Restaurant News

Missy French, Sydney

Our restaurant critics' picks of the latest and best eats around the country right now.

By Pat Nourse
Our restaurant critics' picks of the latest and best eats around the country right now: Missy French, Sydney.
Maybe the expectations came from the name. Maybe it was the knowledge that the owner is all of 21 years old. Maybe it was the word that it was going to be a bistro. Whatever it was, the reality of Missy French is quite a lot fancier than what you may have had in mind. This is Josephine Perry's restaurant, but if you thought she might be opening a place of her own to strike out and do something dramatically different from the sort of thing her restaurateur-chef father, a reasonably well-known ponytailed bloke called Neil, might have done, think again. What we have instead is a polished creation that's very much a continuation of the family business. Grant Cheyne did the interiors, and they're just as carefully lit as Spice Temple (though much brighter). Rockpool Bar & Grill's Richard Healy wrote the tight, impressive half-French, half-Australian wine list. And chef Chris Benedet comes from Rockpool. Perry fille says the menu is a work in progress in the sense that they're trying to keep prices down to keep things feeling neighbourhoody. They've managed it with the $29 puffy, golden Pithiviers (pictured), a puff-pastry pork pie sitting on petits pois and veal jus like a fabulous luxed-up floater. The steaks seem priced a bit more CBD-banker than Potts Point gamine, the flat-iron (with Café de Paris butter) at $45, the sirloin (with Bordelaise) at $53. But the room is pretty and comfortable (barring the tables right by the door, which cop an icy blast every time it opens), Benedet's plates are tight, attractively composed and full-flavoured, the waiters welcoming, and Missy seems set to make friends fast.
Missy French, 22 Rockwall Cres, Potts Point, NSW, (02) 8599 4912. Open dinner daily.
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