Hartsyard, Newtown

Our latest visit to Newtown ended up with us dining at the famous Hartsyard restaurant which everyone seems to be talking about lately. The restaurant is a small North American inspired diner with many dishes from the region that have small twists added to them. The menu is split into two main sections, ‘Seed’ for the smaller dishes and ‘Feed’ for the larger dishes – three dishes is about right for two people.

The one dish I was really keen on trying was the Poutine – fried potato, short rib gravy, cheddar-beer sauce (above) which is a dish originating from Quebec, Canada. In essence it’s a pile of hot chips, gravy and melted cheese curds but Hartsyard has also added some beef to the dish which makes it much more hearty.

Surprisingly I had heard many good things about this salad from people who have dined here before. It was also recommended by the waitress so I took the plunge and ordered a salad – something which I normally never do at a restaurant because I’d rather have more meat 🙂 I was blown away by how good this was in the end with the dressing being the clear winner, it made the dish come together well and gave it an amazing taste.

I can never pass down a really good fried chicken so when I saw that the table next to us had a huge pile of delicious looking fried chicken I ordered it along with our other dishes. I’m still not quite sure why they served the buttermilk biscuit with the chicken but it turned out to be quite nice, especially when it was smothered in gravy. The fried chicken was quite tender and juicy and it went amazing with the chilli sauce that’s provided on all the tables which is quite similar to a mild peri peri sauce – we finished the whole bottle 🙂

I was very impressed with Hartsyard and how good the food was, especially for a relatively small and low profile restaurant. It’s not hard to see why getting a booking here is quite hard on Fridays and Saturdays as the prices are actually very good value (around $70~ for two) considering the quality of the food. The menu is also quite extensive so I’m very keen to come back to try the other dishes available.