Originally published by Two Thousand in 2014

I tried baking my own bread once. As I ate it, a solid 400 hours after I started the recipe, I thought to myself “I will never try this again”. As much as I love home baked bread, I love the spare time that comes with not baking it myself infinitely more. This embarrassingly lazy philosophy applies tenfold when it comes to making my own pasta. I would sooner eat the thick dust layer which has accumulated on top of my never-used pasta maker than I would even consider opening its box.

Thankfully there are people in the world who are really doing their bit, making pastas of all shapes and sizes from scratch so that losers like you and me can live the luxurious life we don’t deserve. One of these good souls is Mitch Orr, who you’ll find in the kitchen at ACME, the newest restaurant on the last corner of Bayswater Road.

ACME is a joint venture, an acronym started by four friends (Andy, Cam, Mitch and Ed) who you’ve probably seen behind the bar, in the kitchen or serving you coffee at various restaurants and bars around Sydney. Mitch in particular has jumped from kitchen to kitchen since his days at Duke Bistro, honing his pasta skills during stints at 121 BC and Buzo, where his monthly pasta degustations became the stuff of stomach-aching legend.

Some of the dishes from those degs have made their way onto the ACME menu, which contains seven pasta mains, each using a different type of perfectly made pasta. Stand outs include linguine with black garlic and burnt chilli, which tastes like an homage to mi goreng, clearly the height of luxury that all noodle dishes should be compared to. Also fantastic is the rich goat, nduja and olive ragu with wholemeal bucatini, and the malloreddus, which makes up for how hard it is to pronounce by being paired with prawn and old bay seasoning.

Before you even get to the pasta, make sure you order a few pieces of rockmelon and prosciutto, which elevates a simple Italian staple by coating the rockmelon in a dehydrated prosciutto crumb. It sounds fancy, but you still eat it with your fingers, just like you do the baloney sandwich – a fresh baked potato roll stuffed with mortadella and a terrific relish – and what is probably the best dish on the whole menu, the asparagus with brown butter. Just try not to lick the plate once you run out of asparagus. At the other end of the menu are three desserts, one has bacon, another hazelnut and the final a nashi pear sorbet, covered in rosemary meringue and the perfect cleanser after a heavy meal.

The drinks menu keeps it simple too, a few beers and champagnes, a changing selection of well chosen local and imported wines and four cocktails, one sweet with yuzu and shiso, another heavy with mezcal and lemonade. Best is the refreshing celery with rye whiskey and soda.

Service is friendly and personal, open like the ACME space itself. You can see right in to the kitchen and watch Mitch check Instagram as you eat your meal. The fit out is simple and stylish, welcoming and clean.

ACME is the perfect place for those of us who can’t be bothered to make their own pasta from scratch. Unfortunately, for those of us who can’t even be bothered to go out, they don’t offer home delivery yet.

Where
60 Bayswater Rd, Rushcutters Bay

When
Tues-Sat 5-10pm

How much
$12-$24 for a bowl of incredibly good pasta

Contact
02 8068 0932

Related links
Acme website

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

It’s a coming of age thing. When I was a kid the first thing I’d do after buying a Macca’s cheeseburger was take the pickle off and banish it to the furthest depths of the wrapper. As a teenager I worked out that if you put the pickle disc in the middle of the wrapper and then tugged at the edges it would shoot into the sky and get perfectly stuck to the ceiling. Now when I get a cheeseburger I’ll ask for extra pickles and then complain that there’s not enough of them on there.

If there is a hierarchy of pickles in 2015, McDonald’s thin circular efforts are pretty close to the bottom. At the top though? The king of modern day pickles has gotta be McClure’s. A few years ago they were just another infinitely better version of a thing that you could only get in fancy delis across America, but now the Brooklyn / Detroit based jars of greatness are pretty easy to find here.

These pickles are addictively crunchy, the kind of pickles that you can eat an entire jar of in one sitting without having just endured a painful breakup while living in a sharehouse with no job. The Sweet & Spicy pickles in particular are a quite life changing – the sweet smelling brine is alluring enough to convince even the lamest pickle sceptics to try one, who will then be rewarded with a mouth full of HOT HABANERO FIRE! Suck it, pickle sceptics! You’re the worst! Go order a McChicken!

Where McClure’s really shines is in their range of potato chips. The Garlic Dill Pickle flavour legitimately tastes like you’re eating a pickle with each chip – and if you go so far as to eat an actual pickle with your pickle flavoured chip it tastes like you’re eating TWO pickles with each chip! Science! For the ultimate pickle experience you can then dip your double pickled chip into a jar of McClure’s relish and wash the whole thing down with a bloody mary made with McClure’s considerably spicy bloody mary mix. Cheers to you and your now non-stop garlic vinegar breath. Who needs pashes when you got pickles?

How much
$17.95 a jar

Related links
See the full list of Australia retailers here

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

Menthol ciggies. Hours of brand new Joyride demoes. A paper bag half filled with mini cheeseburgers from Hungry Jacks. These were just a few of the great reasons to visit Dixie’s apartment, which up until a month ago was the hottest venue on Redfern St. A stone’s throw from Railz, Dixie would welcome all guests with a living room filled with mattresses and a PS3 filled with must-watch Don Bradman’s Cricket replays. It was the ultimate late night Redfern destination, until Redfern Continental opened up across the road.

The new venue from the team behind Arcadia Liquors boasts little in the way of cricket simulation gaming (not even Shane Warne Cricket ’99 gets a look in) but it has finally brought a decent schnitzel to the streets of Redfern, available in both the veal and chicken variety, the chicken being the juicier and therefore better of the two. The whole menu has an ‘Eastern Europe comes to Redfern’ vibe, where bratwursts with sauerkraut go hand in hand with a must-try lamb parpadelle.

You can see Dixie’s apartment from the street seating out the front and reminisce about the time that you bundled up his piles of unopened mail from the S.D.R.O. and threw them over his staircase – or you can head out the back of Redfern Continental for a drink in their awesome kind-of-secret cocktail bar. Dixie’s apartment may have a secret second bathroom that’s filled with cardboard boxes and without working lighting, but behind a plain door at Redfern Continental is a bar that drunker visitors may not even realise is there until their third or fourth visit. While the main restaurant is open, bright and busy – the bar out the back is dark, cool and has been described by writers who never went to Eastern Germany in the 1980’s as having a ‘1980’s Eastern German feel’.

I once got felt up by an Eastern German man in his 80’s at Dixie’s apartment, and while that never stopped me from coming back for many a kick-on at 4:30am on a Monday, Redfern Continental’s mix of weissbier and pasta might become my new Redfern St local.

Where
180 Redfern St, Redfern

When
Mon-Sat 7:30am-12am, Sun 7:30am-10pm

How much
$20 for a schnitzel n sides

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