Paddington wine bar L’Avant Cave is the sort of place you might find if you were wandering around the outer suburbs of Paris.
Bottle shop up front, restaurant up top, courtyard bar out the back. It’s the ultimate triple threat, brought to you by the team at P&V Wine & Liquor Merchants. Built on the bones of Paddington cafe institution Micky’s (home of the cheesecake thick shake), this little bar is casual enough for a walk-in but popular enough that booking a table during the summer months would be an extremely sensible act.
Access the courtyard by taking an amble through the wine shop, curated by co-owners Mike Bennie. The focus here is niche and natural, small and emerging. See something you like, and want to drink it on the spot? Purchase at bottle shop prices and drink it at the table for a $25 corkage fee. Or order a glass of whatever they’re pouring that day, such as the textural, slightly petrol-y, fruity and creamy “stupid little white”, a collaboration between the P&V gang and winemaker Ryan O’Meara.
The space, reworked and restyled under the watchful eye of co-owner Lou Dowling, has a sort of Paddo-meets-11th arrondissement feel. A mural of native Australian flowers by local botanical artist Adriana Picker is woven across one wall while a blackboard menu of drinks (wines by the glass, cocktails and non-alcoholics) is on another. Warm festoon lighting nestles among honeysuckle trailing across the roof, and bistro tables are scattered around the courtyard for maximum conviviality.
Staff are generally well-informed, and even if they can’t get exactly what you want, they’ll do their best to get the next best thing. I order a chinotto Americano but sadly, they’re out of the bittersweet Italian fizzy drink. They kindly offer to make me a regular version (that’s Campari and sweet vermouth stirred over ice), but I try a French Highball instead. Just like a regular whisky and soda, only made with a peppery version of the spirit, distilled in south-west France.
A whole world of spritzes and highballs are on show today. Ratafia and tonic is the stuff old-school Euro sports bars are fuelled on. The deep purple, anise-y Catalan spirit is crisped up with a splash of tonic water. A Tanica spritz is sweet and almost perfumed – the fruitiness of the Davidson plum is really out there – super refreshing. If it’s short and to the point you’re after, there’s Lou’s negroni, named for Dowling. It’s an all-Aussie version of the Italian classic, starring Ester dry gin, Maidenii vermouth and Poor Toms bittersweet amaro, Imbroglio.
Food from upstairs chef Nik Hill’s French restaurant Porcine might include a large fried chickpea chip (or panisse, for the Francophiles) spread with a layer of quince paste and twists of mimolette – the hard cow’s milk cheese makes it a perfect balance of creamy, salty and sweet. There’s also a snack plate of eggplant tapenade, sweet roasted capsicum and creamy herbed goat’s milk cheese, perfect with a couple of A.P bread rolls and some Pepe Saya butter.
A 100-gram slip of Little Manning Valley grass-fed wagyu is seared on one side, dressed in one of the most flavoursome pepper sauces around, which is also used in the restaurant. It’s a three-day process using a whole butcher’s shop worth of bones, red wine, lots of Madeira and finished with the roasting fat from whatever birds they’ve had on the menu that week (it could be pigeon, guinea fowl or duck). Savour for days.
Check the blackboard attached to the service entrance, too, for oysters (Sydney rocks from Merimbula, Pacifics from Coffin Bay), other assorted sea treats (confit tuna, trout tartare, dory roe, sardines) and cheeses.
This is a wine bar made for easy times. Less of a party-hard venue and more the sort of place you might find if you were wandering around the outer suburbs of Paris, only with Australian-style service and a menu that, while Euro in phrasing, tastes firmly like Sydney.
Three more wine bars to try with a similar vibe
Paski Vini Popolare
Wine shop and bar downstairs, restaurant upstairs. This is sommelier and wine importer Giorgio de Maria’s place. Such is the hospitality here, you’ll feel like it’s your place too. Settle in one of the high seats at the moody bar with a glass (or bottle) of something Italian off the chalkboard menu and a capicola panino.
239 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst
Paradise
A tiny wine bar opened inside an old convenience store. Despite (or possibly because) of this, it’s one of the hardest-to-score seats in the east. The newest venue for the Paradiso brothers (Fratelli Paradiso and 10 William Street) offers a regularly rotating natural(ish) wine list and menu from chefs Trisha Greentree and Francesco Ruggiero. Run, don’t walk, to Paradise.
Shop 6C, 11 Ward Avenue, Potts Point
Bar Copains
Nathan Sasi and Morgan McGlone’s neighbourhood wine bar combines all the things that Sydney loves to love: outdoor drinking, salty snacks and niche wines. If you’re not sitting outside in the afternoon sun sharing a pig’s head fritti topped with Zuni pickles and an ice-cold glass of moscatel, you’re not doing Albion Street right.
67 Albion Street, Surry Hills
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Myffy Rigby is the former editor of the Good Food Guide.
