Cuckoo — Restaurant in Sydney

Last Friday I treated my mother to dinner and a show.

After hearing lots of good things about Miss Peaches Soul Food Kitchen (on the top floor of the Marly Bar in Newtown) I decided to take her there.

The first customers in the restaurant, we ordered the Gumbo, the Okra Jumbalaya, the BBQ chicken dinner and a bottle of Miss Peaches White Hooch.

As we were going to an early show that night, all dishes come out at the same time and within 5mins. I thought wow! That’s awesome.

We took one look at the dishes and the penny dropped.

The gumbo was a luke warm tasteless broth and the rice was congealed, the Jambalaya, I was able to pick up the entire dish when I stuck my fork in it and the Chicken dinner with macaroni cheese and kale was stone cold and it all looked days old. I don’t mind paying good money for good food but unfortunately what we were served that night was anything but that. Infact I wouldve gladly spent over a $100 - $150 there that night HAD everything been up to scratch.

It was ashame because we were really looking forward to some decent soul food. Alas Miss Peaches lacked exactly that. There was NO soul and NO love in any of the dishes we ordered.

When I told the waiter he was reasonably understanding and accommodating and offered us a full refund. After he took the food back to the kitchen and after the hipster ‘chef’ came out to throw a few death stares our way, he came back to advise us that there were some ‘changes’ taking place in the kitchen presently so they were trying to sort stuff out. Ummmm not sure what that meant but nevertheless the food they served us was definitely a potential health issue and the ‘chefs’ obviously have no idea how to cook a soul food menu but very good at throwing food in a microwave for a few minutes.

The wine though (a bottle of Miss Peaches White Hooch) was crisp and a beautiful drop. Tick!

Id definitely go back to Miss Peaches for the atmosphere and the music but as far as the food is concerned......Ill be telling my friends never to eat there EVER! An extremely disappointing start to the evening.

In the end we went to the bistro downstairs at the Marly and the food was exactly how I remember...

I have nothing bad to say about the service or the people that work at this place; they all seemed lovely and they were quick and the drinks/food was good, but there is this incredibly racist undertone to the entire place - very appropriative of black culture, also celebratory of a time that people shouldn't be celebrating. The 50s were, for all intents and purposes, a terrible time to be any race other than white. Having places that celebrate that culture and bring back the racist subtext of that time seems like a step in the wrong direction. Also they literally have a menu item labelled "grape drank" which is just....eugh why are you doing that???

Again, no disrespect to the people that work there I understand that it's just a job to them and they're not going around spouting racist propaganda, but I think management needs to make some changes in order to ensure that people who were disenfranchised by that part of society years ago don't feel like it's an inaccessible bar because it's in tribute of that...

We went on a Sunday night and the place was not very busy at all. I had the Meat Platter and Grape Drank. The Grape Drank really did just taste like Grape Soda, so great if you are craving one. The Meat Platter was quite good. It had Pulled Pork (unpulled), Brisket and Andouille Sausage. The meat did taste like good smoked meats, but they didn't seem to have any sauces for the meats. I do like to add some BBQ sauce with my BBQ. One other problem was that there was no table service of any kind. All food and drinks were ordered from the bar, which didn't really feel like American hospitality. One thing I was happy about was that we had been looking for Andouille sausage for a Gumbo recipe and the Chef was helpful in directing us to a butcher that sold Andouille. I would like to go back and try some other dishes (they didn't have many on the menu). Just keep in mind that the menu is incomplete and that they have a specials board as well as a Burger board, so be sure to check those...