Bar Juju on dat beat

Painter Pierre Bonnard once wrote in his journals that “colour… has yet to become light.”

So I crane my neck upward, and I saw.  

Light box fixtures and circling divots kiss the lobby of The Eve Hotel with hazy imprecision. Within, unharnessed warm hues of salmon pink, pearly creams and denim jean blue make quiet verdict in the concave ceilings of Bar Julius. Grounding its presence, dark timber and leather banquettes slink around the 6:45pm crowd. The down lighting is buttery and low-slung, the amber hush of the table lamps glow syrupy and diffused. Like firebugs in a jar, I understand how one can coax dusk indoors.

I’m here with my best friends, trying to take the edge off the 1500 word essay due the day after tomorrow. So we start reasonably – of course, reasonably meaning 10 grams of oscietra caviar. And just as I imagined, it’s sea-sweet and way better than the $6 lumpfish alternative we get from Woolies (still hits in a pinch hey). The Julius service has none of the first-time jitters you’d expect from a venue barely two months old. I think about stealing the mother of pearl spoon but I don’t because the waiter was really nice.

And I’m glad I didn’t because the nice waiter brings out our two plates to start. Number one, lamb belly with a crispy curl of something. On the tender mattress, checkered dollops of yoghurt and salsa verde make a white-green gingham of flavour, tangy and precise. Thin tresses of fennel and hidden cubes of preserved lemon slip between bites, cutting the fattiness with bright  sour flickers. It’s plate number two, and we’re going caesar. The only thing in common  the Julius variant has in common with caesar salad is the fact that it’s served on a plate. Stems of grilled gem lettuce lie still, unchopped. Folded in its mossy plaits, is anchovy dressing, briny and gorgeous — alongside granules of parmesan almond crumb and parings of bacon. It’s just soooo good. Instead of the classic soft-boiled egg, Julius makes it crispy. How? No fucking clue. It’s crumbled like a schnitzel but the inside is golden and gooey as you’d hoped.

Hi again, nice waiter! I made us order the hot dog for the shits. As usual, Julius proves the only thing it shares with a regular hot dog is sausage and bread. I like how the New York street-cart/ casual essentials are treated with a kind of reverence here. It was really stupid to see us split the dog into 5 equal bite-size parts (but we did it), and the bite was even stupider. It’s flash —snappy from the smoked pigs head sausage and acidic from the pickle, dijonnaise and perks of shallot. Of course, we got a side of chips, allegedly made with smoked confit garlic. I mean it was good, but it was chips. 

Now, comes pasta. Cacio e pepe has currently plagued Sydney like locusts over postwar crops — everywhere, relentless, and half the time, stripped of its original spirit. Bar Julius, following a pattern, does it differently. In many cases, the dish is a far cry from its pantry-clearing origins. Here though, it’s rebuilt from the ground up — not by tossing in a few mushroom slices, but by drawing on mushroom velouté. Interestingly, mushroom velouté  is a foundational French soup, built off a foundational French sauce, and at Julius, it’s used to reimagine a foundational Italian dish. The taste?  It’s peppered and loamy, a little feral from the pepper. The chew of the rigatoni is perfectly parmy, plush and clinging.

I wish I had good things to say about dessert because I’m a happy little girl, but the torched alaska was obscenely disappointing for a dish with such visual appeal. The ingredients sounded really cool too, with lemon verbena sorbet, aquafaba, finger lime and coconut cream.I’m seeing a curling white mountain with torched marshmallow-like saturn rings — but I ate bumbum. Where we went wrong is the aquafaba, where its leguminous origins were poorly masked, giving us an oddly bitter, oddly grainy mouthfeel. The decision of a whipping siphon made a meringue much too aerated. All foam, no form ( ｡ •̀ ᴖ •́ ｡). We also got the strawberry parfait with toast milk crumb, but deadass I’m not even describing that. Like I don’t have the vocabulary to tell you. 

We can’t have everything. Forgive my poetics at the start. But seriously, I had a great dinner.

My best friend is seeing someone new, so he comes to meet us after. She’s sandwiched between me and the exit — so I hand him her bag, just to see what he’ll do with it. A silent, best friend litmus test. You-aren’t-good-enough-for-her territory. He takes it without hesitation, slings it over his shoulder like it’s nothing. No whining, no whinging. Just holds it.

Guess it’s not only Bar Julius that’s passed a test tonight.