Restaurant Hubert
15 Bligh Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Restaurant Hubert has become one of my preferred Sydney lunches. On September 6 I went in around 2 PM and had the Boeuf Bourguignon: Kiwami 9+ Wagyu with confit mushrooms, pomme purée and lardons. A pianist was quietly playing jazz standards while I ate.
The jazz is part of the reason I like Hubert at lunch. They have live jazz through lunch and dinner, sometimes a pianist and sometimes a small combo. I prefer it when the music sits naturally in the room rather than turning lunch into a performance.
It isn't a cheap restaurant. The bourguignon is currently A$75, and it would be easy to spend considerably more across the menu. But I think Hubert offers value for the money. The cooking is very good, the waiters are professional, and the service has the assurance of a restaurant that knows what it is doing.
The current menu still gives me plenty of reasons not to order exactly the same thing every time. The Duck Parfait, Escargots XO, Soufflé au Gruyère and Prime Beef Tartare all make sense as smaller dishes before a main course. The escargots use XO butter, one of the small departures from conventional French brasserie cooking that gives Hubert its own character. Even so, the bourguignon remains the obvious repeat order for me.
Hubert is an easy lunch to work into a day in central Sydney. My preference would still be a late lunch: arrive around 1:30 or 2:00, settle in while the jazz is playing, and let the restaurant do the rest.