This sun-splashed Mexican rooftop is perfect for long, margarita-charged lunches

The Age

4 days ago

Perched on the new Eve Hotel at Redfern's Wunderlich Lane precinct, Lottie is one of the swishest spots to sweet up guacamole, grilled Sinaloa-style chicken and pork jowl with a cola-flavoured mole.
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I can't say if Lottie serves the best Mexican food in Australia, but it is, by some margin, the swishest spot to load up on guacamole I've encountered outside the Americas. Terrazzo floors. Textured, blush-pink travertine walls. Pops of red ochre and orange through the tabletops, banquette and coasters. Succulents frame the skyline and there's a retractable ceiling that can't welcome summer soon enough.
It's on the rooftop of the equally swish Eve Hotel, which opened in February at Redfern's Wunderlich Lane precinct (that $500 million, mixed-use, brick development on the Surry Hills border). If you sit on the side of Lottie that has a view of Sydney Football Stadium, you'll also have a sight-line to the giant, Bond-villain doorway leading to Eve's rooftop pool.
Only hotel guests can access the pool and, on a sunny winter afternoon, a few of them do. One patron forces a smile in our table's direction that reminds me of an old Jerry Seinfeld stand-up bit, the one about the stewardess giving a look to economy passengers while closing the first-class curtain. A look that says, 'Maybe if you had worked a little harder ...' Rooms cost upwards of $500 if you want the privilege of drinking one of Lottie's (very good) cocktails with your toes in the water. The rest of us will be at the bar.
I'm not sure how I feel about such a luxury development operating in a suburb where longtime residents have been pushed out due to redevelopment and soaring rents. An essay for the Herald 's opinion pages some other time. For the purposes of this column, however, I'll say that I like many of Lottie's dishes an awful lot and Mexican-born chef Joe Valero is a talent.
One of the best, three-bite snacks I've had all year is Valero's version of a sope (it's like a chubby, fried tortilla) made with featherlight potato rather than masa flour. He tops it with kangaroo tail cooked for six hours in a stock of its own bones and a combination of dried-chilli varieties to balance smoke, tang, sweetness and heat.
Liquid & Larder is the hospitality business running Lottie, plus Bar Julius (classic drinks, all-day dining, beautiful fit-out, would recommend) on the Eve Hotel's ground floor. While the group's CBD steak joints, Bistecca and The Gidley, are invariably packed with blokes, the Lottie clientele was 90 per cent women the other week. Is there a law against men eating together in nice Mexican restaurants? What's going on, my dudes? There's steak here, too!
Butter-soft rib-eye, specifically, topped with a herbal, charred salsa of tomatillo, jalapenos and shiso. It's one of six large plates designed to be eaten with warm, textured corn tortillas on the side ($1.50 each – load up). Grilled Sinaloa-style chicken is marinated in a spice paste fruity with ancho chillis and dressed in a coriander-heavy aji verde with burnt lime. Vibrant, citrusy stuff.
Goat from a farm just outside Orange is marinated, cooked whole and shredded for the barbacoa, a submissive tangle of meat with caramelised crust and a soft punch from apple cider vinegar. Pair it one of the dozens of tequilas and mezcals on offer, or something red and earthy from the short-but-powerful wine list. There's usually someone on hand you can chat with about booze, and for the lighter dishes our waiter recommends a Chilean wine made from the moscatel de Alejandria grape he describes as 'like eucalyptus beurre blanc'. Sold.
You'll also want a half-serve of the pork jowl with a cola-flavoured mole sauce deep enough to get lost in. It's one of the few dishes that remain from Lottie's opening menu (Valero was only appointed head chef in May), along with the ceviche-like aguachile with snappy, raw prawns and pickled carrots. I was half-tempted to shoot its laser-sharp, leftover liquor, dotted with prawn oil, like a 19th-century health tonic.
Word to the wise: avoid the basement-level car park, at least on a Sunday afternoon. It was an epic poem to find a spot two weekends ago, a drawn-out battle with locals shopping at Wunderlich Lane's Harris Farm. Eve Hotel guests have their own parking spots, but again, that will be upwards of $500 for the privilege.