I have to mentally prepare myself when entering hipster joints. I have to tell myself that they’re just hipsters and they mean well enough and that they don’t harm anyone really. For good measure I remember the quote from Seinfeld when they referred to Kramer as the “hipster doofus” and realise that being a hipster is not a state of being for most people. And when I was warned by many that The Corner House was hipster central, well I braced myself. Mr NQN and I were on a date night, just the two of us.

Mr NQN and I walk into one entrance of The Corner House in Bondi which takes up residence where the Old Castile pizza joint used to sit. We’ve dining early at 6pm and we are shown to the empty back room. The maitre’d is brusque and seems as if he has a thousand other important things to do other than seat us. Thankfully the Arctic chill ends there and the waiter and bartender are lovely and everything settles down just nicely. We take a look at the menu (a sheet of paper wooden pegged onto an A4 sized piece of box cardboard) and the waiter gives us some recommendations. Prices are excellent here with most mains hovering around the $30 mark.

This drink is a riot in London $18

The cocktail list has a fun list of names including this one which caught our eye called “This drink is a riot in London” and has Tanquerey, St Germain, Campari, apple and cucumber and is sweet and refreshing and summery. The description reads “All the elements of an English Summer: fresh, floral and a hint of bitter lawlessness.” The bartender that conceived the idea was in London during the riots and was inspired to make this cocktail.

Bread

The bread, two fresh fat fingers, is drizzled in olive oil and salt with roasted pepitas and sunflower seeds.

Crowded House Pizza $23

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“Mother, I’m dropping off something in a few minutes” I said on the phone one night.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A pig’s head” I said bracing myself for the inevitable.

“A whaaaat?” she asked, aghast.

Allow me to explain how a delivery of a roasted (not raw) pig’s head came to come about. You see I was dining with Mr NQN, Dave and Sarah at The Montpellier Public House. It is the new restaurant from the team at Restaurant Balzac still in the sandstone building in Randwick. The changes are seen in a completely different idea and menu but because it was a while between visits, I don’t know if the interior had changed much or not. Instead of the fine dining room of Balzac, downstairs has turned into a busy, buzzy bar and upstairs is the dining room. The menu has also changed with a mainly modern British menu as befits the origins of the chef Matthew Kemp. And we note that prices are very reasonable indeed with most mains under the $30 mark.

The friendly waitress lets us know that tonight, there is only one pig’s head and it will be about an hour until it is ready. Sold! One pot roasted pig’s head to the crazy table of four in the corner! We take her recommendations for the entrees and mains too.

Montpellier Brawn with Crisp Pigs Ears and Tails $18

The brawn with chunks of meat in a jellied broth, set in a tin and sliced is delicious. The meat and jelly are soft and they come with two slices of charred bread and some finely crumbed gelatinous pig’s ears and tail portions.

Potted River Trout, Soda Bread, Pickled Cucumbers $16

The flavour of the trout was good with the added dill and creamy texture and fresh, soft trout although I have to be honest, I have a slight affliction when dining out and that is if I think I could make something similar at home, I tend to dismiss it slightly. Is that an illness? Perhaps… Nevertheless the soda bread and trout go well together alongside the pickles.

Fried Duck Egg, Black Pudding and Baked Beans $18

The baked beans with an enormous soft yolked fried duck egg is how to lure anyone out of bed on an early morning. The beans are sweet and smokey and full of flavour with little cubes of pork belly and the salty, rich black pudding and duck egg provide the perfect foil for this. And I may have just started drooling again after reliving this dish.

Salad of Spanner Crab, Mussel, Cos, Fennel and Dill $20

This dish was the polar opposite of the above dish in terms of richness. It was light, crunchy and delicate this was about subtle flavours with delicate mounds of crab meat and mussels on cos lettuce leaves with thinly sliced fennel and dill.

Mid meal, a table of eight settles down next to us and we find the noise level very high in this sandstone and wooden dining room. In fact, it gets quite uncomfortably noisy in our section we can’t imagine if the other two tables were full.

“Pie, Mash and Liquor” $30

Now as we were sharing, the table that we had for four wasn’t quite big enough for the mains so luckily the table next to us was empty and we could spread out. The pie changes and today’s pie is a beef one with jellied eel juice on top. And before you think that is sounds awful, it was actually very nice. The eel flavour was subtle and we were all confused as we thought that there was eel meat but we could only find chunks of tender beef. The eel juice which is jellified yet still warm sits on top of the beef layer and on top of this sits a layer of lightly crunchy mash on top. There were some very crispy, large croutons strips of crispy pancetta and deep fried parsley.

Shoulder of Lamb Braised on the Bone, Crisp Sweetbreads, Barley and Spring Vegetables $27

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At the risk of telling you my exact age it has been decades since I was last checked in by a bouncer outside an establishment. Although I should add that I only went to establishments that had bouncers when I was a teenager and therefore it was more exciting to get in when you were let’s say technically under the age limit. Ahem… so where was I?

Oh yes in Double Bay,  a place otherwise known as Double Pay where the latest criminal installment involved the theft of expensive flowers from a restaurant by a Louis Vuitton bag carrying, BMW driving Darling Point resident. I was whispered the name “Mrs Sippy” by dining companion Beau mistaking it for a place called “Mississippi” which got me all excited because I thought that it served food from America’s south. Not so said Beau but it had good food nevertheless and was one of his favouritest, newest places. And a bouncer whom I had mistaken for another guest (albeit a burly one-I am so out of touch with the clubbing scene) has just lead us the few metres to the restaurant area where we are shown to a table. There are no bookings at Mrs Sippy but we figure eating early-ish helps in this regard. And from the crowd gathered around it’s already a local haunt for Eastern Suburbites.

The decor is exposed brickwork, vintage looking Chesterfield banquettes on one side and nothing else really to note in terms of decor apart from a curious ceiling made up of slender slats of wood with one end looking like it has been dipped in red paint -and ghoul that I am I think of dripping blood (although non ghoul Mr NQN does too).

Crispy skin pork belly, spiced apple, mustard fruits $18

The menu has smaller bites all around the $20 mark such as salads and sandwiches (the tuna nicoise apprently flies out the door during lunch) and the mains never hit over $29 which is refreshingly at odds with Double Bay’s other name of Double Pay. The crispy skin pork belly is perfectly cooked-the lid a satisfyingly crunchy shell atop a soft, melted gooey base. The spiced apple is a puree and the sweetened jam like mustard fruit the ideal accompaniments to the pork.

Assorted sashimi, seaweed salad $21

The sashimi comprises of four slices of salmon and four slices of kingfish. It comes with a fantastic finely diced ginger which gives it a lovely heat and warmth with a touch of cider vinegar. I actually prefer it to the pickled ginger that you get with sushi and sashimi as there is a real warmth to this. And Mr NQN also likes the wasabi given too.

Crumbed veal cutlet, Jerusalem artichoke and green beans $29

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