Restaurant Review: The Falconer, Darlinghurst

Easter Monday brought the opportunity to visit another place on my to do list The Falconer on Oxford St.

How to describe The Falconer? The glass cake counter in the window and café style tables just inside the door could be European. The booths further back initially made me think of America. But the place isn't European or American, it has a distinctly breezy Australian style.

The music is provided by old school records on vinyl. I haven't seen that in a long time.

The blog that inspired me to visit The Falconer put it best when Lee Tran said "Every TV show has a perfect hangout - the kind of place where characters linger forever and never get shooed by wait staff ...... That place has somehow escaped a soundstage and become a real-life destination. And it's called The Falconer." How can you not visit after an introduction like that?

I ordered the orecchiette with braised Hillside lamb ragu, Sicilian olives, eshallots and tomatoes. The pasta was very rich. Without any obvious cream in the sauce I dread to think how much butter was used! Fat is flavour, as they say, and it sure tasted good. It looks like a small portion of lamb, but there was lots of meat nestling underneath the pasta.

Bar Zini in Pyrmont serves the best pasta I've tasted in Sydney, but this comes a close second. The sauce was on a par, but the pasta wasn't al dente enough.

Marlina ordered the Shashouka – baked eggs with capsicum, chorizo, tomato & za’atar toast. Check out the size of that piece of toast! It took up almost half the plate and was definitely bigger than the baked eggs. As I often find with baked eggs the tomato sauce was flat, with flavour coming from the chorizo, but not a lot beyond that. Everywhere seems to struggle to live up to Clover's hot pot.

There was a really nice vibe about The Falconer. The staff were genuinely warm. I'd like to return in the evening to see how the atmosphere changes and if you really can stay for hours without being shooed away.....