Where’s Nick was always a good place to drink wine, but now it’s an excellent one

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Welcome to the year of the wine bar. “But wine bars have been around for decades,” I hear you say. “What’s the next big thing – sushi? Sliced bread?” True, there have been wine bars in Sydney since Len Evans opened Bulletin Place in the late ’60s, but we’re about to see a great deal more of them.

Flexibility is key in 2023, whether you’re working from home, streaming Succession, or hitting the Peloton for a late-night personalised cardio session. And wine bars, with their chalkboard menus of small plates and by-the-glass options, tend to offer flexibility in spades.

After some olives and a quick exit in case of first-date emergency? Down for a safe space where cheese can be classified as dinner? Up for a three-bottle lunch of snacky European things like beignets, parfait and blistered peppers? “Hey, let’s check out that new wine bar!”

Mind you, Where’s Nick isn’t new. Brothers Julian and Dominic Abouzeid opened the joint in an old Marrickville Road cake shop in 2017. (The name comes from a third brother, Nick, who’s not directly involved.) It’s a friendly bolthole for catch-ups, with a hotchpotch of furniture influenced more by local thrift stores than current trends and Koskela.

Where’s Nick was also a good place to drink wine until 2020, when sommelier Bridget Raffal left Stanmore’s three-hatted Sixpenny to become a co-owner of Where’s Nick and essentially run the show. Now it’s an excellent place to drink wine.

There’s a long list featuring plenty of dry rosé, Southern Rhone grenache, Australian chardonnay and Old World rarities. Bottle prices range from $55 for a 2017 Elm “Bomba” white blend from Heathcote, Victoria, to $1100 for a 2013 Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Millesime grower champagne.

And yes, there’s a lot of “natural” stuff made with minimal interference. I know many seasoned drinkers who baulk at natural wine. “Too much volatile acidity and farmyard funk!” they howl.

But those wild, off-piste attributes are making wine fans out of Millennials in a way that “traditional” brands (Wolf Blass and Penfolds, say) can only dream of. It’s not a coincidence that natural winemaking and wine bars have grown in popularity together.

Chef Leila Khazma has led Where’s Nick’s tiny kitchen since January, and the food often feels like something you might eat for dinner at the house of an old friend. The kind of friend who owns a well-thumbed copy of Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food and counts down the days to quince season.

Bright and crunchy radishes are sliced in half and liberally dolloped with house-made labne ($6 each). Anchovies are draped across crostinis glistening with preserved-lemon butter ($6 each).

Raffal offers to divide a sorrel oil-licked vichyssoise ($20) across two bowls, and the chilled potato and leek soup is perfect for one of those April days when the weather doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.

And this year I am yet to taste anything as unapologetically beefy as Khazma’s carpaccio of garnet-red fillet steak in a pool of salmoriglio – Sicily’s garlicky sauce of olive oil, lemon and oregano ($30).

The meat is already top-notch gear, sourced from Marrickville’s Whole Beast Butchery, and the young chef amplifies the flavour with silky bone-marrow aioli. Terrific, of course, with a slab of crusty house-baked focaccia ($6).

The food often feels like something you might eat for dinner at the house of an old friend.

Khazma’s pizza oven is her most valuable player, roasting a fennel seed-speckled farinata (chickpea pancake) into crunchy-edged golden discs for $6 a pop. Grab one to soak up the herby oils of a submissive braised artichoke, stuffed Roman-style with chilli, garlic and walnuts ($18).

Meanwhile, baked kibbeh ($18) is a warm embrace of Khazma’s Egyptian-Lebanese heritage – a hunky, rustic slice of minced lamb and medieval spices.

Confit duck leg ($28) is drier than it ought to be, especially in comparison to the kibbeh, but I could eat its accompanying roasted, fleshy blood plums all day.

There’s more blood-plum action baked into a rum baba cake ($12) that’s buttery and light like brioche, served with real-deal cream that grips the back of your spoon. We pair it with a lush Noah’s Mill Kentucky Bourbon ($18) that’s all prunes and spice and autumn afternoons.

There are wine bars in Sydney, such as Monopole in the CBD, with deeper cellars and more composed food, but I can’t think of one that’s more convivial. With Khazma on the pans, and plans for house-made charcuterie and more back-vintage wines, it seems that after six years, Where’s Nick is just getting started.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine