Nearly three years ago, JL and I first stepped into the original Yardbird in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. It was an incredible experience, dining at the bar and checking out all the action happening around us. So when I heard Yardbird were popping up in Sydney, I was super excited and couldn’t wait to show DS what it was all about!
Shame they are only popping up for a night…but here’s what we ate.
DS, JG and I had a look at the menu, looked at each other and pretty much unanimously agreed to order 2 of everything on the menu (except the gizzard and heart…). Love when you can dine with friends and just agree that all the food is the right amount of food! The picture above is a Yardbird classic – the Meatball with tare and egg yolk ($5). Seriously, if you dine at Yardbird you can’t miss this. The meatball is incredibly tasty and dipping it into the yolk is the perfect complement.
We were also very impressed with the prices – everything was so affordable! The Rice Cake – with furikake and sesame ($7) for example, was a huge portion (we even got some takeaway…). We also ordered the Kingfish with shitake mushroom and onion soy vinaigrette ($8). It was also a decent portion and tasted incredible. The salad and seaweed accompaniment under the kingfish was really refreshing, especially because most of the menu is deep fried. The Katsu Sando with cabbage and tonkatsu ($12) was really great but surprisingly spicy. Just love these Japanese-style sandwiches! 
Next up we had another Yardbird classic – the KFC – Korean Fried Cauliflower with yuzu and chilli ($8). Quote unquote from DS – “Even though I wish this was actual chicken, it actually tastes incredibly good.” For me, that’s a bit of an understatement because I loooove cauliflower so this is great! I also can’t usually handle any food with chilli but this was mild enough for me to enjoy the flavour rather than the spiciness. Highly recommend this one!
The final dish we got was quite an unusual one – Liver Mousse with shallot rings and shmaltz bread ($12). I don’t really associate liver paté with Japanese food…I feel like the only part of this that was Japanese was the shallot rings?! Either way, it was super tasty. Quite a sweet paté, but I loved the thin toasted brioche-style bread and the shallot rings were a nice touch. 
Oh man, look at all that food! We originally had ordered the chicken wings as well but then cancelled the order after all this food arrived…haha!
I am really glad I popped into Harpoon Harry for the Yardbird pop-up. Of course, they did a great job bringing the staples and some fun menu items, so thanks to the Yardbird team for coming over from HK!
Yardbird @ Harpoon Harry
40 – 44 Wentworth Avenue
Surry Hills
https://www.facebook.com/events/1581774958795504/
http://yardbirdrestaurant.com/info/
http://hotelharry.com.au/bar/
