Hamsi Taverna is a brand new Mediterranean restaurant at the new Sydney Fish Market by Chef and Restaurateur Somer Sivrioğlu. The menu is inspired by the Mediterranean seaside and features items like raw kingfish lakerda, pide and pastas dressed at the table as well as steak and lamb. Find out what is a must order here!
It's a sunny Sunday afternoon when Carla and I make our way to Hamsi at the new Sydney Fish Markets at Blackwattle Bay. The markets have been renovated at the cost of $836M and are now home to a range of seafood and fresh food retailers and restaurants including some by some high profile chefs. One of the biggest names to land at the Sydney Fish Market is Hamsi, the new restaurant by Turkish Chef and Restaurateur Somer Sivrioğlu who also owns Efendy in Balmain, Maydanoz in the CBD and Anason at Barangaroo.
Hamsi Taverna is all about the Mediterranean and the seaside. The restaurant seats 200 people and has a spacious outdoor section that looks out onto the Anzac Bridge and the water below. The outdoor section is covered to protect from rain and has bright yellow umbrellas and sits on the western side of the Sydney Fish Market building on the upper ground floor.
Carla and I start with drinks - a mocktail for Carla which has pineapple, cranberry, lemon and salted soda while my cocktail is a spicy margarita inspired cocktail made with Olmeca Altos Plata tequila, Martini Fierro, passion fruit and chilli.
Service is friendly, and they guide us towards some of the most popular dishes. For example the kingfish lakerda is one of their best sellers. It's made with fresh sashimi style kingfish on a fava bean puree with pickled red onions. Both the fava bean puree (that reminds me of Santorini) and pickled red onions bring out the fresh flavour of the kingfish. Make sure to get some bread to mop up every trace.
Given its location, seafood is the natural choice. Whilst we are tempted by the hummus, we go for the taramasalata, a creamy, light, fluffy tarama dip with a tart punch of lemon oil and salmon roe. Make sure to get some of the soft buns for this. These are baked in the wood-fired oven and are downy soft and perfect for scooping up the dips and sauces.
The pide is a wood fired bread topped with blistered red tomatoes, white anchovies and caramelised onions. It's appealingly sweet and salty at the same time. The edges of the pide bread are also good for mopping up some taramasalata.
For mains obviously, there's plenty of seafood, but there's also lamb and steaks. I am also tempted by the lobster with sucuk butter and fries but we end up going with the 2 person serve of conchiglie pasta shells with vodka sauce. It comes out with a generous amount of spanner crab served at the table from the spanner crab shell. They mix up the pasta with the crab and it smells so deliciously intoxicating I cannot wait to dig into it. The best bits are, of course, the burnished caramelised edge, but the pasta is perfectly al dente, the vodka sauce creamy and punchy. And even though I usually go for a small tasting portion of each dish, I go for my full half of this dish.
We also order the chicken that is taken off the skewer at the table. It is 500 grams of chicken thighs skewered and cooked on the Josper grill. It's paired with a cacik (Turkish yogurt and cucumber dip), flat leaf parsley and onion salad on a square flatbread. It's delicious with a nice char from the grill especially if you've saved some dip as well.
There are three desserts on the menu: lemon sorbet, baklava, and a pistachio tiramisu. We decide to go for the pistachio tiramisu and the baklava. The baklava comes out in a bowl with a crisp sheet of buttery honey filo pastry on top with a ricotta and burnt orange base below that reminds us of a cannoli filling. The ricotta makes the dessert nice and light and more baklava-inspired than a traditional baklava. Carla loves this dessert.
As for me, I love tiramisu and I love pistachio, and this one hits for me. It has a good amount of sweetness so that it is not overpowering, and the star is the chopped pistachios on top of the creamy mascarpone.
So tell me Dear Reader, have you visited the new Sydney Fish Market yet and if so, what do you think? And which dish do you like the look of the most?
Hamsi Taverna
Shop E1B/1 Bridge Rd, Glebe NSW 2037
Phone: (02) 7235 1886
Hours: Open 7 days 11:30 am–3 pm, 5–10 pm
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