What We Ate and Drank in 2020

Life as we know it may have looked a little different this year – but we still had to eat and drink. And Sydney’s restaurants, bars and cafes responded accordingly, continuing to pump out plenty of the good stuff. The amount of ramen on this list is testament to the comfort we craved, while the noodles, bread dishes and home-style meals also show how much we relied on hearty food to get us through. These are our favourites: the drinks and dishes our editors, writers and photographers couldn’t get out of their minds.

Ragazzi, CBD – anchovy toast
Che-Marie Trigg, Sydney editor
I felt incredibly lucky that, just days before my birthday, restaurants were finally allowed to reopen with a limit of 10 patrons. While a visit to Ragazzi at any time is a delightful experience, it was both the first restaurant I chose to visit in the shellshock of post-lockdown life, and the place I celebrated my birthday in the weirdest year my generation has ever experienced. It was a freezing cold, sideways-rain, late-May day when we ventured into the CBD for the first time since March, and (for the first time in a long time) settled into seats that didn’t belong to us. What a thrill to have an expert prepare my Negroni, an actual sommelier pour my wine. But it was the comforting, butter-smeared toast topped with a salty strip of anchovy that has stuck in my mind; a dish I would rarely think to prepare at home, made by somebody actually paid to cook for others. Sure, it was just anchovy toast – and a bloody excellent one at that – but one loaded with meaning during a time of our lives when things were finally starting to look up. (It was also loaded with butter. So much butter.)

Ester, Chippendale – Hasselback potato
Sarah Norris, national editor
Although takeaway and fakeaway (almost-ready meals you do last-step zhushing to, such as heating and stir-frying ingredients together) dominated this year – and it was very fun eating such amazing food by top chefs in my PJs in front of the TV – my most memorable meal of 2020 was IRL at Ester. The Chippendale diner has been reinventing fine dining since 2013, but I reckon my September visit was the best I’ve ever experienced. And while I could easily say it was fabulous because of the “vibe of thing”, if I was pushed to offer a particular dish, it would be the Hasselback potato with smoked-beef fat that arrived to the table sizzling. I took a video of the dish and often rewatch it to relive the magnificence. Long live steamy, sizzling carbs.

Rara Ramen, Redfern – tonkotsu black-garlic and chilli ramen with chashu chicken
Melissa Mason, content director
I never liked ramen until I had this dish. I added the chicken once, forgetting it came with pork (see what a ramen rookie I am?) and now I can’t not add it. The chicken is chargrilled deliciousness and I eat it first, then lament my decision to not savour it throughout the dish. But there’s more to love here: the black garlic is rich and punchy, and the chilli oil abundant without overpowering the flavours of Rara’s tonkotsu pork broth. It was a go-to winter 2020 dish for me.

Felfela, Paddington – ful medames and falafel
Emily Barlow, campaign manager and writer
Family gatherings, in my experience, revolve around food. It’s also the case for the Shehatas, a family of four that this year turned its Paddington Market stall into a delivery service bringing incredible, creamy ful to Sydney households. You can taste the time and love spent making this rich fava bean, tahini and tomato dip. It’s ideal for dunking their herby Egyptian-style felafel into, or spreading on toast, topping with salad or just about anything else.

Happyfield, Haberfield – nitro cold brew
Pilar Mitchell, writer
I don’t normally drink coffee – I’m a green tea woman – but Happyfield’s nitro cold brew has me obsessed. It arrives, like root beer, in a frosty mini mug with a clear line of separation between equal parts coffee and golden foam. The flavour is refreshing, toasted and delicately sweet, completely devoid of the bitterness that’s so often present in a hot brew. It doesn’t hurt that Happyfield is one of the most uplifting places I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending a weekday morning in. Between the jolt of caffeine and the happy atmosphere, the nitro cold brew is probably exactly what 2020 needs.

Bastardo, Surry Hills – eggplant parmigiana
Emily Taliangis, writer
One excellent thing to come out of this crappy year was Bastardo, the Bodega team’s new super cool, old-school-esque Italian restaurant. I could pick anything I’ve tried on its menu so far, but I’d feel like I was cheating on the eggplant parmigiana primi dish if I did. You know how some leftovers taste better the next day, after a night of refrigeration and soaking in their own juices? This eggplant parmigiana is like that, but better. It’s unexpectedly served at room temperature, which does something pretty fantastic to the combination of straight-from-nonna’s-kitchen (and garden) ingredients. Creamy in texture (how does eggplant do that?), just the right amount of oiliness, hearty and fresh at the same time – man, it’s good.

Gogyo, Surry Hills – kogashi miso ramen
Daniel Cunningham, writer
There’re no hard rules in ramen, which is why I love Gogyo’s game-changing kogashi [charred] miso number. The masters burn the shit out of pork lard and blond miso in a wok, extinguish them with a ladle of hot chintan [clear] stock, then bowl up the charr-y, fragrant result with flat Hakata-style noodles, a half egg and pork-belly chashu. This was the first ramen I crushed after Sydney’s wintery lockdown, and it was so much more than a comeback. It was like the prison-break scene in Shawshank Redemption: all of my trials washed away by a black, velvety broth. It tasted like freedom.

Ho Jiak, Town Hall – laksa bombs
Tristan Lutze, writer
In the kitchen of Ho Jiak’s Town Hall digs – which opened in March – chef Junda Khoo overlays the Malaysian dishes of his homeland with modern, localised touches: a WA marron over fiery char kway teow, and superlative chicken rice spiked with sweet abalone meat. Khoo’s crowning achievement, though, are his laksa bombs: hand-formed dumplings filled with chicken, prawns, vermicelli noodles and all the other flavourful adornments of a well-made laksa, floating in an aromatic laksa broth, dotted with a spicy, fishy heh bi sambal. The result is as explosive as the name suggests.

Tarim Uyghur Cuisine, Auburn; Kiroran Silk Road Uygur, Chinatown – soman or ding ding noodles (丁丁炒面 in Mandarin)
Nicholas Jordan, writer
Uyghur cuisine has a lot of noodles, and they’re exactly the kind of noodles I love – chewy, elastic and as sauce-interested as my stomach. At Tarim, Silkroad and many of Sydney's other Uyghur restaurants, they make the noodles fresh every day, stretching and thinning the dough with their hands over and over again until they have noodles long enough to tie your shoes with. Now imagine those noodles, but chopped into hazelnut-sized blobs. The noodle-blobs are stir-fried in a saucy mix of lamb, tomato, cabbage, celery, capsicum and an atomic level of garlic. Final product: magnificently savoury and even more fun to eat. If it wasn’t such a befuddling term, I’d call it dinner cereal.

Battambang, Cabramatta – Phnom Penh noodles
Aimee Chanthadavong, writer
Sometimes the best kinds of meals are the ones that are most familiar. I was reminded of that this year when I rediscovered just how much comfort a warming bowl of Battambang’s Phnom Penh noodles can bring. Swimming in a clear, slightly sweet, umami-rich broth – featuring subtle flavours of pork, garlic and dried shrimp – is a generous portion of fresh, thin, chewy rice noodles. This is topped with slivers of pork bits, cubes of blood jelly, fish balls, prawns, and a handful of bean sprouts and chives for freshness. Mixed together, each slurp is a little different from the last. But no complaints here, especially when I get to mop up the last of the broth with cha kwai and walk away having paid only $15. What a steal.

Nomad, Surry Hills – woodfired flatbread with za’atar
Kitti Gould, photographer
It’s Thursday night and going for a post-event dinner sounds more like a chore than a treat. Until I remember Nomad has reopened and, by some small miracle, it might be able to squeeze us in. I weakly haul myself up onto a bar stool and order a glass of house pinot noir and the wood-roasted eggplant, toasted olive seeds and flatbread. It’s the second time I’ve eaten it in two weeks, so I know the many flatbreads sacrificed in the recipe development phase were worth it. It’s even better this time, eaten with fried green olives and preserved tomato, and wood-roasted Stix Farm baby beetroot, almond and sweet and sour currants. Order extra flatbread for the table if you're not keen on getting stabbed in the hand with a fork by your dining companions.

Hal Bar, Belvoir, Surry Hills – G&T and duck rice-paper rolls
Jane Albert, arts writer
Temperature taken. Check. Hands sanitised. Check. Mask on. Check. Theatre foyer – say what? Yes indeed, that glorious moment when the beleaguered arts industry took its first tentative but oh-so-powerful steps out of lockdown in September to bring the balm we’ve been craving. Together. In a theatre. My first foray back into the performing arts was Belvoir’s A Room of One’s Own, and the best and only way to prepare for re-entry is in Belvoir’s Hal Bar, enjoying an Archie Rose signature dry G&T and a couple of fresh duck and veg rice-paper rolls which have just the right touch of zing. Lip-smackingly good. As for the show, Anita Hegh’s near-solo performance of Virginia Woolf’s acclaimed words was a tour-de-force. Luckily it proved so popular it’s coming back for a return season in 2021.

Sevens Specialty Coffee, CBD – muffuletta
Ariela Bard, writer
Of all the places in which I ate and drank in 2020, I didn’t expect the lobby of an office building in the middle of the CBD to be the one where I’d fall in love. But then I met Zach Hiotis’s muffuletta. The technicolour tower of ricotta-filled zucchini flowers, mortadella, truffle salami, leg ham, artichoke, parmesan, mozzarella, provolone, pimento cheese, spinach, basil, olive tapenade and ’nduja (take a breath) is bookended by two crispy slices of focaccia. Might be time to ditch the work-from-bed set-up and find an office job.

Kopitiam Cafe, Ultimo – tofu with pork mince; 27Three Boulangerie, Petersham – almond croissant
Kimberley Low, photographer
2020 made me realise we need a word to describe “immensely satisfying, soulful and understatedly well executed”. Rather than creative or striking dishes, my highlights for this year have been a source of comfort amidst the madness. Two equal standouts were the homemade tofu with pork mince at Kopitiam Pyrmont, and the award-winning almond croissants at 27Three Boulangerie in Petersham. They’re both excellent of course, but more importantly represent a sense of home; as in family, in the case of the former, and actual, in the case of the latter.

Ragazzi, CBD – Queensland scallop fagottini
Emma Breislin, writer
The booking was made the night before my birthday. We could only get an 8.30pm sitting, but some would say that’s the best time to eat pasta. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and place for a simple bowl of spaghetti and cheese. This just wasn’t one of them. Instead, it was a freshly made fagottini [Italian for “little bundles”] stuffed with Queensland scallops and salmon roe, served floating in a buttery fish broth kind of night. Packed with flavour, but still somehow light and refreshing. I already know what’s top of my wishlist for next year.

Sekka Dining, St Leonards – tonkotsu shoyu ramen
Yusuke Oba, photographer
I had waited for this moment: to dine in rather than take away my favourite Japanese ramen. And no one does better than the ramen-master of Sydney, Hideto Suzuki, who gamely opened a new store soon after the lockdown ended. Tonkotsu-shoyu – also known as double-stock ramen – is thick, creamy and has a touch of sweetness that intertwines with ramen noodles so perfectly. Even better with jug of Asahi beer. Kanpai!

Nutie Donuts, Surry Hills and Balmain – piecaken pudding tubs
Shaney Hudson, writer
We were somewhere on the edge of the pandemic when I decided to eat my way through it it. The piecaken pudding tubs from Nutie Donuts (meant to serve two, but best eaten solo) were designed for Thanksgiving but became my 2020 culinary revelation. Layers of spice cake, pumpkin pie and pecan pie, cut with meringue and set on a crumb base were retrieved from their Surry Hills outlet and safely ensconced in the fridge for 10pm salvation, motivation and procrastination – the ultimate comfort food for a year that smashed us all.