Eating out: Fix St James with Tim 'Rosso' Ross

By Daisy Dumas
Updated August 5 2014 - 10:18am, first published July 27 2014 - 12:15am
A menu that means business: Fix St James.
A menu that means business: Fix St James.
Charming: Fix St James delivers more than its looks suggest. Photo: Wolter Peeters
Charming: Fix St James delivers more than its looks suggest. Photo: Wolter Peeters
Good vibes: Tim Ross likes a venue with a "Cheers-esque feeling". Photo: Wolter Peeters
Good vibes: Tim Ross likes a venue with a "Cheers-esque feeling". Photo: Wolter Peeters

WHO

Tim ‘Rosso’ Ross, Drive host for Sydney’s KIIS 1065 FM and Melbourne’s Mix101.1, from Hunters Hill.

WHY

“It’s a great city luncheon venue and when I was freelancing it was the best place for me to catch up with people mid-week – ‘Let’s go and drink and talk shit.’ As a result I put on a hell of a lot of weight and got a slight drinking problem.

"It’s got that Cheers-esque feeling: it’s all hugs and smiles, the booze is as good as the food, if not better. You don’t feel guilty if you go in there and give it a nudge. There’s always a bunch of lawyers in there having a serious conversation and there’s a couple of idiots like me from showbiz talking rubbish and swearing.”

WHAT

“I always leave wine choices to them, which is dangerous because they pick something expensive. They might have something open and they’ll suggest something – mostly reds and they always knock your socks off.

"Go to the Fix and you think: ‘I’ll only have two glasses of wine,’ and you end up having six, but they charge you for the the bottle rather than six glasses.

"I like places where you order and they say: ‘You need potatoes.’”

ABOUT

“I’m doing the drive show on Kiis, it’s going well. I’m continuing to tour my wonderful little show, Man About the House, about iconic modernist houses, and we’re just in the process of finding a couple more houses in Sydney where we can put on the show this year. We won a National Trust Heritage Award for the show’s commitment to preservation – we’re not just saving buildings that are 100 years old but those that are 40 and 50 years old as well. I have a passion for design.”

WHERE

Fix St James, 111 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, 9232 2767 fixstjames.com.au 

Starters $14-$20, mains $29-$42, desserts, $12-$14. $130 for two, plus drinks

3.5/5 stars

5 Winning fix

4 Get your fix

3 All fixed

2 Fix mix

1 Fixed match

MAIN

Rosso nails the prize for being the most spot-on of my recommendees thus far, nailing what makes this wine bar and restaurant so blindsidingly charming.

Fix St James really is a place where the wine list is both ferociously far-reaching and accessible; where the atmosphere is one of laid-back conviviality despite a high-flying and steady clientele from the legal fraternity, and where you feel the staff make no bones whether you order a glass of wine alone or turn lunch into tea, dinner and after-dinner drinks. Perhaps best of all, it all happens against a backdrop that suggests less than it delivers: I’ve walked past many a time without really registering its existence alongside a discount suit shop and office-block foyer. The interior isn’t a chichi fitout at eye-watering cost. It is, in the words of my dinner date, “like they’ve opened a bit earlier than they should have”.

They haven’t, of course, and the food and drinks are more than settled into the rhythm of an establishment that has been in full flow for nearly eight years.

There is no surprise that Rosso feels at home enough here to “give it a nudge”. At the front, a huge family table seats groups, and at the back, tables are just out-of-the-way enough to give assignations – legal or otherwise – the hush they need.

On a Monday night the main dining table was filled with a merry group who shared a massive platter of carved, pink lamb chops and bowls of veggies amid their five wine glasses apiece, giving the restaurant just enough ribaldry to suggest Mondays were the new Wednesdays.

Our wee portions of grilled salmon were beaten into something more hearty by the addition of a mound of crunchy chicken skin and an orb of quail yolk, and then freshened up with sweet fresh peas and their curling shoots. Pork belly – milky and translucent under a demure, crisp skin – was paired with Earl Grey but it was the paper-thin folds of fresh and dehydrated zapped cauliflower that gave it its edge.

Stuart Knox, The Sydney Morning Herald’s 2012 Sommelier of the Year, has put together a wine list that is a full 19 pages long, crammed with more than 200 wines. There are red, yellow, pink, amber, white and bubbly ones, including cameos from Long Island and Romania, and many are in the $45 bracket. Depending on whether it’s been a bad day in the chambers – the Supreme Court is just across the road – I’d take Rosso’s lead and let the staff steer the way.

My steak tartare was mild mannered and warmly seasoned, shot through with tarragon and minute flecks of alium. Its sides of cress, chips and Dijon-dressed salad leaves were winners, delivering me to a northern France minus only a Kronenbourg and an unsmiling waitress. Steaks of the cooked variety are taken very seriously, and beside the scotch fillet and tagliata of skirt steak, a chateaubriand with trimmings to share is yours for $105. Confit duck leg, salty and melting, leant on its caramelly, boozey prune jus and pancetta for contrast.

Chumpy’s apple crumble with malt ice-cream was too sweet for me (the cheese selection is grand and unapologetic for those without a sugary tooth), but who cares when its biscuity top also crackles and fizzes thanks to the magic inclusion of popping candy?

Fix’s menu means business and is treated with real care and attention, but also manages to be down to earth and plainly, simply good. It doesn’t huff and puff, nor does it want to. More modest than many, the accent here is on what’s on your plate, in your stemmed glass and on the bonhomie in the air.

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