Strangers with Candy

SMH Review: Sweet Temptation

Keith Austin is willingly seduced by a funky little number:
Redfern's Strangers With Candy.

Sweet temptation
By Keith Austin
Sydney Morning Herald: November 18, 2003
Illustration: Simon Letch

Tried: Steamed prawn won tons ($14.50), blue cheese souffle ($14.50), braised pork belly ($14.50), tea-smoked salmon ($26.50), duck confit ($26.50), barramundi fillet ($26.50).

This week's review goes against the best advice your mum ever gave you. That is: have nothing to do with strangers with candy. However, I am here to tell you to have everything to do with Strangers With Candy.

The difference between the two pieces of advice is that at Strangers With Candy they're more likely to say: "Hello, little boy, want to buy a sweetie?"

Well, they certainly succeeded in seducing this little boy and his chums, Popsi Bubblehead and Shady Adie, the ever-more penniless sitar player.

Even before we had the bill Adie was planning a return with her foodie contingent. This is a little disappointing because they are like a plague of well-fed locusts and once they descend on the place, it'll be impossible to get a table.

Strangers With Candy sits so comfortably on the corner of a leafy dead-end street that it feels like it's been there forever. It seems so familiar, perhaps due to the deep burgundy paint job, the dark wood and the banquettes in the small dining area at the front.

Hang on, that makes it sound like a gentlemen's club full of old blokes snoozing under ironed copies of The Times when it is most certainly nothing of the sort as attested to by a couple of fluffy electric mauve cushions and a section of wall plastered with those freebie postcards that cafes have these days. That would be it, then; a place that's both deeply traditional but funky at the same time. A bit like the food.

Now, here's the thing. If a stranger stopped his car and offered me an entree of braised pork belly like this, I'd get in. It is beautiful and comes sitting in a rice wine, soy and ginger jus. It breaks my heart to see even the smallest of bits go down the gullets of the gannets with me.

The advantage of this is that, in return, I get to taste Popsi's steamed prawn won tons and Adie's delightfully light and wobbly blue cheese souffle.

The won tons are soft, actually taste of prawns (always a good thing) and are swimming happily with Chinese mushrooms in a sesame and lemongrass soup that explodes with flavour.

This is topped only by the dreamy souffle, which comes with a mixture of stuff that the menu tells me is pickled green pear, rocket and eggplant caviar. What eggplant caviar is when it's at home is anyone's guess but given that eggplant is on my list of vegetables that deserve extinction and yet I still like the caviar, they must be doing something right.

It's about this time we realise we have stumbled on a place really quite special and when the main courses arrive I am thinking of ways to kill Adie before she tells anyone else about it.

Popsi struggles with her wild barramundi fillet (steamed in a bag with ginger and baby bok choy) because it is so big. Adie wolfs down her sensuously pink, tea-smoked salmon with one hand while texting the Food Mafia with the other. My duck confit doesn't even touch the sides on the way down.

(Psssst! We also had dessert, even though Eat up has to restrict itself to two courses per person. Now that was candy.)
 

"Never mind what your mother told you - this is one time you should say yes to strangers with candy."
Sydney Eats 2005

"Strangers is already popular
with the locals (so be sure to book), and Veronica Stute's adventurous cooking deserves a wider audience."
Sydney Morning Herald
Good Food Guide 2005