This club with a killer verandah is serving pub classics from an old-school chippy

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Get in the car, roll down the windows and drive south. Let the sea breeze flow in as you track down the escarpment, snake along Sea Cliff Bridge, pull into Coledale and join the line at Rosie’s Fish & Chips.

It’s hot out and the fryer’s bubbling. Behind the counter, Ben Sinfield slips fillets of flathead into yeasted batter aerated with Principle beer and soda water, then drops it into shimmering beef tallow. The coating puffs and crackles, hardening into an amber crust. In the next fryer, the chips – peeled and cut from the boxes of potatoes piled up outside – go in for a second dunk.

The package is wrapped in paper, there’s lemon, dill-flecked tartare and Sarson’s malt vinegar to cut the fat, and as you tear it open and take that first crunching bite you think to yourself: this is summer.

Even in the depths of winter, Sinfield and partner Tania Ho’s shop cuts through like a ray of sun through rolling cloud, bringing up childhood memories of warm nights, bare feet, endless holidays. Food can do that, and that’s before you get to the octopus and 𝄒nduja croquettes and chip butties.

But here’s another question: what would happen if the pair decided to go into league with the local RSL, expanding their repertoire to pub classics? Turns out that since July, up the road, we’ve had the answer. And at the Coledale RSL, they’re giving all the staples you’d expect – schnitzels, pies, even fish and chips – the same care and attention.

Joining Ho and Sinfield (who also run Rosebery’s Banh Xeo Bar) is head chef Rob Doll, who Sinfield met when they were both teenagers learning to cook in London. Sinfield went on to work at St. John Bread and Wine. Doll went to The Ritz and The Savoy, before coming to Sydney to work at LuMi and Cafe Paci before quitting the city and moving south.

The genre is everyday, but they’re not settling. Parmigiana sees chicken breast marinated in buttermilk, crumbed in smashed up cornflakes then fried crisp. The ham comes from the local butcher, the cheese is a stretchy sauce of parmesan, mozzarella and provolone, the tomato is a roasted sugo. Creamy mash and a bouquet of peppery rocket ride shotgun.

Order a caesar salad, and it’s a restrained plate of cos lettuce strewn with dark, fat croutons, crisped pancetta, a few good anchovies, a few blobs of dressing and a rasp of parmesan. Order onion rings and they’re soaked to blunt the sharpness, then fried in beer batter till shatteringly crisp.

This is them hitting the RSL’s brief, but this isn’t any club. In 2022, the doors were shut, with liquidation on the cards. The past three years, though, have seen it sell off (some, not all) pokie licences, and reopen under a volunteer-run model, with more than 80 locals pitching in to restore the place and keep the doors open.

Apart from some cute historical paraphernalia, the insides are nothing special, but the seafoam green exterior is strung with lights, the verandah has views to the bush, and manager David Lynch (no relation) has taught everyone from veterans to students to pull schooners of Rooster “Cold-ale” brewed by Willie the Boatman and named for one of the club’s oldest members, who’s come here since Coledale was a cloistered coalmining and steelworks village.

Line up for the Bistro, and odds are a cheery, chatty Rosie’s employee will take your order. It’s pick-up by buzzer, there’s self-serve chicken salt, but it’s all a level up, and the dishes gracing the blackboard and the things that aren’t pub classics show it, too.

A bluefin tuna steak cut from a whole fish supplied by Craig Lukey of Soueast Seafoods in Ulladulla is charred then simply dressed with brown butter, fried capers and pickled cucumbers. That same butter, but with fresh herbs and nasturtiums, makes it onto a whole lemon sole, the skin crisped up, the flesh easing from the bone.

They’re doing marrow-bones as pie chimneys, and even if the chicken veers dry in a filling flavoured with leek and tarragon, the mustard cream sauce keeps things juicy. Steak? They have it, but the rump’s on the tougher side, without much flavour in the meat – give the wagyu rib-eye for two a whirl if you want more intramuscular fat. And yes, it comes with their chips.

Sticky toffee pudding with Millers gelato from Bulli has given way to apricot frangipane tart now the weather’s warmed up. The leather-clad bikers mulling the prices? They’re back with mates for lunch. Ho has already managed to slip a wine from Aristotelis Ke Anthoula in Pambula onto the menu, along with a natural rosé from Burgenland. It’s only a matter of time before she’s got them on the pet nat.

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