Gastronomous Anonymous

It certainly has been a while since my last visit to Onde. I remember coming here with two of my dearest friends I and S whilst we were still at uni. Yes, this place has been around for a very long time, 14 years to be exact. I was talking to a good friend, M, and he took his lovely fiancé, A, for dinner and had a wonderful meal. It made me realize how it was time to revisit!

So I took ‘The Mother’ here one Friday – date night, and like M and A, had a wonderful meal.

Now a little bit about Onde – 36 seater restaurant that was established in 1996 and serve authentic, french cuisine. They don’t take reservations but they are more than happy to take your number whilst you have a drink at the pub. The menu is simple, well executed, and reasonably priced. The dishes are all written on the black board, two of them, which are hung on the wall. A little bit hard to see pending on where you are sitting, but the waiters are more than happy to explain them to you.

‘The Mother’ and I started with fried squid with roquette, tomato and aioli. Lightly battered, deep fried and dipped with aioli it was simply divine. The bitterness from the roquette really gave it a nice touch. My only gripe would be there weren’t enough fried calamari!

‘The Mother’ had the duck confit with mescfun, caramelized apple and walnut, and my goodness, it was incredibly scrumptious! The skin crispy, the meat so tender and succulent that it just fell off the bone. The caramelized apple was sweet, and crunchy and was a great complement to the duck, and the walnuts gave it a really nice touch. We ate a lot of duck confit when we were in Paris, and this was just as good as the ones we had in Paris, it was delectably good!

I, couldn’t go pass the pork – crumbled bungalow pork cutlet served with witlof, caramelized figs and potatoes. The pork was lightly crumbed and full of delicious flavours. The meat was incredibly tender and succulent and the caramelized figs really gave it that nice sweet flavour. It was such a simple dish but well executed. It was seriously good and absolutely satisfying! As classy as I can be, I picked up the pork cutlet and used my hands to eat the meat around it – it was just too good to be left behind and knife and fork was just didn’t cut it! ‘The Mother’ looked at me in disgust and was thankful that we sat in the corner.

Unfortunately we didn’t have dessert, we were meeting some friends for drinks and didn’t have time! Will definitely have to come back that’s for sure.

It’s a great little restaurant, all the fond memories of this restaurant came back to me. Onde is located on Liverpool Street, off Victoria Street in Darlinghurst. If you haven’t been, go, you will not be disappointed! Great food, great service, great value – I would definitely recommend it.

GA’s ratings: 8 / 10

Onde Restaurant

346 Liverpool Street

Sydney 2010

Ph: +61 2 9331 8749