Pub food without the grub
Tona Inthavong outside the revamped gastropub's new Green Peppercorn restaurant at Fairfield.
Picture: Sam Ruttyn Source: The Daily Telegraph
This time last year, the Fairfield Hotel was such a hotbed of disorder that the local police wanted to close it down.
So, looking for a way to turn things around, new owner Campbell Rogers approached local restaurateur Tona Inthavong with an idea. His view was that they could lift the pub out of the ordinary by creating one of Sydney's best Thai restaurants, right inside the hotel.
"We bought the Fairfield Hotel 12 months ago and it was in a pretty dire state - the reputation the hotel had was shocking," Mr Rogers said. "But we believed the hotel had a lot of potential and we wanted to bring it a bit of class."
After almost a year of planning, the result is the newly opened Green Peppercorn, an impressive, 120-seat restaurant featuring high-quality Thai-Laos cuisine served in a dining room that would rival many in the CBD.
"The reaction has been brilliant - people are loving it," Mr Rogers said. "On our first Friday night we did 250 covers, on the Saturday 300 and 275 on Sunday. That was just our first weekend. There were already queues out the door."The Fairfield Hotel might seem like a story of remarkable transformation, but all over Sydney, once dingy hotels are being converted into gastropubs as savvy hoteliers look to capture a burgeoning market for upmarket pub food.
The publicly listed Lantern Hotels group, for instance, is undertaking major renovations of three western Sydney hotels, stripping back gaming and drinking lounges and installing dining rooms.
Two of the three - the Ambarvale Hotel at Ambarvale and Uncle Buck's Tavern at Mount Druitt - will open in time for Melbourne Cup, while the El Toro at Liverpool will open before Christmas.
The group is also restoring the dining at Sydenham's General Gordon Hotel and the Dolphin Hotel in Surry Hills.
"We're renovating all of them and the emphasis will be on very high quality and consistency, because a lot of pubs previously have been very inconsistent with food," said Bob Tate.
Mr Tate has had a long connection with Sydney pubs, having part-owned the Clovelly Hotel and Bondi's Ravesi's, but said Sydney's west was the new frontier for pubs.
"The market there is demanding an equal standing and my intention is to provide exactly the same food and the same quality (across the city)," he said.
The inner city is also set for a new wave of pubs to reopen with new dining rooms. The Keystone Group, which already owns several successful gastropubs, is reopening the Newtown Hotel in October with a new restaurant called Animal. At nearby Erskineville, independent operators Graham Thompson and chef Gavin Gray are renovating the Kurrajong with a beautiful upstairs dining room.
Jaime Wirth, who is part of a consortium that has renovated derelict inner-city pubs including the Norfolk, the Abercrombie and the Carrington, said pubs were becoming popular dining destinations because they offer fun dining alternatives to restaurants.
Source: Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2012
