Charlotte Bar & Bistro, McMahons Point review

I’m inclined to like Charlotte immediately, for two very simple reasons. One, it does a hearty spritz with my favorite 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 tasting. (And what is tasting, if not kaiseki?)

Japanese-owned Azabu, the group behind Choji Yakiniku and Kame House, have launched a very upscale French bistro in McMahons Point, catching up 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 frogs’ legs, for instance, they offer 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!

The signature dish is a play on beef 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.

You can’t have a French bistro without steak fries, 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 shaped sauce boat contains a rich, smooth mushroom sauce.

There are some wobbles. Charcuterie plate ($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).

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, joined and wallowing in a sprightly ravigote sauce ($95).

Desserts reads like Larousse Gastronomic, from chocolate mousse and praline tart, to mango Charlotte and baba au rhum. Apple pie ($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 natural oysters 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.