Was it the Olympics? Was it a desire for classic, comforting dishes in wild times? Was French cuisine just, randomly, due for a resurgence? Whatever the reason is, it’s another week in Sydney, and another new French restaurant has stepped up to the plate. But this one is un petit peu différent.
Ennui has just opened in the CBD. It’s a restaurant by a trio of hospo pros – Thomas Bromwich, Samuel Woods and Peter Chan. Bromwich and Woods met while working at Sydney wine bar institution Love, Tilly Devine. It was there, working alongside one another, that they envisioned the venue they would open together one day. It would be a small, 30-seat tightly packed wine bar – maybe in the inner ’burbs.
But sometimes, life gives you a 178-year-old two-storey sandstone building in the CBD instead.
“We came down and saw that it was about four times bigger than what we’d been looking at doing,” says chef and co-owner Thomas Bromwich. “So all of a sudden we had to make a very quick decision about whether or not this was an opportunity we would pass on and regret for the rest of our lives – or whether to take it on and throw absolutely everything we had at it.”
“I think you can tell what we decided on.”
And you can’t really blame them. Leases for spots like this don’t grow on trees. It’s a beautiful heritage building from 1846, right by the Capitol Theatre, that you look at and just think: French, this would be a good place to eat French food in.
So that’s what Bromwich, Woods and Chan did. Except they didn’t do that at all.
The menu at Ennui isn’t really French, so much as it uses the cuisine’s classic ingredients, techniques, and basic elements as jumping-off points for something a little more local and reflective of its owners’ backgrounds. Woods is half-Thai, and grew up in his family’s Thai restaurant, before going to work front-and-back-of-house around the world – including time as the manager over at the Bentley Group’s Yellow. Bromwich, in addition to being Love Tilly Devine’s chef, also worked in the kitchens of Tasmania’s Stillwater and Hartsyard, in Sydney.
So yes, there’s a steak tartare, but here you’ll find it laced with seaweed. And yes, there’s an oyster with Champagne sauce, but it comes topped with tobiko – flying fish roe that’s more common on sushi. The recipe for the crisp chicken wings is ripped almost verbatim from Woods’ family Thai restaurant. Snapper and prawn dumplings? Not French, but they were too fun not to invite to the party. But some dishes were too hallowed to mess around with too much – the steak frites is just a classic steak frites.
“Wherever you are in the world, the style and structure of cooking is so heavily influenced by French food,” says Woods. “So we’re not French chefs, but we have to acknowledge its influence – that said, there’s a lot of Asian influence in my cooking, so if I just cook French food, I’ll be ignoring my background and my history.”
That approach is typified by what’s sure to be Ennui’s signature dish: Duck Ennui, which asks, what would happen if you combined Peking Duck with duck à l’orange? It’s a very good question.
It’s all complemented adeptly by a confident, lively wine list – featuring delegates from around Europe and Australia – as well as a fun range of signature cocktails and rare whiskies.
Upstairs, downstairs, quick snack, long lunch, pre-or-post-theatre meal – Ennui is determined to let you enjoy its space in comfort, in whatever way you’d like to use it. From the outside it looks prim and elegant but inside, it’s warm, textured, intimate and conspiratorial. Even though it’s about four times the size of what Woods and Bromwich originally planned, the nucleus of the small wine bar they originally wanted – a place where you can linger – is plain to see.
We want to welcome people in and show them a good time, if they want to hang around and enjoy it here, than that’s what we’re here for,” Bromwich says. “I want to provide someone walking into this building with a comfortable, restorative, relaxed and fun experience, where you’re not worried about when you have to leave.”
Ennui is now open and ready for bookings.
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