenth of the time that it’s taken the Sydney City Council to install a flowerbed.

Where
8 Hunt St, Surry Hills

When
Tues-Sat, 5:30-10:30pm

How much
Mains from $24

About ten years ago, at an Indian Home Diner, or some other similarly terrible franchise on Enmore Rd, you could get an off menu item called an ‘Indian kebab’. Thinking back, it probably wasn’t even on the off menu, but at 11:30pm one night I watched in horror as my drunk friend ordered the man behind the counter to make him an Indian kebab, forcing him to wrap two pieces of chicken tikka in naan bread and cover the whole thing in curry sauce. My friend then announced that this would cost him seven bucks and he inhaled his creation within 30 seconds of paying. For many years, this experience summed up Indian food in Australia for me.

Obviously, there are much better Indian food options than a drunken mistake in Sydney, hell, there were probably much better Indian food options on that takeaway store’s menu, but in Harris Park, there are streets filled with the best Indian food Sydney has to offer. The choice is like staring into a servo freezer, trying to decide which of the 50 Magnums you want. There are some 20 Indian restaurants in Harris Park, and they all look (and smell) pretty good.

My father-in-law took me to Taj’s Indian Sweets, right down the end of Wigram St, four years ago and since then I have trouble venturing inside any of the other restaurants around it. I’m sure they’re good too, but remember that year you first had a Magnum Ego and were then able to confidently select it again and again from the freezer in a heartbeat, free from the fomo that comes with not trying those colourful new ice creams? Taj’s Indian Sweets is my Magnum Ego.

Their name focuses on the sweets, which you can see lined up along on the counter as you enter. Those sweets are excellent, each one as different tasting as it is different looking and hard to remember the name of, but before you get to the sweets, you’ve gotta make your way through the actual menu. Taj’s is one of the few places in Sydney that serve puri – an amazing south Indian snack that comes in different variations (just like Magnums!). At Taj’s you can get pani puri; small crunchy balls filled with chickpeas, potatoes, chutneys and tamarind water, bhel puri; puffed rice with chickpeas, vegetables, tamarind and mint sauce and sev puri, crackers topped with all of those aforementioned ingredients. The pani puri are addictive and probably the highlight of the whole menu.

The curries at Taj’s aren’t amazing, best served in small amounts as part of a thali (which they offer a southern and northern variation of), or on the side of a dosa the size of your head. The food is fun, filling and great to eat with a big group. That huge menu ensures return visits to try it all as well – I’ve eaten at Taj’s at least twenty times and have only made my way through half of that wall of sweets.

Where
91 Wigram St, Harris Park

When
Open 7 days, 10am-10pm

How much
A little more expensive then an Indian kebab

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

It seems like it was yesterday that we were proudly announcing that Darlo late night drinkateria The Cliff Dive had opened a kitchen selling grilled things on sticks. It seems even sooner that we were joining the hordes praising the burger gods that Mary’s had opened a CBD joint, home to the best brekky burger we’d ever eaten three of before lunchtime at least twice.

As it turns out, the fellas at Cliff Dive and Mary’s like to keep themselves as busy as they do drunk and tattooed, as last week saw the Mary’s team move into Cliff Dive to open, of all things, a kebab kitchen. Could they work the same magic on the late night kebab that they had on the cheeseburger? There was only one way to find out. We had to eat all four of the kebabs on the menu.

Kebab one was the closest thing to a regular kebab, something similar to the chicken roll at El Jannah (a big compliment!), a chicken x garlic x pickle combo that you can turbo-size by adding chopped chicken hearts and livers to. Kebab two is the spicy one, the name ‘Devil Pork’ acting as a warning for the firey chilli kick folded in between the thin slices of pork and lettuce.

Kebab three let the team down a little, the promising combination of lamb and XO sauce being a little on the bland side, offering little in texture and bite, something easily fixed with a richer XO sauce (or maybe the addition of lamb hearts and liver?). All letdowns were forgotten after one bite of kebab four, the pumpkin and corn kebab stealing the show with the additional crunch of roasted chickpeas and a creamy garlic sauce. In all seriousness, my favourite of the kebabs might be this vegetarian option. What have I become?

If the only thing missing from Cliff Dive’s tiki and tinnie fest was a hairy man in a singlet making a shitload of kebabs in the corner, put your hands in the air. Mary’s have delivered again. As in, they’ve delivered another hit food spot. Mary’s don’t actually deliver yet, the bastards.

Where
The Cliff Dive, 16-18 Oxford Square, Darlinghurst

When
Thu-Sun from 7pm

How much
$9 – $12

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2014

Beloved Newtown burger spot Mary’s wowed Sydney’s online burger eating ‘community’ when they announced that they’d be opening a franchise in the CBD. It was possibly the first time in history that anyone was excited about something from Newtown moving closer to their workplace. The productivity of human resource workers who worked within 10km of Pitt St Mall was down 75% for a solid 3 months. Every day they checked Broadsheet for news of Mary’s CBD opening, hoping to tag their co-workers in the comments before they were tagged themselves. “Omg, lunch date soon? This needs to happen! When.are.we.going?”

The wait ended last week when Mary’s CBD opened their doors on Castlereagh st, neighboured by numerous cafes which nobody you know has ever gone inside. The Mary’s crew warned everybody in the lead up – this city location was not going to be the dark, rock n roll dive bar that people have politely tolerated in Newtown. This was just going to be a simple takeaway joint, no seating, no Jack Daniels, minimal tattoos – and heaps of burgers, including their cheeseburger, veg burger and Mary’s burger, staples from their Newtown menu which are widely agreed to be the best burgers in Sydney.
Joining these burgers are two new ones, exclusive to the CBD store – the breakfast burger and the chicken burger.

The chicken burger is there to appease the fact that Mary’s CBD isn’t offering the baskets of fried chicken you can get in Newtown – instead you get a big hunk of fried thigh with a few bits of vegetables and some sauce. The chicken is crunchy, the bun is soft, it’s a good chicken burger for sure. But, it is completely overshadowed by the best thing on the menu – the breakfast burger.

Served at any time of the day, the breakfast burger is what starving yourself for a month then eating a Sausage’n Egg McMuffin must be like. A sausage patty, a hash brown, bacon, an optional egg and HP sauce in between a super soft bun. It’s messy, gooey and will make you shout expletives with every bite, which is a problem if you’ve opted to take your Mary’s burgers to the Westfield food court to devour. The breakfast burger is the kind of meal that will encourage you to get brutally hungover just so you can appreciate it even more.

Yes, it’s still just a fucking burger, but what sets Mary’s apart from most of Sydney’s other burger joints is their acknowledgement that a burger should be greasy, fatty and generally bad for you. The owners fell in love with a Macca’s cheeseburger and tried to do it better without fucking it up too much. While other burger chains are announcing new super low carb burger buns that look like wooden plates, Mary’s are embracing everyone’s favourite ‘sometimes food’ and ensuring that their offerings are as delicious as possible.

Where
154 Castlereagh St, Sydney

When
Mon-Sun, 10am-10pm

How much
$10 a burger

Images
Al Naturale