Jackalberry — Restaurant in Sydney

Jackalberry is located on the ground floor of the Hyatt Regency on Sussex Street in the Sydney CBD. Set in a heritage building space, it’s nice to see they’ve kept the façade with a nod to Sydney’s historic past. Whilst the Hyatt already has a few bars, including one of our favourites, Zephr, they have opened this new bar, with street frontage to appeal to bar trotters and those in search of good cocktail or two. We must add that this bar serves up what we currently regard as the best cocktails in Sydney and we’re sure this will become the bar on everyone’s lips in no time. They were even recently awarded Sydney’s best new bar at the Hotel awards.

Jackalberry, named after the native African tree, which is in fitting with its ‘around the world’ theming with influences from across the globe, it’s like an urban jungle where its décor features travel inspiration, from world globes, to shells and safari wallpaper, and plants to give that feel of an indoor oases.

The space is large and feels very chic with a circular booth seating, and bar stools where you can catch a glimpse of the talented French bartender/mixologist Remy carefully crafting some amazing cocktails.  The cocktail menu offers eight drinks with inspirations from around the world such as France, Netherlands, Japan, Greece, Cuba, Mexico and the UK. As a lover of all things Japanese, I began with the drink drawing inspiration from Osaka, Japan. Aptly titled ‘tea time’, this drink is made with Robu Gin, Yuzu puree, black sesame and Earl Grey syrup and lemon juice, it is a smooth and easy to drink cocktail, like enjoying a refreshingly sweet tea.

We’re grateful to Remy for introducing us to two new cocktails, to appear on their Spring menu when it launches. One was their version of a whisky sour made with Bullet Bourbon, lemon, shitake mushroom and topped with rocket. A slightly sour and drink, with a good amount of sweetness wand a hint of mushroom on the back palate, producing a drink with excellent flavour combinations. We had a Lemon meringue pie cocktail, served in a tall glass, the Frangelico providing the flavour of the pastry based, very cleverly concocted. In addition, the ice cup resting on the glass with the meringue foam added that extra creative flair.
We love our food, so of course we were keen to try a few things on the menu, which showcases 14 dishes from around the world. The food here complements the theming and the cocktails beautifully. It is like a travel itinerary on a plate. Beginning with a dish influenced by Bern, Switzerland, we try the ‘Tete De Moine’, which is essentially a fancy cheese plate with a beautifully presented fanned out slices of cheese with pickled walnuts, shiraz poached pears and shards of honeycomb, served with grissini. We loved this dish and the interesting intricacy of flavours. Followed up by some refreshing vegetable rice paper rolls with a coriander and hoi sin chilli dip, hailing from Hanoi in Vietnam and the lightly fried stuffed pumpkin flowers with date, kumara puree and bronze fennel from Marrakesh, Morrocco. These dishes are good little tasting plates to accompany a drink or two. The sliced butler steak was cooked nicely, served with chimichurri and skinny fries. The meat was seasoned perfectly with a rio grande spice rub and we feel this is a generous and more substantial meal that comes highly recommended. The Persian style lamb koftas, hailing from Tehran, Iran were also nice moist pieces of meat, nicely flavoured, accompanied with a spinach borani yoghurt. My favourite of the night was their Kati Kati wrap, influenced from Camaroon, Africa. Whilst at first look, you may think it’s just a wrap, but that’s most certainly not the case. It is some amazing chicken that has incredible flavour combination of spices, served inside a flat bread and so tasty, we could have eaten a few of these. We also think this is a...

Went here Saturday night 7th May - booking at 7:15pm. Would not recommend this place for dinner. Food tasted Ok, but the value for money was extremely poor - serving sizes were terribly small when compared to the prices and considering I would not class this as ultra fine dining (where you do expect to pay a lot for not much food). Ordered the Ribs from the menu, note plural, but it was literally 1 beef rib of tough but nice flavoured meat that had to be eaten like a streak due to toughness - $42 for that. Then wife had the kingfish - again quite good flavour, but when grilled lemon (a garnish) is mentioned in the menu as part of the meal, you know it’s going to be a small meal. Small serving of fish + half a lemon + a sauce and again $38. Shared the crème brûlée for dessert (should have learnt). In terms of taste this was actually worst part of meal. I had 2 + half spoonfuls the wife had 3 - was about $16 I think. A coupe of drinks then $118 later I asked for a bowl of chips as we were still hungry but they said they could not get them out prior to the dessert so counted out losses and left after the crème brûlée. Staff are lovely and the atmosphere was nice hence the 2 stars, but that could not make up for the fact of the cost considering we both had to eat 2 muesli bars once we got back to our room to...

We were staying at Hyatt Regency, and were having late lunch at Jackalberry (around 4:30pm on Easter Sunday). The food was good. However, when we asked about the happy hours promotion (30% off food bills) as mentioned in the hotel information given to us at check-in, we were told by the waitress there is no happy hours due to public holiday.

The information from the hotel and the restaurant website clearly indicated happy hour is 4pm to 6pm -Monday to Sunday, and no where it is mentioned public holiday is excluded.

We left disappointed and felt cheated, as they could have been more transparent about this. We probably wouldn’t ate there if we knew the happy hour promotion can’t be used. It was a bit pricey (we ordered two mains and two drinks and it’s already over $100) and there are a lot of other restaurants nearby at Darling Habour.

Update: The hotel assisted us to sort...