A love letter to Corner 75
Everyone has a restaurant that makes them feel completely at home.
"You made a mess of the table!" Paul Varga, the former owner of Randwick Hungarian restaurant Corner 75, would cry if he spotted his diners spilling any drips or drizzles. He was joking of course, but this was all part of the warmth of the original Corner 75, Sydney's most cherished Balkan restaurant which stood on the corner of Frenchmans Road and Roscrea Avenue in Randwick for at least 40 years. The paternal scolding. The tutting if you couldn't finish your chicken paprikash. The retro sprinkle of curly parsley and a halved cherry tomato on top of your nokedli. The thick-stemmed wine glass holding fairly unremarkable furmint. Paul shaking your hand as you left to go home.
In March last year, Paul and his sister Kathy, who ran the kitchen, served their last bowl of goulash. Kathy was wearying of her long commute from her home on the Central Coast, staff were getting harder to find – they were ready for the quiet life. So they handed the keys to this plucky little restaurant, which had served Sydney's small, loyal Hungarian community for generations, to its new custodians, JP El Tom and Alex Kelly from Marrickville's Baba's Place, and Dan Puskas from Stanmore's Sixpenny. And a new era began.
Today, the new Corner 75 has just celebrated its first birthday and if you squint, it looks much the same as it did when Varga ran the floor. A clause in the contract of sale insisted that all the memorabilia – from the Ferenc Puskas soccer pennants to the framed 1990s restaurant reviews (a startling amount containing droll Hungary/hungry puns) – had to remain on the walls.
