Opah - Eat Drink Live

This Cronulla restaurant knows about the bare necessities of life – food and drink – and it knows how to deliver both in casual style. Located up one level from the street on the corner of Gerrale Street and Kingsway, an olive pit’s throw from the beach, Opah’s motto is Eat Drink Live and it’s winning formula is something of a unique proposition in Sydney – Greek yum cha. Borrowing the famous Chinese format makes sense for Greek cuisine, as it means you can order up a number of smaller bites to share around the table. Complement this with a sharp cocktail bar and a cornucopia of dishes drawing on Greek and modern Australian culinary tradition, and it’s clear that Opah know how to look after their guests.

Opah’s ace in the hole is its Greek yum cha menu, a fixed-price feast that’s famous in Cronulla and beginning to make serious waves across Sydney’s foodie community. It’s not exactly fusion; more accurately it’s the restaurant’s reminder to diners that the shareable joy of Chinese yum cha has its counterpart in the traditional Greek way of sitting down to a meal consisting of several plates of Mediterranean delicacies that can be passed around among friends and family, lack of lazy Susan notwithstanding. Classic Greek dips, flat bread and salads, grilled halloumi, flash-fried calamari, and aioli fries, Opah’s signature filo tiropites with honey and thyme, garlic prawn risoni and Greek sausage, grilled chicken, 16-hour spit-roasted lamb and Mediterranean vegetables. Looking to live? This is the way to eat. And it’s BYO if you’d like to drink!

A weekday alternative to the Greek yum cha menu is Opah’s Village Menu, a lunchtime classic for the Cronulla community. Offering much of the Greek goodness of its all-week sibling selection, substitute ‘Mama’s meatballs’ for the tiropites for another of the restaurant’s down-home signature dishes. Over at the bar, nicknamed The Eagle’s Nest due to its fantastic people-watching potential down over Kingsway, Gerrale Street and Perryman Square, the food highlight is the fixed-price Greek tapas menu. Book a high table for four to eight people and tuck into this accompanied by jugs of Mediterranean-influenced cocktails, classic concoctions, a range of boutique vodka and gin martinis and margaritas. Or, soak it all up with a larger mixed mezze platter. A prime bar and restaurant close Sydney’s iconic Cronulla beach, Opah is busier than Bondi on a hot day – book ahead to avoid disappointment.