Barhop: Kagura

Kagura

Address 84 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills, 02 9212 1981

Open Tues-Sat 12pm-3pm, 6pm-11pm; Sun 12pm-6pm.

Does Sydney need another izakaya bar selling fried chicken and beer? Probably not. My stars, I'm happy this one exists though.

Kagura has been open as a restaurant on the leafy part of Foveaux Street for a few months, but only recently has it started trading as the small bar it always wanted to be. We visit early on a Tuesday evening and the only other customers are two middle-aged gentlemen sitting at the head of the bar and wearing turbans. In front of them is a large, wooden box that we figure is either an eight-track player or charcoal grill from the 1970s (turns out it's actually a deep-fryer used for $2 tofu balls).

At the helm of Kagura is Flynn McLennan, nice guy with a square jaw who cut his teeth at Zeta Bar. The bar's canopy of paper cranes is all his doing ("I can fold one between Town Hall and Central") and tonight he's trying to smoke a cocktail but the hand-held smoker is on the fritz.

"Yoshi, do have any spare batteries?" he calls out to Kagura's sushi chef who also trains at the boxing gym next door and fights at a weight of 64 kilograms. Yoshi hands over a couple of AAs and returns to pummelling wagyu with the force of Thor's hammer.

"He skipped training today and I think he's taking his aggression out on the meat," says McLennan.

McLennan is maple-smoking an original creation called Youth of the Beast ($20). It's something of a tequila old fashioned with 123 Organic Reposado, chipotle liqueur and tangerine bitters. Unfortunately the end result isn't as powerful or delicious as it sounds, with, as a mate suggests, "too much top and bottom, not enough middle".

I'm happier with a rum and plum Blazer ($20); a mix of Dictador 12-year rum, Amaro Montenegro and plum wine with cinnamon, orange and star anise in the distance. It works surprisingly well with the the excellent house-smoked salmon on a sashimi platter ($25 a person).

There's a collection of half-crushed Sapporo cans above the grill and we ask what the story is. McLennan says he used to run a game where if a punter could crush a finished can of the $11 beer with their bare hands, it was on the house. Although the imported cans are likely made from submarine scrap metal, turns out it's not financially sound to offer such an incentive when boxers and line fisherman frequent your boozer.

Besides Sapporo and rum, the bar is stocked with a snappy selection of sake and izakaya whisky favourites Suntory, Nikka and Yamazaki. I could (and will) come back here and get to know them better with bowl of chicken karaage ($14) and more not-bad yakitori ($4 a chicken stick). I'll also be returning for periwinkles ($12) and a short, natural-leaning list put together by Bentley sommelier Ged Higgins.

However, even if it stopped selling natural wine with sloshed donkeys on the label and ox-tongue on sticks, I'd still return to Kagura for more stories of boxing and line fisherman and McLennan's collection of antique Riccadonna bottles (yep). This is the kind of quaint, cute, slightly weird place Sydney can never have enough of.

Go for… chawanmushi and a chinwag.

Stay for… a glass of something fun, fresh and French.

Drink… a rum and plum Blazer.

And… there's outdoor fish and pork smoking sessions on Sunday afternoons.