This Little Restaurant Broke the Curse on a Surry Hills Address

Mishy’s is a little restaurant that, at each service, is alive with energy. There’s chatter around tables, and between tables. The lights are low, and the staff are smiley. Mishy herself – Michelle Powell, the founding chef at Bistro Rex – is flitting between the door, the bar and her diners, greeting people and delivering drinks and checking on the kitchen. The chef has been hard at it, refining her offering for a little over three years. It’s her thing, her way, and now – relying on nothing other than word of mouth – she’s in full flight.

From day one there were people about, but Mishy’s identity hadn’t been locked in. The chef started with a small budget, no business plan and no name – the night before doors were open, she went for the obvious. “Mishy’s to me has been an evolving space,” she says. “I’ve never dreamt of owning my own restaurant, but as a 45-year-old woman, I just got sick of working hard for other people. Friends of mine who’ve been extremely influential in my whole life were just like, ‘Do it!’”

First it was lunch, creeping steadily up to what it is now: a full-service restaurant. “We didn’t have any publicity for three years, nearly. It was a slower growth, but word of mouth is really powerful,” she says. “We do get a lot of Americans, a lot of travellers, because of our Google reviews. I had a customer find me through Reddit, and others use AI to find us, they’re typing in ‘Best-rated Surry Hills restaurants’, but they’re specific – ‘4.9 stars over 300 [reviews]’. For me it’s a really healthy and organic growth.”

Even more impressive is the 180-degree pivot for the site: 113 Reservoir Street is an address you might flippantly call “cursed”. “This has been a site in Sydney that everything that goes in goes broke,” says Powell. “The last successful business was back in 2014. Honestly, for the first six months, I hated it. I was like, what have I done? I was tired, I had no money, I literally had to borrow $60 to buy a part to fix the dishwasher myself.”

Powell’s self-described “elevated home cooking”, powered by her weekly trips to the market to hand-select the produce, unlocked the space’s magic.

By Christmas in 2023, six months after opening, the space was full. “There was literally laughter in the air. I felt that true feeling of joy – and I thought ‘Thank God!’” Since then, the tight-knit locals from the surrounding residential streets have come back again and again and again – word travelling without social media or coverage from publications like this one. 

They’re returning for familiar dishes – often flexed up with native ingredients. Oysters dressed with finger lime; kangaroo salami with parmesan and zingy peppers. Sheets of house-made pasta are stuffed with spinach and ricotta, with a warrigal green sauce. Murray cod is crispy-skinned with delicate meat, in a native curry sauce with macadamias and sea purslane. Then there are the scallops, a lovechild of the Bistro Rex-era of Powell’s life.

“They’re quite close to my heart,” she says. Hervey Bay scallops sit in their shells, on a bed of creamed leeks. On top? Vadouvan-spiced oil, native karkalla and flash-fried curry leaves. Plus, the creaminess of grated cashews. It’s all very aromatic, and any time someone orders a serve, the scent wafts through the restaurant. 

There’s also a 300-gram steak from northern NSW, served with fries, for $76. “It should really be on the menu for a bit more than what I’ve priced it at, but it’s been on the menu since day one – I call it a community service,” she laughs.

It’s the hospitality of it all that keeps Powell going. “If it wasn’t for my friends, the locals, there’s no way I would’ve made it. Still to this day there are people that live around the corner that don’t know that we’re here. And to me, that’s fantastic, cos there’s still this fresh blood of new people coming through.”

Mishy’s
113 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills

Hours:
Tue 11am–3pm
Wed to Sat 11am–3pm, 5.30pm–10pm
Sun 11am–3pm

mishyssydney.com.au
@mishys_sydney