OPENINGS
LONG
CHIM
SYDNEY
J
ames Connolly, who looks after Long Chim Perth’s bar, and Keegan Hartslief, bar manager for Long Chim Sydney, are both looking forward to expanding the cocktail menu at the freshly opened Sydney restaurant and bar. The opening menu features a few classics from the Long Chim Perth list, which has been developed over the last 10 months, like the Thai Basil smash (gin, Thai basil, chilli and lime) and the Tropic Thunder (rum, pineapple, passionfruit and burnt orange). As the dust settles on the anticipated opening Hartslief and the team will develop their own recipes, helping to create a “whole recipe book to choose from across all the Long Chims” according to Connolly. “There are a few interesting ideas I want to play around with and put my own spin on,” says Hartslief. “I’ve had experience in Thai restaurants before and I’m hoping to work alongside the chefs a lot more. The wine list is so geared to what the food is like and the drinks are like that too – very different to the cocktails you get in other venues. Chefs’ taste profiles are a little bit different to what we’re used to in bars so you can learn a lot.” Connolly points out that a lot of wine drinkers have been impressed by the cocktails and how well they match with the food. “We always try and use Thai ingredients where we can and there are new spirits coming out of Thailand all the time, it’s like a burgeoning craft spirits industry over there and I make people bring them back from Bangkok. We have lots of people on the ground,” he says. He adds that, if Perth is anything to go by, the wine and cocktail menus will be an even split revenue-wise. “At the end of the day we have to remember that everything we do revolves around David Thompson’s food,” Connolly says. With that in mind, the wine list has been put together by Greg Plowes who was the head sommelier at Tetsuya’s and also at Nahm, Thompson’s restaurant in Bangkok. “So for the last 10 years he has been working with wine and Asian food, so what he doesn’t know about it, isn’t worth knowing,” says Connolly. “It’s an eclectic list – a few from NSW, Canberra, Yarra Valley, WA, then some French, German and Italian. Everything is geared toward the food but drinkable on their own too.” Long Chim also has its own beer that is made for it at Indian Ocean Brewing in WA. “It’s called Little Red Fish, and it’s a Kolsch-style beer that contains about half the amount of salt as a Gose,” says Connolly. “And they throw in roasted coriander seeds and lemongrass, then it uses Equinox and Melba hops, in the kettle and dry hopped. The salt content makes you realise how sweet some beers are, so it’s quite savoury and quite moreish.” The back bar customisation continues with an Americano collaboration with the team at Maidenii. Built on a gentian base, with Riesling and Viognier wines for texture, the Long Chim Americano features star anise, chilli, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, and a dose of salt. Connolly says they’re also in the midst of working on a gin with the team at Hippocampus that should be ready soon.
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