Chefs Joel Best and Ross Wilson have been trained by the best. Their résumé boasts time in the kitchens of Sydney’s best fish-focussed restaurants: Pier, Fish Face, the Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay and Flying Fish. When they set their sites on North Bondi, they went a bit smaller, opting to offer wares out of a room the size of a broom closet.
As expected after working at Fish Face, they fry an excellent piece of beer-battered flathead. The chips, little hand-cut nubbins, are OK, but the potato scallops are excellent – nice and thin, not too wide and beautifully flaky. Surprisingly though, the baked hapuka is a little over-cooked and under-seasoned. Even on a Monday evening the tiny place is absolutely pumping.
It’s not exactly clear whether you can just take a seat or whether you have to wait to be seated, so we do what everyone else does, and just pile in. There are a couple of tables outside - nab them if you can. Otherwise it’s about squashing into the little room, with its busy open kitchen and fresh fish on display, as people order take away around you. The joy is in the chaos at this bustling little diner. Get amongst it.