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 you look like when you speak Australian.

“A Yabby?” I asked.

“Yes, me’dear,” he said to me. “Let’s get this lady a yabby,” he said to the bartender.

The yabby came in a few moments. I thought it was going to be some large fried fritter thing but it is actually a sort of oversized crayfish found only in Bondi, with plenty of sweet meat that is cut free of its shell so you can lift it out with your fingers, spritz it with some lemon or dip it into the accompanying thousand island dressing (yes, thousand island dressing) and tuck it into your mouth. Sweet! These critters are good. Yabby me anytime baby.

When Erica arrived, I had drained my drink and polished off my Yabby. We got her one too. Then it was time we moved to a table. We were seated at one of the restaurant’s high tops facing the wide screen TVs over the kitchen showing non-stop extreme surfing. We ordered more fresh grapefruit cocktails and got to our ordering plans.

Things at Bondi Road can start off with wraps—little summer lettuce cups filled with lump crab, lobster or shrimp ($8 each), hot pots ($9 each) like New Zealand mussels and garlic prawns, or raw bar—the Yabby, as well as oysters (p/a) and marrons (similar to yabbys but bigger and redder $18). But these preludes are really just the warm up for the real thing which is The Fish—a selection of just flown in seafood from Down Under that includes crimson snapper, barramundi, New Zealand groper (not grouper, this is groper, as in a guy in a bar who wants you), and Suziki Mulloway. Your fish is served your choice of grilled, beer-battered, or breaded. In addition to The Fish, you’ll also find a section of classics, mostly non-fish items like a burger (more on this later), a kangaroo steak with shrimp and corn fritters ($18), and Australian lamb chops ($18) with tomato salad and mint.

Being that the place is known for its fish, we went with two orders of Fish and Chips ($15 each). We decided on the barramundi, which we ordered beer battered, and the groper, which we had breaded. We had three sides ($4 each)—the cole slaw (a fabulous mess of shorn cabbage with a bit of apple and a horseradish kick), the summer corn with tomatoes and mint, and the roasted corn and orzo. And we also ordered a hamburger with the Lot ($10).

Before we get into the wonders of fried fish at Bondi Road, let me give you a little background on my life and its intersection with the world of fish and chips. My mom, who is of Persian ancestry, was actually born in England. She lived there, in London, until she was about eight, and then they moved to Queens, where everyone has pretty much stayed. When my brother and I were little, mom used to make fried fish and chips (what all my friends called Fries) once a week, on Wednesdays, if I remember correctly. (It is possible I don’t remember correctly. Portions of my childhood have been blocked out.) But let’s go with Wednesday for argument’s sake.

To make our fish and chips, she swiped thin flounder fillets with egg wash then dipped the wet fillets in some store-bought canister of breadcrumbs, and fried the fish in a heavy bottomed skillet sizzling with hot oil, flipping the fillets so that they were crunchy and golden on both sides. She then set the fish to drain on paper towels. Once the fish was done being fried, she mixed the leftover breadcrumbs and egg wash together and formed the mixture into little patties and fried them up to make these puffy little fritters she called Koo-Koos. The Koo-Koos were our favorite part of the meal. Then she sliced Idaho potatoes into long thin logs and fried them, skin on, in a little Fry Baby she manned in the middle of the stove. My mom did a great job. She was working full time, going to school at night, and my Dad had long since departed for the island of restaurants and take out known as Manhattan, so she had her hands full with me and my brother David. She rocked. (And continues to do so.) No one really has anything on my mom, or her fish and chips. But then I ate at Bondi Road. And they aren’t mom, and they don’t make Koo Koos, but they do make some damn good fish.

We were wowed. Let’s talk barramundi in beer batter first. The beer batter is more like an organza cloak than any heavy sponge-like batter. There is nothing weighty about it. It is ethereal and greaseless and robes two moist, thick and silky filets of barramundi. The fried filets of groper—quite a nice treatment for a groper I must say—are thinner, allowing the breadcrumb coating to crisp up into great textured crust so it’s got a nice crunch, a fine contrast to the glossy fish it conceals. The chips (fries) are perfect—hot, golden and potatoey, dusted with salt and served with malt vinegar. Erica and I had a little routine going. We chatted—love, life, weddings (hers), food, repeat—we watched the surf, we sipped our grapefruit tequila concoctions, pulled off a piece of fried fish with our fingers and dipped them into the tarter sauce, then each grabbed a few fries.

But our cycle was interrupted by the arrival of the Burger with the Lot, a sandwich that was about the height of half the distance between my elbow and my wrist. It is nuts. I am not sure you will be seeing this at a Burger King near you but this is what a burger with a Lot is: a burger topped with cheddar cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onions, and three other completely wild ingredients: grilled pineapple, sliced roasted beets, and a fried egg—all served inside a sesame seed bun. No special sauce. Try to make a jingle out of that one.

I was in shock when I heard about all the layers and flavors that would be involved in this sandwich and inquired about the origin of the recipe. But the Aussies I surveyed (and there were quite a few to survey) had no idea. “It’s just the way we always had ‘em growing up,” one said. “I don’t know why, it’s just the way Mum served it,” another said. So, if you have any ideas on why these items ended up on a burger, please let me know.

As for me, I think the reason there are beets and pineapple on the burger goes to the age-old issue of getting kids to eat their fruits and vegetables. What better way than to sandwich them between bacon, cheese and a burger? But really the reasoning is neither here nor there, what matters is that people actually eat it this way and that it really tastes great. While I thought the burger was overcooked, I loved the unexpected contrast and combination of flavors. I made sure to cut a piece that gave me a little of each flavor in one bite. I loved the juicy sweetness from the pineapple against the smoky bacon and the runny egg with the earthy sweet beet. It all works. It’s odd, and quite massive actually, but it’s good fun mate.

Before we left, we had to give two classic desserts from Oz a go, and tried The Lamingtons, little fluffy cubed sponge cakes shaped like fuzzy dice that are filled with cream, then rolled in chocolate and tons of coconut. While they were slightly dry, they were nonetheless quite nice, and a Pavlova, a giant meringue topped with fresh whipped cream, kiwis and raspberries that was way too sweet for my taste.

Erica and I were well into our third round of drinks at this point and in no rush to go home. So we drank a little more, watched a bit of surfing and chatted up Garth the charming manager. As he told us about life Down Under, we dreamed about life on Bondi Beach, sitting around on Sunday mornings after a little surfing with pitchers of Greyhounds, platters of fish and chips, and burgers layered with beets and pineapple. It got me thinking that if there are 16,000 Aussies here in New York, maybe it’s time more of us moved down there.

Bondi Road is located at 153 Rivington Street, at Suffolk, 212-253-5311.

Andrea Strong