Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
What happens when three-hatted Sixpenny partners with trailblazing Baba’s Place to relaunch Randwick’s Corner 75? Sunflowers, scones and chicken dumpling soup.
Scott Bolles
1 / 20Corner 75 has reopened after a respectful makeover on Frenchmans Road, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
2 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
3 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
4 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
5 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
6 / 20Sunflower plate. WOLTER PEETERS
7 / 20LP’s pork and paprika sausage with condiments.WOLTER PEETERS
8 / 20Roast Sommerlad chicken with paprikash sauce.WOLTER PEETERS
9 / 20Chicken soup with semolina dumplings.WOLTER PEETERS
10 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
11 / 20Pork schnitzel.WOLTER PEETERS
12 / 20Langos and house-made sour cream.WOLTER PEETERS
13 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
14 / 20Head chef Carley Scheidegger.WOLTER PEETERS
15 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
16 / 20Hungarian-style beetroot. WOLTER PEETERS
17 / 20Bullhorn peppers and sauerkraut.WOLTER PEETERS
18 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
19 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
20 / 20Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
When two of Sydney’s hottest restaurant teams recently announced they would embark together on a central European food odyssey, the collaboration was surprising.
Good Food revealed in November that Marrickville’s newly hatted Baba’s Place had partnered with chef Dan Puskas, from Stanmore fine-diner Sixpenny, to work on a then-confidential project that tapped into the latter’s Hungarian heritage.
From left, chef Carley Scheidegger and co-owners Alex Kelly and Dan Puskas.WOLTER PEETERS
Now the two venues have unveiled the sympathetic revamp they’ve given the food and decor at Randwick’s four-decade-old Corner 75 Hungarian restaurant. The March 6 launch is one of the most anticipated openings of the year.
The flouncy lace half-curtains that drape the time-capsule dining room remain on the Corner 75 shopfront. Framed photos of famous Hungarians are back, and some fittings and decorative details reinstated as they were when Bob Hawke was in office.
Baba’s Place co-owner Alex Kelly can’t accurately pinpoint how long the Hungarian restaurant has resided at 75 Frenchmans Road. A French restaurant opened at the site in 1974, and Kelly said it took its Hungarian turn at an unknown date during the 1980s. Corner 75’s first Herald review appeared in 1987.
Roast Sommerlad chicken with paprikash sauce.WOLTER PEETERS
During the renovation, the team found Valentine’s Day menus, a newspaper from 1984 and old beer cans.
“It’s made me realise it’s a lot more work to preserve something than create something new,” Kelly said.
FROM OUR PARTNERS
Corner 75’s new owners have shown the sort of meticulous care you’d expect from an episode of Restoration Australia. Kelly said they documented where every framed artefact sat on the wall prior to renovation. “They’re culturally load-bearing,” Kelly jokes about returning each item to the correct spot.
The chandelier still dangles above the dining room, and they’ve restored the sign on the street, while adding a couple of new details. “Corner 75 is a Fun Place with Great Food,” is etched above the entrance.
“We tried to replicate the carpet. When we tore it up, we discovered another carpet from the 1980s under it, lighter [in colour]. We’ve gone for something between the two shades,” Kelly said.
Corner 75, Randwick.WOLTER PEETERS
Outgoing owner Paul Varga upheld Corner 75’s traditions and Hungarian menu after taking the reins in 2012. Chef Dan Puskas has the advantage of Hungarian heritage (Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskas’ jersey graces the restaurant’s walls, though he is no relation of Dan’s), and knows the cuisine is viewed as more traditional than cutting edge.
“We hope to change the way people look at Hungarian food,” Puskas said. As owner-chef at the innovative Sixpenny, which is perched at the three-hat summit of Sydney restaurants, you might expect Puskas to oversee a complete overhaul of the Corner 75 menu. Instead, they’ve kept more than 80 per cent of the old menu.
The chicken paprikash is still there, but it has been upgraded with heritage-breed chicken. You can still grab an order of nokedli dumplings. Goulash? Check. Langos, the fired flatbread? Yes, they even serve it with house-made sour cream.
LP’s pork and paprika sausage with condiments.WOLTER PEETERS
Puskas worked painstakingly through the menu with Corner 75 head chef Carley Scheidegger, and Baba’s Place executive chef Jean-Paul El Tom. They settled on pork and chicken schnitzels after plans to add a Viennese version were put on hold due to the high cost of veal.
Cheese scones, a staple of Budapest bakeries, are on the new menu, and you can order a mini-sized of the chicken soup with semolina dumplings for $8.
“For me it’s all about the different sides – fermented red cabbage and creamed spinach,” Puskas said. Scheidegger’s background and skill with pastry at Fred’swill shine when the dessert trolley starts rolling.
The fields of sunflowers El Tom spotted on a research trip to Hungary also inspired the team. “We have a sunflower seed dip,” Puskas said. “They are embroidered on the uniforms, and there is sunflower seed milk in one of the cocktails.”
Does the fact that there’s debate over the morality of extreme wealth inequality further demonstrate the need to eradicate billionaires?
The End of Google Search—and the Internet—as We Know It
The Ringer – “For years now, Google has been tweaking its search formula to prop up AI and bury actual links. Now it’s rounding into its final form—and changing the internet forever.
“In every nook and cranny of the internet, at each and every moment of the day, you can find someone complaining that their go-to product up and changed the formula. Maybe their perfume has stronger sandalwood overtones than it used to, or their local snack shack switched up the breading on its chicken strips, or a specific pair of yoga pants absolutely did not used to be this see-through during downward dog! (Sorry, everyone.) And sometimes the product in question involves the basic nuts and bolts of the internet itself.
By which I mean: Google used to be better, man. You don’t have to take that last one from a terminally online weirdo like me. There are plenty of serious business people out there, with money and key performance indicators on the line, who would agree that lately, when it comes to the internet’s biggest and most powerful search engine, the formula has definitely changed.
Like Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, who admitted on the tech news web show TBPN in May that his elite publishing house was already preparing for the worst when it came to the future of inbound traffic referrals from Google. “Last year, I told our teams: Assume there’s no search,” Lynch told the hosts. “You have to have your businesses planned as if search is zero.” He wasn’t alone in his proactive pessimism.
Mike Reed, the CEO of USA Today, shared recently on theRebooting Show podcast that at his company, “our plan is to assume search is gone and build our business in other ways.” Drastic times call for drastic projections, and as Reed phrased it in his interview, more than once: “The traditional Google Search model is broken.” For the better part of the 21st century, for better and for worse, that traditional Google Search model was the engine of the internet, the cause of and solution to so many online delights and problems.
Google hoovered up content, websites picked up traffic, and users got pages of search results that ranged from salient to spammy but were mostly straightforward enough to parse. In recent years, though, this status quo has been undergoing a significant change—one involving, you guessed it, artificial intelligence…”
