Ground Floor
5–7 Young Street
Sydney NSW 2000
I was dining alone at Grana and ordered the saffron gigli with kangaroo ossobuco, stracciatella and saltbush. The kangaroo was tender, the pasta excellent, and I particularly enjoyed the service.
The kangaroo was what interested me most. I expected there might be some gaminess to it, but there wasn't. The meat was tender and rich without being heavy, worked through the saffron pasta with the soft stracciatella and the distinctly Australian addition of saltbush. Grana describes the gigli as part of its house-made pasta program, which fits the restaurant's broader emphasis on grain and flour milled and worked on site.
For me, it was a perfect dinner.
The service was better still.
Hinchcliff House
Grana also benefits from having a building with some substance behind it. It occupies the ground floor of Hinchcliff House, the former Hinchcliff wool stores near Circular Quay. The surviving complex was built in stages during the nineteenth century and is now on the NSW State Heritage Register. Heritage NSW describes it as one of only two known surviving examples of its building type in Sydney, with sandstone and masonry walls, timber post-and-beam construction, timber floors and king-post roof trusses.
The restaurant arrived as part of the building's adaptive reuse in 2021. Rather than treating the old wool store as scenery, the conversion leaves enough of the sandstone and heavy timber structure visible for the building to remain legible. Grana's bakery and flour mill add another layer to that relationship between the restaurant and its setting: grain is not merely part of the name but part of the way the kitchen works.
There is more on the menu than I tested. Grana's current shared menu ranges through house-made schiacciata, burrata, sardines, seafood, porchetta and dessert, alongside the saffron gigli with kangaroo ossobuco that I ordered. I can recommend the dish I ordered.