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“Bondi Road”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Seafood	Lower East Side	Moderate	Great

MY DINNER AT BONDI ROAD
I learned recently that there are 16,000 Australians living in New York City. It is my guess that all 16,000 of them, at some point, will eat at Bondi Road, a restaurant created in the image of one of their homeland’s most coveted surf spots. I imagine once they try it out, they will come back. Let’s hope not all at the same time. Because then there will be no room for the rest of us. And that would be a dreadful thing.

So, let me tell you a bit about Bondi Road. It is a fish shack of sorts, serving fish and chips, and then some. Now you may know of fish and chips from places like A Salt and Battery and Chip Shop. And you may think you know what a fish shack is from trips to say Mary’s, Pearl, and Ditch Plains. But Bondi Road—Bondi sounds like Bonzai—is like nothing you’ve experienced before. This is a rad surf town reincarnated in the form of a pint-sized joint on a sleepy block of Rivington Street. Through wide doors that open to the sidewalk you will find a restaurant painted ocean blue and wrapped in an almost full 360 degrees of panoramic photos of Bondi Beach, a bussling suburb and beach town located in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, just a seven minute train ride from the center of the city. (If we had a beach where people could surf all day seven minutes from Manhattan do you think people would ever work? I don’t imagine they’d do much other than wake, suit up and run, board on back.)

Anyway, Bondi Beach is pretty much Gidget gone wild. And behind the beach you’ll find Bondi Road, a slip of a street dotted with cafes and fish and chip shops that owner Heathe St. Clair, who also owns Sunburnt Cow, used as his muse for his fish and chips shop here in New York City.

I arrived at St. Clair’s Bondi Beach the other night and took a seat at the bar next to a few Aussies drinking Greyhounds, classic Bondi Road drinks. At Bondi Road here, they are made as they are Down Under, from fresh grapefruit juice, squeezed to order before your eyes in an old-fashioned juice press, and mixed with vodka. (I like ‘em with tequila. I think you will too.) I sipped my grapefruit tequila with a squeeze of lime and perused the menu. Just then an Aussie gent sitting next to me said, “You’ve got to have a Yabby darlin,” in an accent I am sure women Down Under have learned to resist, but I have not. Honestly it matters not what ... [more, click below]

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Posted: August 20, 2006

Other restaurants in Lower East Side :
+ Mojo   + WD-50   + Schiller's Liquor Bar   + Azul Bistro   + Barrio Chino   + 71 Clinton Fresh Food-- Closed   + Little Giant   + Kuma Inn   + Falai   + The Stanton Social   + The Tides   + Thor   + The Orchard   + El Bocadito-- CLOSED   + Bondi Road   + Rayuela   + Suba   + Bun (boone)   + Sorella   + The Fat Hippo   + Pulino's   

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