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Our Newport was in the news today: Sydney Morning Herald released their
inaugural Good Food Guide, and our Zubi Bar won accolades. Here are some of
them in today's paper (click here for the whole article):
IT DOESN'T look like the kind of beachside cafe that usually wins awards. There's no ocean view.
It's a brisk walk from the beach. The interior is cramped and cosy. And there's not even that tinge
of childhood nostalgia since it has only just celebrated its second birthday.
Yet Zubi Bar, on Newport's insalubrious main drag, is one of the big winners of the inaugural
Sydney Morning Herald Good Cafe Guide launched this week.
Edited by Jill Dupleix and published by Fairfax Books, the new volume is a sister to the long-
established Good Food Guide, with the same rigorous standards of expert anonymous reviewers.
In all, they have chosen more than 250 cafes for inclusion. But only the very finest are awarded
between one and three ''coffee cups'' - the caffeine equivalent of the famous GFG hats.
Seven merit three cups, signalling ''a total commitment to outstanding coffee''.
But Zubi Bar is not only one of just 23 that earn two cups (''a great cafe with great coffee''), it also
picks up a bonus heart symbol - for its ''special spirit and sense of joy'' rather than its
determination to ''grow old disgracefully'' like Leichhardt's Bar Sport.
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| Photo SMH Ben Rushton, Zubi Bar baristas
Steve Hulley, owner of Zubi Bar, readily says the cafe owes its award to the man who founded it
in 2009 - the late Pete Dyball, who died suddenly of motor neurone disease in October last
year.''We've hardly changed anything,'' Mr Hulley says. ''Not the staff. Not the menu. Not the
little plastic toys that come with the order number. Just a little bit of landscaping to the secret
garden [highly praised by the reviewer] and a few things inside to add to the vibe of the place.''
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If you didn't know which suburb you were in when you walked into Zubi Bar, you would assume
you were in one of the trendier inner city suburbs: Surry Hills (25 mentions in the new guide),
Glebe (five), Alexandria (five), or Potts Point (10).
That's one of the great lessons from the Guide - great cafes are spread across the city from
Bondi's Crabbe Hole to Zokoko in Emu Heights.
This is all fine but for the somewhat condescending attitude by the writer, Steve
Meacham, towards the Newport, and its 'insalubrious main drag'. Does this look
insalubrious to you, Steve:
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