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Painting the Bridge

Andrew Christie

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Bar

324 Level 1 – Onyx Lounge – The post nuptial brain freeze

May 4, 2014 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

324-1 onyx

We’ve been away in Melbourne for a week, wedding the Stropette to the Heathen in a flowery and chilly open air ceremony, in which the Pancetta stole the show. But now it’s back to the serious task of eating our way to St Peters before we lose interest in this project.

This week we’re still on the Newtown Station railway bridge, but upstairs this time, at the relatively new Onyx Lounge. I arrived a bit early and waited next door in the Bank Hotel till Strop made her way up the hill. The front bar of the Bank is very noisy and crowded on a Friday night, so the chilled, calm vibe at Onyx was a pleasant relief, although I bet the owners would prefer the crowds that Bank pulls in. It was still quite early as we made our way up the stairs, and I wondered if we might be the only ones there. We weren’t, but they weren’t exactly crowded either. Onyx is dark and moody, with little red lights marking out the stairs, dark brown walls, low lights, ferns and a macrame room divider. The music is cool too, bass-heavy and jazzy. It is all just so chill. Strop liked it because we could actually hear each other without having to shout. There was a sign down on the street advertising live music later, so I was hoping that we would be able to stay awake long enough to hear a bit of that.

Macrame! And ferns!
Macrame! And ferns!

The staff were immediately present and attentive, directing us to a window table with views up Enmore Road. The other customers seemed to mainly be young and in pairs. My generalisation generator immediately went to work and I came up with the theory that Onyx was being used as a fairly safe first-date setting out point. I have absolutely no evidence to support this theory but I don’t care, they looked clean cut and innocent, at least for Newtown. There was certainly no evidence of hipsters, even though the fake ferns and macrame can only be seen as ironic. At least by someone of my generation, who of course invented macrame.

Onyx looks a lot like a restaurant, but the food is generally limited to bar type food with a bit of a Mexican-slash-Spanish flavour. There are share plates, pizzas, sliders (little tacos in this case) and burgers. We decided to put ourselves about the menu a bit, (while avoiding the burger-wars as Onyx is not an actual pub) choosing a latin themed pizza with chorizo, prawn taco sliders, and empanadas from the share plate menu. I opted to stick with beer while Strop went looking for a nice red wine by the glass. She started with a shiraz which she found too peppery then moved on to a pinot noir, which was more to her refined tastes.

The food arrived quickly, which was just as well because I was starving. The pizza topping was good but I found the crust a bit doughy and sweet for my taste. All the food was a bit disappointing which is a pity because I quite liked the vibe of Onyx. The empanadas and tacos were okay but nothing memorable. Oh well, it’s a bar, you come for the drinks not the food.

Ice-cream? WTF were we thinking?
Ice-cream? WTF were we thinking?

By this stage the live musician had arrived, complete with guitar and amps. Great, we thought, let’s stick around for some of that. So we decided to try a cocktail for dessert. I feel that we only have ourselves to blame for the result of this decision, even though the helpful waiter backed up our dumb decision. Based on very limited logic, we decided to have cocktails that incorporated ice-cream, because… well, dessert. This was a bad decision. They were sickly sweet, and they gave us brain freeze, and they got us more pissed. We had a lengthy discussion trying to tell which cocktail was the one that was supposed to have the salted-caramel, neither seemed particularly salty. Meanwhile the singer had no sooner set up all her gear, than she sat down to a hearty meal. I did wonder how she would go, singing straight after a meal like that, but then what do I know about the needs of starving artists. The meal was probably part of her pay.

Strop and I ummed-and-aahed a bit about whether to wait for the music to start. I think neither of us wanted to end the night on an ice-cream-cocktail-brain-freeze note, so we tried again. This time we kept it simple, Franjelico over ice for her, and a mojito for him. And they were good. And the music started, and she could sing. It was all good. We clapped. If the crowd had been a bit bigger Strop might have given her a whoop or two too.

Later we stumbled out onto King Street to find that some wag had been liberally deploying Joe Hockey masks. Who would have thought that someone in Newtown would take umbrage at something Joe said.

Next up its burger-wars time again as we leave the bridge behind and make our way to the Townie.

Strop tries Joe Hockey on for size
Strop tries Joe Hockey on for size

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bar, Cocktails, mexican, pizza

153A Corridor – Not entirely an irony-free zone.

July 20, 2013 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

153Acorridor

We have been looking forward to Corridor for a while, having been denied the chance to review our first cocktail bar by the untimely demise of the much lamented Jester Seeds. Corridor is an extremely trendy young persons bar. It may not be Newtown’s Hipster Central (there are lots of claimants for that title), but you can certainly see it from here.

Downstairs, Corridor lives up to its name and the implications of its subdivided address. It is long and narrow with the bar right at the front which means that it doesn’t take many punters to make it look busy. There are rooms upstairs as well but I have a recently buggered knee so I am sitting downstairs while I wait for Strop who has been working in Parramatta even though it is Sunday. Sydney’s public transport is not weather-proof, reliably failing if there is a heavy dew. You can rely on it to fail on weekends as well – the excuse of “Trackwork” would make some sense if it didn’t happen every weekend, and if there was even the slightest sign of things improving.

Corridor effect
Corridor effect

I have taken up a position behind a schooner of Young Henry’s Real Ale, at a tiny table and perched on a knee-unfriendly stool, as I wait for Strop to be delivered unto Newtown.

The music is good. This is significant as I am an old fart whose musical origins go waaaay back. But luckily everything old is new again, even if it is served up with a heavy dressing of hipster irony. The bar is resounding with retro blues-rock that wouldn’t have been out of place in 1970, and the barman is grooving along in a sailor’s hat, like the Skipper sported in Gilligan’s Island. My irony antennae are going off big time.

My irony related musings are interrupted by the arrival of Strop. While she is laying out her reasoned critique of Sydney Transport, in detail and with vigour, I observe over her shoulder that the poll-position street-front table is being vacated. Hating myself for short-circuiting her withering flow, I nevertheless point out the appealing nature of the newly vacant table. Strop is a big fan of sitting up the front and we are soon settled down with room to stretch our legs, and a passing parade of Newtown’s finest to observe and comment on.

Strop goes for a daiquiri while I decide to stay loyal to Young Henry – the evening seems a bit cool for cocktails to me, especially after Feej, which is now only a distant, but fond, memory.

The Po Boys on the menu catch our attention at first (I mean, what actually is a Po Boy?) but then everything else looks good as well. As we can’t decide what we’d prefer, we order a Tasting Plate reluctantly turning our backs on the Po Boys. This turns out to be the right thing to do. The Tasting Plate (actually two plates) is generous both in quantity and variety, and we are soon happily filling our faces and drinking, while commenting on the aesthetic and lifestyle choices of passers-by. Who could ask for more?

Po Boys entirely forgotten by this stage
Po Boys entirely forgotten by this stage

The food has a soul food/Louisiana theme going on and features onion rings, candied yams, spicy fried prawns and fish, cornbread, collard greens, sweet corn, a kind of cassoulet and a sweet potato puree. Lots of yums.

The splendid blues-rock soundtrack is soon supplemented with enthusiastic live vocal accompaniment, by the the barman, and one of his very good mates. They sing along heroicly, in authentic 1970s stadium-rock voices, belting out the timeless, and apparently universally adaptable, lyric “Happy Fa-ather’s Day Dan” to every song. Corridor, it turns out, is not entirely an irony-free zone.

When a man from the bar with a creative haircut, steps onto the pavement for a smoke we pay no never-mind – funny haircuts are a dime a dozen in Newtown. But when he pulls out a bright blue e-cigarette and starts sucking on it, suddenly we’re in Blade Runner territory and start to pay attention. This bloke turns out to be the head chef (why do so many cooks smoke?) so Strop gets busy asking him to interpret all the dishes spread before us. Pretty soon it’s turned into a cooking lesson as he explains how to make the collard greens using cabbage and prosciutto. That’s one we will have to try if we ever eat at home again.

Dessert
Dessert

For desert we stick with cocktails, a culturally-themed Mint Julep for me, and a banana rum thing for Strop. We drink these peering out across King Street, to our next target, Mad Mex. I have been thinking of developing a new rule which would cross this place and Guzman y Gomez out: Must Have Proper Plates – No Paper – What Do You Think This Is A Picnic? but Strop informs me that we are already booked in there next weekend with her sister and family. So there is no escape – we will have to do the whole Mexican stand-off gag thing.

As we are preparing to leave Corridor, the kitchen hand leaves for the night, wheeling a fixie through the still crowded bar. Maybe we are closer to Hipster Central than I thought.

Corridor on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bar, Cocktails, Corridor, Fixie, Food, Hipster, Irony, King Street, Newtown, Po Boy, Trackwork

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