By Daisy Dumas
Why I love this place
WHO Tim Blackwell, Nova FM presenter
WHERE Continental Deli Bar Bistro, Newtown
Continental Deli Bar Bistro in Newtown is typical Porteno-style cool.Credit: Michele Mossop
WHY "I've lived in Newtown for just over a year. As soon as I heard the Porteno boys are opening something up close to me, I thought: it would be very dangerous, for one, but also very good. When you walk in, this guy just stops what he's doing and says: `Welcome to the deli!'
"It's just really typical Porteno-style cool with a marble bar which is really old school. The staff are so friendly and really passionate. You don't have to be cool. You can feel cool because of their knowledge. I throw it open and leave it in their capable hands. You can pop in and grab something on the go, or do what I've been doing way too much: start with a beer and then just say to them, `Feed me'. They bring me all these weird and wonderful things on a toothpick – it's my favourite way of eating. Just throw it all in and ask questions later.
It's impossible to go wrong with the charcuterie plate (left), while a spoonful of floral jam brings things together on the cheese platter.Credit: Daniel Munoz
"You can go there and get salamis for your sandwiches at home and then start drinking. I have been living there since it opened – it's dangerous."
WHAT "They can their own stuff: pickles, creamed corn. They have these pickled mussels which are unbelievable, and great olives.
"I even remember at one stage drinking a London Calling cocktail and eating anchovies. That's perfectly acceptable there.
"Fish plate – basically it's whatever they've got going: tinned huge fat sardines, great anchovies, basically an olive with a bit of cheese in it. [It's] a world of fun from a tin on a plate. The charcuterie plate – you can't go wrong with that either.
Bread, cheeses and protein are the staples at Continental Deli Bar Bistro.Credit: Michele Mossop
"You can't leave without trying one of the mar-tinnies."
ABOUT "We love cooking at home. At this time of the year, a lamb shoulder on the barbecue with a Greek salad is my go-to. It takes 25 minutes. It's unbelievable.
Tim Blackwell, Nova FM presenter, has lived in Newtown for just over a year.
"It's a tough area to live in. There are so many cheap food options.
"Never have there been so many eyes on the drive-time shift. It keeps it very interesting. You can take it too seriously, and I realise what a non-serious job it is. Everyone's got their roles nailed, and we just get it done. I've started doing some presenting with Nine's Getaway. I went to Thailand to do a series of stories. That's exciting. I don't look anything like Jesinta Campbell does in a bikini, but it's good fun. We get pretty good holidays in radio, so I'm just going and doing things when I can get away, no pun intended."
Continental Deli Bar Bistro
210 Australia Street, Newtown
8624 3131, continentaldelicatessen.com.au
Cheeses, canned fish, cured meats, $9.50-$132. Dinner, $3-$35. Lunch $70 for two, plus drinks.
★★★★☆
News of the potential recession hasn't reached Australia Street. There, lovers of very fine and very distantly sourced seafood can buy 120 grams of Espinaler tinned tuna belly for $55, or another for $38. Canning may be the post-Pasteur king of steadfast and dependable preservation, but the compo format is not wholly without its glamour and princely price tag to match.
It's very good, but so it should be, being from the world's best canneries and imported to Sydney with no small effort. Hunks of little sucker-studded octopus legs in rich, deep-red oil gloop and drip over the potato crisps I reappropriate as spoons, leaving trails from the lozenge-shaped can of goodness and over the red-rimmed plate at Continental Deli Bar Bistro.
Atkins dieters, you might be in heaven. So might you, dude-food lovers, and you, drinkers with an eating habit in the style of the most civilised European all-night tapas artists (the Spanish, of course).
The small, spick-and-span, providore-sophisticated dining spot feels like stepping into a Barcelona tapaceria, complete with tiled floor, mirrored walls, banks of canned foods, hot sauce, hanging legs of air-dried and leathery-skinned cured pork, long ropes of garlic, wizened chorizo-esque snags and curling, dried chillis. Its long and slender bar is fabulously, meticulously kept, stocked and presented. I'm in Newtown, I think, but if I squint my eyes and take a deep noseful of the tawny, nutty dry sherry in my hand, I just might be in Bodegas Ricla late on a July evening.
So don't expect salad or fresh fripperies, besides bread, when you pop in to this 20-or-so-seat deli for a light lunch. It's animal fat, bread and protein and little else. By night, the guys who have stormed Sydney with Porteno have put together a menu that goes a lot further than a tapa and even extends to a couple of desserts, all set in the bar or the 1950s-style upstairs dining room.
By day, though, it's a cured meat, canned fish and cheese haven or heaven downstairs, with scores of all three to carry the devoted deli-goer from noon to dinnertime. We sample a wurst sandwich, filled with slivers of four different sausages, including a liverwurst and a beerwurst, packed with oily mayo into a big, soft bun. It is a cracker, alive with smokiness, fatty moreishness and a long history of meaty provenance. The care taken to deliver good quality is so distinguishable that it is an extra flavour, silently hanging at the end of the mouthful.
Our cheese platter has comte, white rind and blue cheeses, but I'm most taken by the spoonful of floral jam that takes the edge off and brings things nicely together with my glass of Leonor Palo Cortado sherry. My gran was onto something when she sipped her post-church midday sherry.
Mine was very much a daytime visit, so I will have to return for a go at the dinner menu with its steak tartare, deviled chicken, steak with greens, pasta and Waldorf salad. Oh, and the baked vacherin with smoked Polish sausage. I'll stop there.
Our orders took a while to be taken, and from there on in, service was straightforward and guided, as is my wont. Our waiter suggested most of our fare, and choosing the cheese plate hands the curation of a trio cheeses to the counter staff, which makes things even breezier.
One very un-Spanish addition to the scene was the airconditioning, but in a small room that is bound to occasionally build up a head of steam come a loud crowd on a muggy night, it's probably best for all, including neighbours. Next door, by the way, is the lovely 212 Blue, as included in this column not long ago.
Continental is not the best option for vegetarians or vegans, the owners will be the first to admit, but I'll be back for dinner and a Mar-tinnie, which does exactly what it says on the tin: a martini presented the way the troops would like it.