The cult charcoal chook is only part of the story at Chapel Street’s shiny Sydney import Henrietta

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There’s a glorious absurdity to the way in which we fall in culinary love all over again. Over the past few years, long-discarded flings re-embraced with the intensity of characters in a Nicholas Sparks novel include hasselback potatoes, Golden Gaytimes and buffalo wings. Right now, we’re giddily getting reacquainted with the 1980s delights of charcoal chicken, and Sydney can take the credit.

The latest case in point, Henrietta, hails originally from the harbour city’s Surry Hills and started taunting Chapel Street’s Windsor end with the scent of rotisserie chook in early July. It follows in the wake of El Jannah, the multi-venue Sydney behemoth that opened in Preston last year.

Both are all about Lebanese-style charcoal chicken and are commonly described as “cult” venues, which is only slightly hyperbolic if you see tender, charcoal-perfumed chook with ruggedly caramelised skin as a panacea for life’s trials.

That’s exactly what you’ll get at Henrietta, but the way you get it is entirely up to you. It’s a mullet of an operation: takeaway business at the front, dine-in party out the back. And while it’s a valid life choice to grab a half chicken, lamb-stuffed pita and sumac-dusted chips to go, the lure of a restaurant with attentive staff, linen napkins and a menu going the full Middle Eastern mezze is reason enough to commit bodily to the experience.

The chicken – free-range, brined, cooked to order – is unsurprisingly good. But it’s only part of the Henrietta story.

Pass the impressively industrial open kitchen with its acres of stainless steel and performative rotisserie action and you’re enveloped in a vision of disco-era Beirut. Shiny, beaten-silver wall panels are offset by Aegean blue accents, while
terracotta brick is put to hardworking use in walls, floors and booths. Lighting is set to date-night flattery.

This is the scaffolding for a proper night out that includes Middle Eastern-accented cocktails as fruit-forward, sweet and pouty as the Chapel Street crowd could desire; the not especially affordable wine list has a good showing of Lebanese numbers for credibility, rounded out with simpatico Australian and Italian offerings.

The chicken ($32 half/$54 whole) – free-range, brined, cooked to order – is unsurprisingly good. They say the best way to eat it is with your hands. Tear open a piece of flatbread, slather it with toum (the fluffy, snow-white garlic paste) and load it up with chicken and pickles and harissa, if you like it spicy.

There’s no shame in adding chips, either. It’s a recipe for contentment, but the chook is only part of the Henrietta story. The mezze-style dishes from head chef Ashish Bhatnagar and his crew add to the case for a night out rather than in.

Raw lamb is the basis for one of the Middle East’s most beloved dishes, kibbeh nayyeh ($24). The pounded meat’s putty-like texture may prove a challenging new frontier, but its vitals are balanced by nostril-rattling raw shallot and the crunch of its carbohydrate delivery device, zaatar-dusted toasted pita.

Bouncy duck kofta are DIY-wrapped in cos lettuce with pickled cabbage and cacik (tzatziki’s Turkish cousin) for a Levantine answer to sang choy bao.

And falafel? Of course. Five fat lobes ($14) nail the formula of super-crisp outside, light and fluffy inside and are accompanied by a pot of runny tahini with a quiver of house beetroot and cucumber pickles so salty they induce minor palate fatigue.

It’s textbook stuff – mostly. Kingfish crudo ($28) nods to Melbourne’s obsession with the dish, but takes its own path with the vital tang of compressed rhubarb and a baharat sauce tingling with Aleppo pepper, lemon juice and sumac.

A prawn roll ($15) is another flirtation with local fashions: a sawn-off brioche hotdog bun sandwiching creamy, coriander-accented crustacean dabbed with an umami-bringing black tahini mayo.

For dessert, the tiramisfouf ($17) is the bastard child of the turmeric sponge known as sfouf and Italy’s delicious coffee and mascarpone-laden gloopfest, with pine nut praline. It works just fine.

Portions are large, but staff bundle up your leftovers to take home with military precision and a palpable joy that you’ve asked. The best advice for anyone heading to Henrietta is to take your mates: the bigger the army, the better. Order widely and don’t forget the vibrant sides that are light to the main carte’s shade (Brussels sprouts, caramelised until they’re screaming for mercy and served with tahini and date molasses, $19, can be my Henrietta wingman any day).

And if we’re straying into the realm of polyamory, so be it. With all due respect to the chicken, there’s plenty more to love here.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine