Charlotte Bar & Bistro offers a French-ish menu with plenty of twists including snail gyoza and chicken riblets that taste like frogs legs.
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14.5/20How we score
French$$$$
I’m inclined to like Charlotte immediately, for two very simple reasons. One, it does a hearty spritz with my favourite French aperitif, Lillet Rouge, and two, it stuffs snails and bone marrow into crisp-bottomed gyoza dumplings to have with it.
Anyone who thinks there’s something strange about a Japanese-owned French restaurant, has forgotten their history. The two cuisines have been entwined since France’s Paul Bocuse, the Troisgros Brothers and Joel Robuchon started visiting Tokyo in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Paris is littered with Japanese chefs performing the delicate dance of degustation. (And what is degustation, if not kaiseki?)
Go-to dish: Fricassee de cotes de poulet (chicken riblets), cooked in the style of frogs’ legs.Edwina Pickles
Japanese-owned Azabu, the group behind Choji Yakiniku and Kame House, have launched a very upscale French bistro in McMahons Point, catchment area for the burgeoning back-to-work North Sydney office crowd. Executive chef Masahiko Yomoda and head chef Hiroshi Manaka, who both trained in top restaurants across Europe, curate a Frenchish menu with plenty of twists.
Instead of doing cuisse de grenouilles (frogs’ legs), for instance, they offer cotes de poulet (chicken riblets), fried in much the same way, with butter, garlic and parsley ($25). The pale, tender meat slides straight off the blade-thin scapula bone. And guess what? It tastes like frogs’ legs!
Signature boeuf en croute.Edwina Pickles
The signature dish is a play on boeuf en croute royal, a magnificent beast wrapped in glossy, golden, intricately patterned pastry; its heart of rare beef, duck and foie gras beringed with a rich duxelles of mushrooms. Notice is required (as is $289), for the en croute to serve four as a main course. Do that, and you may as well start with Beluga caviar ($395 for 50g), and throw in a whole lobster ($249 to share).
Once home to The Grape Escape, a pioneering wine bar acknowledged in the very first Good Food Guide in 1984, this corner site has never looked so good. Wood-panelled and linen-draped, it offers private dining rooms, cocktail bars, swish loos, and an outdoor terrace for weekend lunching.
A keen young team led by French-born Julien Legat brings charm to the table even amidst the fluttery nerves of opening week, and wine service from Legat and Hugo Scott is particularly en pointe.
Charlotte’s steak frites comes with a gravy boat of rich mushroom sauce.Edwina Pickles
You can’t have a French bistro without steak frites, and the Charlotte version ($62) is a good Ranger’s Valley bavette, grilled medium rare, with a bevy of long, thin, golden, skin-on-ends chips. On the side, a shapely sauce boat contains a rich, smooth mushroom sauce.
There are some wobbles. Assiette de charcuterie ($24/$38) is a generous platter with a good pork and duck terrine, cornichons and little pickled bico chillies. The prosciutto, however, is dull and thickly sliced, and the rillettes are not fatty enough to be lush (nobody wants diet rillettes, guys). Sourdough bread is $10. Wines are interesting but pricey, so I wade in the shallows with a spice-and-cherry 2021 Domaine Dupre Bourgogne ($105).
Ravioli stuffed with lobster, scallop and bug meat.Edwina Pickles
And yes, we have entered the age of the $68 pasta. Admittedly, the plump ravioli come stuffed with lobster, scallop and bug meat, floating in a bisque emulsified with foie gras, and garnished with tempura zucchini flower, but it’s hard to justify. Whole roast chicken makes better sense, jointed and wallowing in a sprightly sauce ravigote ($95).
Les Desserts reads like Larousse Gastronomique, from chocolate mousse and tarte aux praline, to mango Charlotte and baba au rhum. Tarte aux pommes ($17) sees apple wrangled in the shape of a rose. It’s pretty, but not satisfying. A selection of well-kept French cheese (three for $35) is one of the best in town.
Huge potential here, with a disconcerting habit of nailing one dish and then, not. The pricing, too, is haphazard, when a banquet menu is $89 per person and a dozen oysters natural is $84.
The real appeal, and the best results, lie in the idea of an haute bistro menu put through a Japanese filter. And the Lillet Spritz, snail gyoza, and chicken that tastes like frogs’ legs.
The low-down
Open: Lunch Fri-Sun from noon; dinner Wed-Sun from 6pm
Vibe: Elevated French bistro dining in and out, upstairs and down
Go-to dish: Fricassee de cotes de poulet, $25
Drinks: Lillet spritzes, absinthe fountain, French beers and a 600-bin French-Oz wine list with a focus on small producers and regions.
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Terry Durack has been reviewing restaurants and seeking out new food experiences for three decades. Former critic for London’s Independent on Sunday, author of six books, and Chief Restaurant Critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, Terry was twice named Glenfiddich Restaurant Critic of The Year in the UK, and World Food Media’s Best Restaurant Critic. Australian-born and a resident of Sydney, he brings a unique perspective on the global food scene to his travel writing.From our partners