Hartsyard’s comfort food a recipe for success

The husband-and-wife team behind the incredibly popular US-style food haunt Hartsyard in Newtown, in Sydney’s inner west, could border on being cheesy if they weren’t so damn funny and down to earth. When WISH asks them how they manage a restaurant, a bar, two young children and writing a cookbook without killing each other, Hart says: “I don’t really see Gregory”, crediting the crazy hours she does in front of house and he does in the kitchen. “But really it is being honest about who you are. Both of us have worked more than the average Joe in our lives. We are both used to not having a lot of downtime and that suits both our personalities. We don’t do crosswords — we are just not like that.”

They met in New York when she was a part-time waitress (trying to break into musical theatre) and he was a chef. Llewellyn was very cool, he had tattoos, smoked, drank straight Jack Daniels. Hart was Australian, a singer, the opposite. “He was like Danny Zuko and I was like Sandra Dee,” says Hart. “You cannot print that,” Llewellyn interjects, with a grimace on his face. “It’s just so cheesy.” Hart was surprised when Llewellyn asked her out. “It was midnight on a Friday night,” Hart says. “Who calls and asks someone out on a date on midnight on a Friday night? I remember he said ‘I would like to take you out for lunch’. I thought he must have rung the wrong waitress. We went out for lunch and I thought, look, we will just go out on this one awkward date, he would realise he rang the wrong girl and it was just all fade into nothingness. But that is not what happened.”

They dated and moved to Santa Monica when Llewellyn was offered the job as executive chef at a luxury beachfront hotel, before moving to Australia 18 months later and having their first child. The story of Hartsyard began when they returned to the US for a wedding and got a “kick in the pants” from a very ambitious friend. “She was from a Korean background and was really work-driven,” recalls Hart. “And she was like, ‘Gregory! What are you doing? Open your own place. Do it now.’ That was November 2011 and we opened in May 2012.”

Llewellyn, who grew up in a small town in upstate New York, started working in food when he got a job at a local French restaurant called Folderol as a teenager. The very “old-school” German chef taught him the basics of cooking that set him on a career that has ranged from fine dining to running restaurants, room service and functions at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. “It was just non-stop,’’ Llewellyn says of the exclusive hotel experience. “In the bowels of the place, it was just hell. It was like permanent anxiety. Your phone never stopped with emails like this person didn’t show up, Eminem is here, Beckham wants this or that.” One of the private dinners Llewellyn cooked was for Warren Buffett, Bono and Bill Gates (they wanted cheeseburgers).

When it came to deciding the style of food for Hartsyard, it was all about cooking what Llewellyn wanted to eat and what he knew. It’s a coincidence that Southern US-style food has since become very popular. “[It is food] that you want to eat with your fingers, food that you do not have to use a fork if you don’t want to,” Llewellyn says. “It is big, punchy, salty, acidic food, but mostly it is just fatty and salty. That to me is very comforting.”

The restaurant went gangbusters from day one and Llewellyn’s fried chicken (which takes three days to cook) became the signature dish, along with oyster po’ boys (a deep fried oyster in a roll), which took off. “That is when I decided to focus on more home-style grub type food.”

Hart says they were unprepared (but very grateful) for the immediate success of Hartsyard. “It was a bit hilarious. We were massively ill-equipped. We didn’t have the staff. It was a total shit show. Quinn [their first child] was waking up at 5.30am and we were going to bed at 2am and living on $250 a week. We were staffed by a social worker friend of mine and a guy I went to school with [who was a singer],” Hart recalls. Llewellyn adds: “He used to belt out Happy Birthday like a soprano. I was like, this is not TGI f . . king Fridays. What’s going on?!”

Next up was a bar down the road called The Gretz, another child and their first cookbook called Fried Chicken and Friends (out this month). “It’s like a natural progression. We have always wanted a neighbourhood restaurant and bar,’’ says Llewellyn. “By we, you mean you,’’ Hart retorts, and cracks up laughing. Llewellyn soon joins in.

Gregory Llewellyn’s top American cookbooks

To the Bone, Paul Liebrandt & Andrew Friedman (Clarkson Potter)

Liebrandt is one of the masters of cutting-edge French food. He does whatever is not right. He will cure foie gras with beets. It is bizarre and yet makes so much sense at

the same time.

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, Alice Waters (Random House)

Alice is a Californian icon, a Slow Food proponent and one of the original chefs to focus on farm to table (her restaurant Chez Panisse is in Berkeley). She lets beautiful, simple ingredients speak for themselves.

Charlie Trotter’s, Charlie Trotter (Ten Speed Press)

The famous Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant ran from 1987-2012 and was really the first to do American-style food that was off the wall. Trotter, who died in 2013, was considered a mentor, trailblazer, artist, teacher and leader by colleagues.

Source: The Australian, Milanda Rout, 7^th August 2015
Originally published as: Hartsyard’s comfort food a recipe for success