The new Sydney Fish Market at Blackwattle Bay was never guaranteed to win over the notoriously fussy seafood lovers of Sydney. Budget overruns, rumours of chaotic car parking and the city’s stubborn nostalgia for the old one next door could easily have turned it all into an expensive flop.
In fact, a short time after opening, the Fish Market seems more lively than a shark snatching a snapper off the end of an angler’s line. Nowhere more than at Hamsi Taverna, Efendy Group’s newest Turkish-Mediterranean restaurant, led by culinary director Somer Sivrioğlu, Efendy’s founding partner – which has claimed the market’s prized southwest corner facing the Anzac Bridge. Day and night, its soft, sinkable al fresco sofas and gently curved timber and leather banquettes are packed with people – spritzes and pilsners in hand – treating the place like they’ve just shaken sand off their feet at Türkbükü.
The outdoor area is where you want to be, and the poached prawns with voluptuous tarama dressing and crunches of celery and pistachios are the very first thing you want to order, best wedged into a bit of oregano-fragrant village bread. Then you should wrap a handful of Mooloolaba spanner crab into a baby gem lettuce cup and top it off with a blob of Turkish pepper mayo, and make sure you have a whole fish waiting in the wings once you finish the mezze. Go for the baby snapper in tahini, if they have it, and the Murray cod if they don’t.
The Hamsi skewer isn’t for everyone – fire-roasted sardines are a very fishy fish – but think of their swaggering brininess as a feature not a bug, with the parsley salad keeping things fresh. The baked conchiglie pasta with vodka sauce may seem a touch out of place at first, but the snowfall of spanner crab on top steers it back into the seafood lane, and it’s a top seller on the menu, so the people have spoken. If you must stray from the ocean entirely, the Tasmanian lamb shoulder, with its little puddle of smoked yogurt, is the winner.
A well-ordered wine list is cleverly separated into the styles you know (riesling, pinot noir) and then by taste (herbal, oily, fruity etc) which makes navigation easy, and wherever it’s not, the effortlessly charming floor staff will gladly take the reins.
Perhaps the market buzz will die down over time – the terrible parking rumours weren’t entirely wrong, after all – but Hamsi feels set to endure; a confident little corner of harbourside sunshine.
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