Restaurant Reviews

The Four In Hand Dining room has always been under the eye of the reviewer.
 

Below are some quotes from published reviews about the Four In Hand dining experience.

Terry Durack :SMH Food Living Feb 2010 (16/20)

"This feels like food that is making a point, not just sitting there. The kitchen is also more sustainable than most, with its use of cheeks, ears and bones. The chef also grows most of the flowers, herbs and small vegetables on the rooftop. It's a more refined version of nose-to-tail cookery than at that patron saint of offal and honesty, St John in London, and is all the better for it.

Above all, there is respect here for those who enjoy good, contemporary food and wine without any histrionics and who want somewhere small and civilised in which to appreciate them. I'll stop looking for things I don't like about it now. I don't think there are any.

Australian Gourmet Traveller 2009 Restaurant Guide.
Ranked 76 Best Restaurant in Australia

"This cosy dining room has long been one of Sydney's quiet achievers and continues to deliver a unique experience." 

" Service has always been a standout and continues to deliver as does the wide-ranging wine list with a strong Euro Bent."

Australian Gourmet Traveller 2009 Restaurant Guide.
Best Pub Dining
Combining Good Looks, an approachable front bar and very good value, The Four in Hand is probably the ne plus ultra of Sydney pub restaurants.

Page 42 Australian Gourmet Traveller 2009 Restaurant Guide

The Sun Herald : Feast 4th November 2007

"Pig’s Ear schnitzel isn’t a dish you bump into every day. It’s the perfect antidote to those doomsayers who say our pub menus are washed away and boring. Pig’s ear might not yet be hot and widespread in Sydney restaurants but it’s a prized ingredient in a fish-cheek kind of way."
...."Fergus Henderson, author of Nose To Tail Eating and London’s champion of the left-field cut, has a prized pressed pig’s ear recipe. Colin Fassnidge dishes up pig’s ear at the four In Hand with neck confit. Crisp schnitzel outer, moist middle and, er earily faint in pigginess, the dish hinges on its varying textures and piques of calvados jus and celeriac remoulade."...

..."his is a clever menu that lurches from simple food with a twist to dishes that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Banc itself."

"I like the small Four In Hand dining room. It doesn’t need or want a big named designer to make it over. It’s authentic, simple cosy, moodily lit but perhaps a little trying on the ear when the dinner reaches the crescendo. A painting of a giant squid peers down on punters tucking into a menu that’s surprisingly wide-reaching despite its compactness."

"A staff member explains that the Four In Hand name refers to four reins in a cart driver’s hands, which is also telling of the eating experience here. In a heartbeat, the food can lurch from French bistro to more tricked-up and technical food, yet the finery never overwhelms the feeling you’re still very much in a Sydney pub."
Words by: Scott Bolles
4th November 2007 

Surprise Packages                                                                      Jane Adams Unwraps her end-of-year dining favourites   (15 Sydney Restaurants were identified and the Four In Hand was one of them)

Four In Hand: This Paddington hostelry has to have the best corner pub restaurant in town. Chef Colin Fassnidge was Sydney's greatest secret, but the word is slowly spreading. Whatever your mood, it will improve after a meal here, especially early in the week when the ambient noise levels are lower. Relish everything including the "nose to tail" pork and daube of beef with poached bone marrow.                                                 
Issue 125 November   2007                                                                          

Good Food Guide 2008
"Irish-born Colin Fassnidge trained at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons and helped open Boxwood Café with Gordon Ramsey.  His menu here is small and well executed, composing French Bistro dishes with a sparky modern touch. The room is sleek yet inviting with square tables covered by crisp white tablecloths and comfy chocolate brown banquette seats"..... 
Score 14.5
~ Restaurant awarded "One Hat" - Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2008

the (sydney) magazine
Food Hall of Fame Dinner 15th October 2007

At its peak, Banc was one of Sydney's shinest stars. Now five years after its spectacular demise, the restaurant continues  to exert a powerful influence over our food culture.
The celebrated Martin Place fine diner was not only sexy, extravagant and glamorous but it also produced a generation of chefs who dominate the Sydney restaurant scene.
Graduates featured (from the left) Mathew Kemp (Restaurant Balzac), Warren Turnball (Assiette), Justin North (Becasse) and Colin Fassnidge (Four In Hand), who are hosted the event alongside Kirsten Galliot, editor of the (sydney) magazine, have collectively notched up six hats in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2008.
The Four Chefs reunited for the Food Hall of Fame dinner and prepared a dish each as well as two Banc Favourites.

Australian Gourmet Traveller 2008 Restaurant Guide.
Ranked 79

If you’ve been wondering, the four things they have in hand are food, wine, service and atmosphere- a set of variables even a good gastropub is lucky to have tamed half of.
This smallish, cosy but smart dining room is of a different breed. Colin Fassnidge is equally at home putting oomph in a little amuse-bouche of roast garlic and parmesan soup as he is in pulling off surprisingly delicate balancing acts with full flavours like those in the smoked eel and caramelised onion tart with beetroot relish and crème Fraiche. Little twists such as the crisp pigs’ ears that contrast a juicy roast pork fillet don’t go unappreciated, nor do considered desserts such as the dark chocolate delice with malted Pedro Ximenez ice cream. Add a small but richly varied wine list, managed by the dynamic Steven Whitbread, and caring service under Fassnidge’s partner Jane Hyland and you’ve got the full Package.   

Cuisine
food wine & good living
Jane Adams

News & Views

...."But if it's value you seek for your fixed-priced meal, look no further than the Four In Hand Bistro, Paddington, where unheralded talent, chef Colin Fassnidge, presents an eight course degustation menu for a remarkable $75."

Issue 123 July 2007

Cuisine
food wine & good living
Haute Cuisine

JANE ADAMS offers a different View on Views

"Four In Hand Bistro: Geraldine would be cross if my list was predictable. So here's one with a view- of a bar.It's a tiny bistro in a corner Paddington Pub where you will forgo musings on the bar scene as soon as Colin Fassnidge's food is set before you. He is one of Sydney's undiscovered cooking stars whose deft art and skill will thrill even the most discerning of palates. Choose his degustation."
105 Sutherland Street, Paddington, PH 02 9362-1999

Good Food Guide 2007
"You can sit at dark-wood chairs or the L-shaped banquette under a monstrous squid water colour and order from a wine list full of old-world gems and Aussie treasures."

"The food is delightful....."

The Sydney Morning Herald – Good Food Guide 2007

The Sun- Herald – Good Living
A Pub bistro delivers: The Menu is balanced, the Wine list is excellent.

Ex-Banc boy Collin Fassnidge moved over from Rozelle’s La Grande Bouffe and is cooking wonderfully.

Apart from the room’s big mirror and slatted black bistro chairs, you cant help but notice Luke Sciberra’s tremendous artwork and fret just a little.
Showing a knack for picking the right chef, The Four In Hand has a new face behind the pans. Colin Fassnidge proves he has the talent to maintain and perhaps enhance the pub’s already solid reputation.

Fassnidge’s rabbit terrine is terrific. Properly confited leg is pressed with roasted saddle meat and a hint of sautéed liver and kidney. Crisp minuscule cubes of belly meat add sparkle and juicy nubbins of corn loosen it so it’s not hearty or heart stopping.

Mathew Evans NOV 2005
15/20 The Sun- Herald – Good Living

The Sydney Magazine- Dish It Up

Scallops With escabeche salad at The Four In Hand.
All hail the local pub with the cute but not overly fancy dining room. All hail the arrival of Colin Fassnidge, a chef whose repect for ingridients reigns supreme.
A Dish of Fassnidge’s that really rocks is the scallops. Four sea scallops are seared and laid over a salad of sauteed onion, fennel and carrot dressed with olive oil and lemon. Mico leaves of shiso and chervil add pep and sparkle and take it to the next level.

Mathew Evans The Sydney Magazine Dish It Up

Australian Gourmet Pages
Colin Fassnidge, another ex-Banc boy and a very talented chef, runs the burners at this surprisingly stylish bistro.

Hidden in the backwaters of Paddington, this pub dining room is a gem, lots of dark wood, homely, with comfortable chairs, a terrific wine and spirits list, and good service lead by one of Sydney’s most knowledgeable sommeliers Steven Whitbread (he knows a good dram when he sees one, too!). This is a tightly run ship with the customers’ comfort and satisfaction being of foremost importance.

This is a delightful venue with terrific food, excellent service and outstanding value for money. It’s a real joy to be a guest at Four in Hand.

By Franz Scheurer Australian Gourmet Pages

"This feels like food that is making a point, not just sitting there. The kitchen is also more sustainable than most, with its use of cheeks, ears and bones. The chef also grows most of the flowers, herbs and small vegetables on the rooftop. It's a more refined version of nose-to-tail cookery than at that patron saint of offal and honesty, St John in London, and is all the better for it.

Above all, there is respect here for those who enjoy good, contemporary food and wine without any histrionics and who want somewhere small and civilised in which to appreciate them. I'll stop looking for things I don't like about it now. I don't think there are any."

Terry Durack SMH Good Living 22 Feb 2010 (16/20)

Sydney Morning Herald- Spectrum- 23rd June 2007

A champion team delivers bistro food that turns punters into winners and grinners.
My American friend is about to board her plane back to California. For her farewell dinner, I suggest good fish and chips, a cosy pub, a modernised interior and a fire.
She's in. We gather the male contingent (one) and head to the Four in Hand. What we haven't counted on is that so have loads of rugby-loving Paddingtonites.

They're cramming the bar with smoke and scarves and schooners raised to the huge televisions. Their worshipping, upturned faces are bathed in the glow of the screens. "Look, they're all watching football," says the sports neophyte. "That's not football," is the withering reply from the male contingent, "that's rugby".
They're also munching on chips and we're salivating.

There is nothing for it but to go around the corner and push open the dark wooden door under the scratched, gold lettered sign that says "dining room". You can see instantly this was where boarders and travellers in the early 20th century descended from their bedrooms for breakfast, lunch or dinner. The interior has been stripped back but retains its character with mellow floorboards and chocolate-timber trim. Despite the dominance of wood, the noise level is manageable.

Narrow mirrors above the tall banquettes hint at French bistro. In a more Australian vein, a glass pane in the corner frames a view of revellers at the bar. Nice not to feel cut-off from the action on the field.
A huge mirror at one end of the cosy space (barely 40 seats) and sash windows at the other end, with candles flickering on the sills, complete the picture. Oh, except for the huge, wall-length, watercolour of a squid. Don't worry, it's prettier than it sounds.
Candles also glimmer behind the bottles ranged on the waiters' station where our maitresse d' checks her book and finds a table downstairs for us. The Four in Hand Bistro is a rarity, a top eating place that is open on a Sunday night. That's why families are having birthdays and couples are being romantic and young urbanites are treating their parents from out of town.
We settle down to read a manageable, well-balanced account of five entrees, five main courses, four desserts (including cheese) and a special. A wine list with a bent to boutique Australian, good-value French and interesting Hispanic drops also has a choice wine-by-the-glass selection for the minimalist drinker.

First a demitasse, unannounced, of creamy onion and potato soup to perk up the palate. Then our entrees. Everything looks like a painting and is flavoured robustly. Provincial with panache, bistro with elan.
The thin neat rows of white anchovies, roast red peppers and confit tomato are as delicate and individually discernible as the lines on an Emily Kngwarreye canvas. Just as pretty is the big pink cube of seared house-smoked salmon, partnered with a veal sweetbread and sherry-infused carrot. The calzone is a half moon of crimped and crisped pastry plump with mild sweet smoked eel, offset with a tangy little dice of beetroot relish and dollop of creme fraiche. Apart from wishing for a lighter, tangier creme fraiche, the combination is perfect.
By now, it's apparent that there's a lot of play on the plate but not so it distracts you from the main game. The beef daube, despite the cute little brussel sprouts peeking out from smooth parsnip puree and the tiny stack of potato slices topped with horseradish cream, is all about the shreds of slow-cooked meat.
The pink pork fillets have crisp ears and braised neck for texture and extra body (in fact, some more pig bits and the entire animal would be there). But they and the little lemon thyme gnocchi (almost a dish in their own right) are there to complement the roast meat. It's the same with the roasted ocean trout in its bouillabaisse-like broth of mussels, fennel and sorrel.

The chef, Colin Fassnidge (ex-Banc and est.), shapes his ingredients into more than the sum of the parts. They are not a bunch of individuals spinning off in all directions. As they say, a champion team will always beat a team of champions.

It's past our appointed final siren and no one has suggested we do anything but have dessert. They are a stupendous final stanza. The chestnut parfait and quince sorbet is one of the most sensational pairings in years. The witty chocolate delice is a tour de force tournament with two balls: dark, luscious ganache rolled in almonds and malty, sherried ice-cream. No wonder the blokes wandering past lick the windows and grin.

DIGEST

Food
Provincial with panache served bistro style with elan. Colin Fassnidge is a cooking star in the style of Panaroma's Sean Moran.
Service
Patient, to the point of pleasing the foreign guest with multiple tastings of wine until she was happy.
Atmosphere
Dark wood, flickering candles, white tablecloths, bistro mirrors, small room, view to the bar. Pure Aussie chic.

 Helen Greenwood