The menu leans Middle Eastern and Mediterranean yet still feels very Sydney at the Australian spin-off of The Palomar, the hotel restaurant at the new Olympia.
Contemporary$$
I hadn’t heard of 25hours Hotels before it was announced that the German-born brand would be taking over the old Olympia Pictures building on Oxford Street. According to its website, where you can book rooms in Paris, Berlin and Dubai, a 25hours hotel is meant to be “quirky and elaborate”. Ugh.
But at least the long-dormant Paddington corner site was getting some love and attention, right? If you were into Absolut Vodka-based cocktails in the ’90s, you might remember it was home to the Grand Pacific Blue Room, too. The 109-room hotel opened in October and, well, yeah – there are naff choices galore. The gift shop, for example, sells socks packaged to look like blue cheese and a desk-tidy designed to look like a giant pencil sharpener. If you’re a nine-year-old shopping for a Father’s Day present, come on down.
In a tribute to the building’s cinema past, the check-in desk looks like an old video store and you can borrow a VHS of The Shipping News with Kevin Spacey on the cover, Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle or a compilation of David Campese’s best rugby union goose-steps (the cassette selection is this aggressively hodge-podge) to watch in your room. I think I’ll just stream a new movie in high-resolution, thanks, or hang out at the hotel’s The Palomar restaurant, which happens to serve terrific food.
The Palomar is another overseas brand transported to Sydney; the restaurant was originally launched in 2014 by a group called Studio Paskin in London. It’s known for its smashed cucumbers with green tahini and crispy chilli oil, which are on the menu here and objectively delicious (although chilli oil makes everything delicious: it’s a performance-enhancing drug for flavour). I’m more interested in the original creations from culinary director Mitch Orr and his team.
Orr – whom you may remember from ACME in Rushcutters Bay and Kiln at the Ace Hotel – isn’t in the open kitchen too much, but he doesn’t really need to be when talents Luke Davenport and Chloe Sharp are on the pass. Davenport has several technique-driven restaurants on his CV and sends out precisely grilled scallops with herby zhoug butter and skewers of concertinaed beef tongue with a sticky-date glaze, charred edges and fresh horseradish. Textbook snacking.
Sharp worked closely with Orr at Kiln and now commands The Palomar’s wood fire to bronze and blister the skin of butterflied, line-caught blue mackerel laid over deep-green chermoula. It’s a beautiful bit of fish and cooking. Wood-fired squid is another highlight with its moss-like covering of “just about every herb under the sun”, says Orr (but, more prominently, tarragon, parsley and chervil pulverised with roasted garlic and a glint of preserved lemon). A pork chop is topped with roast grapes and reduced chicken stock spiked with sherry to puncture the fat.
There’s a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean pitch to the menu, similar to The Palomar in London but which also feels very Sydney, especially when you get stuck into the small plates, such as coral trout crudo curled to look like a rose and enhanced with a burnt blood orange dressing and capers. Olive oil-drizzled stracciatella is teamed with sumac-infused honey, fresh strawberries and Thai basil and could almost be dessert if it weren’t for the savoury blast of dehydrated tomatoes and rice vinegar.
For actual dessert, there’s a baklava and pistachio ice-cream sandwich – another dish imported from the original London restaurant. You can eat it in three or four bites and I like it a lot, largely thanks to the rich ice-cream balancing a sweet baklava crust. Also very good: a bowl of brown-butter cake hunks and blackberries topping a lush whorl of yoghurt ice-cream. Team it with a pour of something fun and fortified. Sommelier Eleonore Wulf has put together a confident wine list of innovative and established producers, while venue manager Lillia McCabe looks after a warm and efficient floor team.
Studio Paskin also runs a sunny, rooftop lounge, a somewhat brooding wine bar and a cafe at the hotel, with Orr in charge of food across all venues, which seem to be on the right track. The Palomar’s dining room, though, while comfortable, feels austere and in need of some colour and art. Dare I say, a touch of that signature 25hours Hotel quirk? Just hold the Kevin Spacey videos and blue-cheese socks.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Thoughtful but easy-going hotel restaurant with buzz powered by an open kitchen and fire
Go-to dishes: Blue mackerel and chermoula ($40); wagyu tongue skewers (two for $24); coral trout crudo with burnt blood orange and capers ($34); calamari and preserved lemon ($50)
Drinks: Thoughtful mid-sized wine list strong on the low-intervention front, with more options available from the adjoining bar; fun and well-balanced cocktails and Tea Craft tea
Cost: About $170 for two, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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