Arthur
One of Surry Hills' most loved restaurants reopens with a new look, menu and feel.
Overview
Arthur, one of Surry Hills' most beloved restaurants, has been reimagined with a new menu, fresh fit-out, and reinvigorated direction. At its core, the reimagined venue is deeply and authentically Australian, with a 100 percent Australian menu and a dining room that welcomes you however you show up, and however you choose to dine.
While Arthur retains its moniker, everything else is entirely new. Not an evolution or transformation, this is a complete rebuild for the venue, offering its patrons a fresh experience. With the reopening, the team want you to feel less like you've formally arrived at a restaurant, more like you've stumbled into your friend's dining room for a relaxed, intimate and instantly comfortable evening.
An open kitchen continues this feel of connection between diner and chef; the pass becomes part of the conversation and part of the atmosphere of the space. And from that pass, the chef's focus is not on technique, but on produce — entirely Australian — and how to best show it off.
"By choosing to use only ingredients produced in Australia, we've created a framework that pushes us to be more creative. If there's an ingredient from overseas that we feel a dish needs, we can't just buy it; we have to either make our own version or find someone here who's producing something similar," says chef-owner Tristan Rosier.
There's no exception to Rosier's 100 percent Australian rule, and that goes for the drinks too. The sea salt is from South Australia. The chocolate is from Daintree Estates. The sparkling is even Australian, bypassing the expected champagne producers to spotlight Australian makers.
At Arthur, you're as welcome to sit and snack all night slowly as you are to pop in for a quick dinner. "The old Arthur asked you to plan your night around us. This one just wants you to turn up," says Rosier. Snacks set to become signatures include the likes of Aussiefeller oysters with warrigal greens, cheddar and beer, globe artichoke with mandarin oil, and abalone with mushrooms, whipped lardo and saltbush.
"We built the first Arthur around a very fixed idea of what a special night out looked like. But Tristan's cooking has moved on, and so has the way we actually like to eat when we go out. We want a glass of wine at the bar without committing to a whole evening. If we wouldn't book ourselves into that format anymore, we had no business asking anyone else to," says co-owner, Bec Fanning.
Noah Lust, who leds the bevegrage program, says, "Every classic cocktail comes with a set of assumptions built into it — like which vermouth you use in a martini, the Campari that goes into the negroni, or the Angostura bitters that go into an old fashioned — when you commit to a fully Australian menu you take all of those ideas away and realise how much of a drink can be rethought and rebalanced. The next step is sourcing seasonal, local produce and finding ways to integrate it into the drinks to make each one an Australian version of the classic styles."
Arthur also boasts a banging happy hour that'll have punters popping in from across the town. Australiano Hour will offer snacks for under $8, cocktails from $10, wines for $10 and beers for $7. The star of the happy hour is $3 cold peeled Aussie prawns served with a bush tomato cocktail sauce.
Lust says, "The rule is the whole game behind the bar. You can't reach for the bottle everyone else reaches for, so you find the Australian one, and nine times out of ten it takes the drink somewhere more interesting than where you started."
"The food, the room, the drinks, the service, they all carry equal weight. Every part of the experience is considered. The atmosphere and the vibe are as much the point as what's on the plate," adds Rosier.
Images: Supplied.
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