There’s something very “vintage Sydney” about Stanley Street in Darlinghurst. It’s not anchored by a big, blockbuster restaurant or a painfully hip cocktail bar. The old Bill and Toni’s is still serving good-value spaghetti, and the 70-year-old Beppi’s still stands as a stately sentinel on the corner. Mercifully, it hasn’t been designated as any sort of engineered “precinct”, other than its loose label as Sydney’s original Italian quarter.
Claret Club, a wine bar/restaurant hybrid that opened inside a converted terrace in the heart of Stanley Street in December, feels vintage too. I arrive on time for my 6:30pm booking but the white-clothed tables on the street look so inviting on this soft-lit summer evening that I ask if I can start with a drink and a snack outside, without missing out on my table in the dining room upstairs. “Oh, we’d love you to,” comes the enthusiastic reply. Not something you hear too often in an era when venues are keen to get customers in and out as fast as possible. I order a very good Negroni and a round of pig’s head croquettes – daubed with salsa verde – and take my sweet time
That sense of throwing back to a proverbial gentler era continues as I eventually drift up to the upper floor for dinner. Bronze sculptures, stained glass windows and a sound system playing Kate Bush and T’Pau make it all feel very 1980s.
Wine leads the charge here, unsurprisingly since Claret Club is the work of two sommeliers: Bridget Raffal from Marrickville’s Where’s Nick and Harry Hunter, formerly of Rockpool, Bentley Group and Dinner by Heston. Many of the bottles come from their own personal collections – approachable, lots of French, German and Italian, fair whack of Australian, many clarets of course – and a mirror scrawled with well-priced by-the-glass options that today includes an MJ Becker Hunter Valley chardonnay and a Beechworth Nebbiolo Rosé. Raffal has plans to add a special selection of offerings from producers affected by the recent Victorian bushfires.
The food menu – led by ex-Dry Dock chef Andy Buchanan – is also nostalgic, nodding to nouvelle cuisine. Crumbed sweetbread (fresh not frozen; a rarity) bobs in a poivre sauce. The skin on the snapper is expertly crisped, and served with a spring-fresh sauce vierge of tomatoes, garlic scapes and soft herbs. It doesn’t get much more old-school than a dessert of chocolate cremeux and blackberries. Everything’s grown-up but relaxed; like the dinner parties your parents threw back in the day when no-one watched the clock.
Claret Club has settled into creaky old Stanley Street and made itself comfy. In a city obsessed with the flashy and fresh, it’s a pleasure to find somewhere that feels properly cellared.
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