Sydney’s Casual Community Gems –

Here’s my list of lovely, no-reso-required, Sydney based eats where no solo diner would accumulate a 3-digit bill. Happy tummies for all the locals.

1. New girl on the block, Derrel’s in Camperdown, where Anglo-Indian pub style ensures a cheeky cuisine where your nana would smack you for eating with one hand and steal a bite of a chip butty with the other.
2. Alchemy Polish Café Restaurant, Crown Street’s resident sweet grandma who’d compliment your manners at the grocery store checkout. There is true beauty to be found in chewy dumplings of cheese, meat, and veggies where pierogi and pickled perfections intersect.
3. Xi’an Eatery, the true jewel of Burwood’s Chinatown. The joint is a no nonsense, cut-the- niceties gig, serving up dishes like silken tofu and century egg and Biangbiang noodles with classic Sichuan numbing virtue. You know the Asian restaurant isn’t good unless the menu is frayed.
4. Kosta’s Takeaway storming Sydney’s sandwich scene, where its humble Rockdale beginnings secure itself a spot in being a community backbone. There’s nothing better than hearing the rough and tumble of the Prince’s Highway gums deep into a divine tuna melt.
5. Enmore Road’s much favoured, free-popcorn-serving, Bar Planet, is heralded for an ambiance that is swanky and oozingly sexy accompanied with prim-perfect cocktails. Though it is resoundingly clear that the specialty is all-things martini, cocktails like the ‘Sunbeam’ (named excruciatingly well), offer an irresistible and bright taste of citrusy limoncello nuanced with shaken ice and spots of herby tangy goodness.