First look: Former Rockpool chef opens high-end bistro in Marrickville

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Corey Costelloe describes 20 Chapel as a neighbourhood bistro, but it hasn’t stopped the former culinary director at Rockpool Bar & Grill transplanting a few high-end accoutrements to his new Marrickville restaurant, which opens on Friday, June 21. Not many local eateries have access to produce from one of its owners’ farms or have a bottle of vintage Chateau Lafite Rothschild on the wine list.

If the black stonework with white marble flecks on the bar and kitchen pass at 20 Chapel look familiar, it’s because it is the same as you’ll find at the luxe Rockpool Bar & Grill on Hunter Street, in the CBD. “When we went to look at stone options, they still had the same slab we used at Rockpool,” the chef says.

Costelloe also brought Rockpool’s maitre’d, Anthony Qalilawa, along for the ride at Marrickville, the affable frontman a partner at 20 Chapel. When Costelloe departed Rockpool in February, he was briefly the most high-profile unsigned free agent in the Sydney restaurant world.

He toyed with opening his own venue in the city, before a conversation with the third partner at 20 Chapel, veteran chef David Allison, led them to Marrickville. Allison had a site with a cool industrial interior on Chapel Street where he’d previously operated Stix Cafe.

Costelloe was already a fan of Marrickville’s Vietnamese and Greek restaurants, and its unrelenting explosion as a food and booze destination hadn’t gone unnoticed. The Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre, Grifter Brewing and Wildflower Brewing and Blending are just a few of the venues on its well-trodden trail, topped up by additions such as Kin Dining and Bar and the newish We Three, where you can sip on retro cocktails and snack on potato and grana padano gnocchi.

Allison’s Stix Farm on the Hawkesbury River is supplying the greens and tomatoes on 20 Chapel’s opening menu. Costelloe is using zucchini from the farm to make a burnt zucchini vinaigrette he’s serving with grilled baby octopus.

And Allison is bringing more than produce and experience to the venture. “David offered some of his wine collection for the wine list,” Costelloe says. As well as a couple of old bottles of Grange, they found a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild. “Unfortunately something had dripped on it right where the year is written, we’re going to have to get an expert in to work out what year it is,” Costelloe says.

20 Chapel’s opening menu incorporates pumpkin from Stix Farm in a stuffed agnolotti with smoked almond and sage. There’s a dish of Hawkesbury school prawns, green lip abalone and polenta, and a main course line-up of steaks driven by Costelloe’s long-standing contacts with producers David Blackmore Wagyu and CopperTree.

The chef has a couple of secret weapons in his kitchen. He says he won a tug-of-war to land the services of talented sous chef Owen Okada, who apprenticed at Rockpool Bar & Grill before working at Saint Peter and Clam Bar, and pastry chef Daria Nechiporenko. “Daria’s a weapon in the kitchen, her Russian honey cake had to go on the menu,” Costelloe says.

Open lunch Sat-Sun; dinner Wed-Sat

20 Chapel Street, Marrickville, 20chapel.com.au