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As his Coogee restaurant prepares to open its doors, the British celebrity chef shares his top places to eat and drink around town.
Rick Stein didn’t want to open a restaurant in Sydney. “It wasn’t something we’d discussed before,” says the British celebrity chef whose name is already attached to Bannisters restaurants in Mollymook and Port Stephens.
“Those restaurants are in holiday areas. They’re places by the sea and they’re quite relaxed. I didn’t want to get involved in the whole dynamics of a restaurant right in a city like Sydney.”
That’s no longer the case. In November, Rick Stein and his wife, Sarah “Sass” Stein, will open a 220-seat restaurant and bar within the InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach hotel.
It was the location – perched above Coogee Beach – that won him over. “It’s in Sydney, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s in Sydney. It just has this different atmosphere,” he says.
The beachfront venue, managed by Melbourne-based investment fund Salter Brothers, will have an open-air terrace and serve Stein signatures, including Cornish-style fish and chips with mushy peas, Singapore chilli crab, and seafood pies filled with scallops, snapper and blue-eye trevalla.
“There will be quick-and-cheap, in-and-out food, as well as more formal sit-down food. We want people to feel as if they can come off the beach and have a quick something and then go back,” he says.
Stein currently divides his time between Sydney, Cornwall and London, spending around three months each year at his home in Neutral Bay. “I will probably end up staying longer now, mainly because I love being here,” he says.
Here are the chef’s favourite places to eat and drink when he’s in town.
Avenue Road, Mosman
“Where can you not get a good coffee in Sydney? I love a flat white, and there’s this place called Avenue Road in Mosman we go to all the time. Every time I go there, I have a large flat white, an orange juice and scrambled eggs and bacon on sourdough. That’s my order, and it’s just always busy, always packed and really efficiently run.”
Tobikiri, Neutral Bay
“Tobikiri is a fantastic tiny Japanese restaurant. It’s a husband and wife running it, and they’re doing everything. They produce fantastic food, great sashimi which I always love, and I just noticed this last time I went in there, they’ve got this unbelievable selection of sake.”
Margaret, Double Bay
“One of my favourite restaurants is Margaret, simply because I’ve known Neil Perry forever, and I love his cooking of fish. Last time I was there, I had coral trout cooked over wood with just a lick of olive oil and a piece of lemon. He shares the same view as I do about fresh fish simply cooked.”
Royal Palace Seafood, Haymarket
“We used to go to Golden Century in Chinatown a lot and now [the site is] Royal Palace. I just love their dumplings, and they do fantastic salt and pepper mud crab – just delicious.”
Sean’s, North Bondi
“Another place that Sass and I have been going to for years is Sean’s in North Bondi. I just love their roast chicken. Again, it’s very simple food, but he’s got a farm somewhere, and that’s reflected in his menu. It’s fabulous, I really enjoy it – great wines too.”
Mimi’s, Coogee
“Mimi’s is very expensive and very upmarket, but the cooking is good. Last time I was there, I think I had a caviar tart. As one of my friends said about caviar, ‘it’s not worth eating it unless you eat lots of it’. Thank goodness I wasn’t paying. The service is unbelievable – and the prices are unbelievable. Particularly for the wine. It just puts Sydney as an international city on the map, I think.”
The Oaks, Neutral Bay
“I really like The Oaks, it’s just my sort of pub. I love that courtyard out the back with that big tree in the middle of it in summer – just downing schooners and forgetting your troubles. It’s a great pub, I have to say. At one stage, someone thought I’d bought it. There’s a group – I would say in English parlance – of sort of old geezers like me that, we think, made [the story] up. They know I go to that pub all the time. It was in all the papers – the English papers too.”
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