Have a delicious drop you’ve been wanting to share? Bring your own bottle of wine and join us for lunch or dinner on Monday, so you can savour your preferred vino with every delicious bite at to The Charles Brasserie.
Pair your favourite Champagne with our Signature caviar service or pour a bottle of Rioja red to match with our Spatchcock and foie gras pithivier. Ask our Sommeliers for the best dish to pair with your bottle and enjoy your evening with us in the Brasserie.
BYO has a corkage fee of $35 per bottle and is available in the Brasserie on Mondays only, for both lunch and dinner.
To book follow the button below or contact our reservations team on (02) 9145 8066
Our aged Wagyu cheeseburger is made with all the best ingredients from our perfectly cooked aged Wagyu beef patty, slices of melted emmental and comte cheese, onion and pickles, topped with mustard and tomato sauce and served on a brioche sesame seed bun.
Our Bar lunch special includes our aged wagyu cheeseburger and your choice of house wine, beer or soft drink for $25pp.
Optional add on of seared foie gras for $15.
Available from Monday to Saturday, 12pm-6pm. Walk-ins welcome.
When afternoon tea is in full flight under the lofty ceiling of The Charles, it’s a beautiful sight. A trolley roams the room, groaning with cakes, chocolate and macarons, and guests sip artisan tea from fine china as they load up scones with preserves and cream. In many ways, The Charles offers a very traditional take on the afternoon tea, a concept masterminded in the mid-19th century by Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, who would get peckish between lunch and her 8pm dinner. But in other ways, what head pastry chef Rhiann Mead and her team is doing is quite radical.
First, let’s backtrack – here in Australia we typically call this meal ‘high tea’. Yet in the UK, this betwixt-lunch-and-dinner feast is known as ‘afternoon tea’. So, what’s the difference? Traditionally, high tea was what the working classes in England might call dinner or supper (and it’s not unusual for many Australians to have grown up calling this meal ‘tea’). It was a filling meal of meat, carbs and, yes, tea, served after a long day of work. Still, scones, sandwiches and cakes scream ‘high tea’ to many down under.
“We didn’t want to restrict ourselves to the limited options of a standard high tea menu,” Mead says of The Charles’ decision to call the service afternoon tea. “Being a European brasserie, we have a much broader range to choose from, and we wanted the menu to reflect that.”
And Mead’s menu has a few items one definitely wouldn’t have seen on a Victorian-era high tea stand: unique takes on Kit-Kats, gummy bears and chocolate Flakes. “They’re beautifully refined and elegant, but also bring a sense of nostalgia,” she says. “They’re something you’d never see on an afternoon tea menu elsewhere.”
You probably also wouldn’t catch The Charles’ truly impressive honey cake on any other afternoon tea menus: it involves layer after layer (28 in total) of dulce de leche and honeycomb cake, making a spectacular crown for the dessert trolley.
Speaking of the dessert trolley: it’s a flourish you won’t see at any other afternoon (or high) tea in Sydney. It comes by each table after they’re served their scones and savouries, with diners invited to select from a bounty of sweets: the honey cake, tiramisu tarte, chocolates and macarons.
Some traditions, though, are never worth overthrowing. “You can’t have afternoon tea without scones!” says Mead, whose team bakes the classic every day. She also offers a practical answer to that old-age question: does the jam go first, or the cream?
“I’m a jam-first girl,” she says. “A scone will absorb more jam than it will cream, so it makes sense to do it in that order if you want to maximise your toppings!”
Afternoon Tea is available 12-5pm, 7 Days a week in The Charles Brasserie. Visit www.thecharles.sydney for more information
How did you get your start as a pastry chef? I didn’t really mean to get into
baking. I worked at Harrods Food Halls in London during my gap year before
starting physiotherapy at university. While I was there I saw all of the amazing
pastry creations and chocolates on display and I knew I needed to learn more.
I met one of the pastry chefs there and started hassling him everyday until he
agreed to let me do an apprenticeship with him.
What’s been the highlight of becoming head pastry chef at The Charles?
Curating the dessert trolley has been so fun. It was really exciting to have an
opportunity to do a la carte service as well as a trolley, because I feel like as
a pastry chef, you’re usually doing one of two things: either production for
a trolley or display, or service. At The Charles, I have the opportunity to do both.
You’ve created a magnificent dessert menu at The Charles. How do you decide which pastries to feature? The Charles is a grand European brasserie,
so I’ve done a lot of research on out-of-the-ordinary Eastern European desserts
from places like Poland or Russia.
Finally, what is your favourite thing to bake at home? At home I love making
things like dougnuts, croissants, or puff pastry. Things that have a particular
formula or process. It can be so therapeutic and soothing to create a dessert
with so many layers.
Our Director of Bars, Jonothan Carr takes us behind The Charles Bar which will be a destination for all-day beverages, from morning coffees to afternoon tipples with colleagues, and the perfect spot for a pre or post-cocktail when dining in the Grand Brasserie. The beverages menu will deliver classics that guests know and love with the highest level of polish and a few new favourites.
The Martini is a beverage synonymous with style and will be a focus of The Charles cocktail list. Arguably the world’s most recognised beverage partly due to Mr Bond (we prefer stirred if you were wondering), The Charles Bar will serve our Martini in a vessel not yet seen in Sydney. We are looking forward to sharing it with you!
Like most classic cocktails, its origins are a mystery though it is commonly believed to have evolved from a Martinez cocktail created during the gold rush in America. The Martini, as we know it, was first listed in Harry Johnson Bartenders Manual in 1888 featuring the ingredients Old Tom Gin, Sweet Vermouth, Curacao and Boker’s Bitters.
A far cry from the Dry Gin and Vodka Martinis currently in vogue, as palates have changed over the years, so too has the Martini. Old Tom Gin, a sweetened gin, has moved aside in favour of the London Dry style and a Dry Martini ruled from the early 1900s until vodka made its way out of Russia in the late 50s. The “Three Martini Lunch” shown on popular shows such as Mad Men harks back to a time when such things were less regulated as vodka didn’t show up on the breath of the ad men after long “business lunches”.
The Eighties did not do the classic Martini any favours, as the name Martini ended up being associated with all sorts of drinks, many which were bright and full of sugar. This changed during the classic cocktail revolution of the 2000’s, where Bartenders returned to the old cocktail books and revived the Martinez and Dry Gin Martini’s. Along the way olives became popular as an addition. The Dirty Martini is now ordered almost as much as a Dry Martini, showing that stirred-down solid drinks are genuinely back, and being enjoyed in classy environments such as The Charles Bar. We look forward to serving you soon at The Charles Bar.
Salmon en papillote, boeuf bourguignon, potatoes dauphinoise, bouillabaisse, duck pâté en croute – all synonymous with French cuisine. Although, none are quite as extravagant or spectacular as the classic French dish ‘canard à la presse’ – or pressed roasted duck.
A partially roasted duck is put into a heavy press to extract the blood and bone marrow. The juices are used to create a rich sauce that’s served with the breast and legs. Traditionally, the sauce is enriched with the duck’s ground liver, butter and Cognac.
Its origins date back to Paris in the 1800s and the best known is legendary restaurant La Tour d’ Argent where the dish is a signature and each duck since 1890 is numbered. Apparently, Charlie Chaplin ate duck 253,652; 112,151 went to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and Edward VII was served number 328 while still Prince of Wales.
The duck press itself is a large metal press on two or four, often webbed, heavy feet to keep it stable. A spout low down allows the liquid to be collected easily as the duck carcass is slowly pressed. They don’t come cheap – in 2016, a silver-plated press from Tour d’Argent fetched $65,000 while Anthony Bourdain’s personal duck press sold for $52,000.
While French cuisine has long celebrated old-fashioned cooking tools and methods and a focus on things that take time, culinary destinations across the world are embracing this approach once again. Duck press can be found in the kitchens of some of the world’s most exclusive Michelin-starred venues, from New York’s Daniel and Orchard Park restaurants to Marcel’s in Washington DC and Marchal in Copenhagen’s Hotel d’Angleterre.
Now, Sydney’s elegant, European-style grand brasserie and bar, The Charles, is honouring this French classic.
“The hallmark of a European brasserie is the house specialty,” explains Sebastien Lutaud, Director of Culinary. “At The Charles, ours is the ‘Canard à la Presse’, or whole dry-aged Maremma roasted and pressed duck. It takes around two weeks to make each dish, but it’s nothing short of splendid to eat.”
At The Charles, preparing the duck and glazing it with Valhrona Oabika (concentrated cocoa fruit juice) takes almost a day, then each duck is dry-aged for around 10 days in a custom-built room in the kitchen. Once ready, it’s quickly roasted at a very high heat to achieve caramelisation, crispy skin perfection and juicy meat.
The beautifully presented whole roast duck is carried to the diner’s table to showcase the duck before it is carved. Back in the kitchen, the duck breasts and legs are removed and the carcass cut in half lengthways. On the open kitchen pass, two extravagant copper-plated duck press take pride of place to create the superb sauce for this delightfully crispy roasted duck dish. The carcass is packed into the press and slowly compacted, resulting in an incredibly flavoursome liquid. To thicken, The Charles team stray a little from tradition and instead combine the liquid with a roast chicken jus gras. It’s sweetened with Pedro Ximenez and reduced to create this distinctly duck sauce.
Once plated, the finale takes place at the table, where the exquisite duck sauce is gently poured over the sliced and perfectly arranged duck breasts, served with tender confit duck legs.
“It certainly takes patience, but it’s no secret that some of the best and most delicious flavours take the longest to create,” reflects classically French-trained Executive Chef of The Charles, Billy Hannigan (Loulou Bistro; The Ledbury; Guillaume at Bennelong). “In its simplest form, we’re creating a roast duck sauce. It just this one is anything but simple.”
