A finely tuned, beautifully serviced neighbourhood hangout where the drinks menu packs a lot into a small space, Etta calls for a return visit before you’ve even finished the first.
Etta has received bucketloads of praise for its work as a restaurant and deserves every bit of it, but it’s also one of the best bars in its vibrant Brunswick East neighbourhood. Co-owner Hannah Green opened her place off the back of a career as a sommelier in high-end restaurants such as Attica and Rosetta, so you’d assume she pays close attention to the drinks. She does. Her drinks menu packs a lot into a small space with everything there for a reason, whether you’re talking sake, sherry, craft beer or house-made sodas flavoured with yuzu or rhubarb. The wines on the list are a constantly changing collection of mostly small producers so you may not recognise many (or any) of the labels at first, but Green is one of Australia’s great wine communicators, brilliant at steering you in the right direction. Wines that started out as strangers soon become firm friends.
The room helps the friendship, too. Light and airy – particularly when the weather is good and the front windows fold open to the street – it has a relaxed living-room vibe, if your living room included a lovely curvy marble-topped bar and elegant metal-legged furniture on a crisp terrazzo floor.
Not surprisingly, given this is a restaurant bar, the snacks are worthy of close attention. Whether it’s crisp fried tiny school prawns with curry leaves or pickled cucumbers teamed with fresh, mozzarella-like stracciatella cheese, the snacks here, like everything else at Etta, are going to make you glad you came.
Hannah Green’s talents don’t only extend to her ability to spot an excellent wine at a hundred paces. She’s one of those hospitality professionals with a knack for making you feel like you’ve come to the right place and that she’s genuinely glad you made it. The rest of the floor staff adopt the same attitude and are as adept at suggesting something to get you started – a freshly shucked Sydney rock oyster, perhaps, or an Etta Spritz, a refreshing mix of rosé, vermouth, grapefruit and soda – as they are at leaving you be if you just want to talk among yourselves.
The charming, neighbourhood-bar friendliness makes it easy to settle back and order just one more drink and snack, so don’t be surprised to find yourself settling in for the long haul. It’s best to just give in to it and ask for suggestions for a bottle of wine to carry you through some of the larger dishes on chef Rosheen Kaul’s menu, perhaps a superb grilled pork rib teamed with an oyster sauce, storm clams grilled over charcoal and dressed with soy and fish roe, or pine mushrooms tossed with cured egg yolk and lap cheong, the Chinese sausage. Etta is the kind of place that will leave you feeling not just like a regular but a local. You may find yourself planning a return visit before you’ve finished the first.
One of the great things about Etta is that the drinks list is so well put together it’s almost impossible to make a bad decision. Cocktails lean towards the classic, as in the Fish House Punch, which mixes Cognac, dark rum, peach liqueur, black tea and lemon, or a Rob Roy where Scotch makes great friends with sweet vermouth and bitters.
The wines on the list mostly hang around Australia, France and Italy, but a few German and Austrian whites are worth considering and work well with the flavours on the menu. There’s a focus on minimal-intervention wine-making – producing so-called “natural wines” – but there’s nothing too funky or cloudy here and plenty for those who like their wines clean and classic.
%20HopeSt_HighRes-12?$dans-daily-web-image$&wid=800)
