The Charles Brasserie & Bar Review (2025): Save room for dessert

I wasn’t a fan of The Charles Brasserie & Bar when it first opened in October 2022.

It’s not just because the food wasn’t nearly as good as it is right now, or because the cutting-teeth service was spotty and lacked that warm approachability so essential for such an imposing venue. The disconnect between the experience and the grandiosity of it all just felt far too wide to match claims that this overtly ambitious play from Etymon Projects was the French restaurant Sydney had been waiting for. If you want to be a luxury dining experience, lean into it with all ten toes.

All the ingredients were there. The no-expense-sparred dining room quickly resonated with its grand double height ceilings and bold central Tibero stone banquette, coupled with an adjoining drop-in wine bar and an underground lounge that still feels grossly underused. Designers Cox Architecture swiftly nailed the brief for a Manhattan-esque dining experience, purposed to shake up Sydney’s once-lackadaisical dining scene at a time when everyone just stopped caring after Covid.

A 1930s ACA building stripped to its core and rebuilt as a wonderfully transportive experience with echoes of Paris, London and New York. That’s an mighty big pair of shoes to fill, and it seems like, in the past 12 months at least, this centrally-located provincial French restaurant has well and truly found its feet.

What is the food at The Charles like?

*Lobster agnolotti (left) and Bannockburn chicken (right) are highlights from The Charles menu.*

Head chef Billy Hannigan is clearly a creative type. The menu sticks closely to upscale brasserie dining but there’s enough interesting words on the menu to pique even the most by-the-numbers cynic.

Tasmanian sea urchin that’s been whipped so roughly that it looks like cream on a cupcake, swirling over a beautifully salted potato rosti with a pop of texture from toasted buckwheat ($14 each) is my first impression. An excellent one. Every bite is a delight, and while it’s done in two nibbles, the full-palate-coverage of rich, decadent sea urchin is enough to have me scrambling for more. I eye off my dining companion, nudging him towards the last Blue Swimmer crab croquette with smoked roe ($11 each) so I could snatch another sea urchin. The croquette is texturally perfect and crumbly, but woefully dry inside.

Better yet is the one-and-done Fruits de mer tartlet ($12 each) with a colourful stack of sashimi-grade yellowfin tuna, ebi prawn and ocean trout, all diced up with jelly like consistency. I inhale it with one gulp; tarts like that are just too awkward to eat bite-by-bite. The seafood is perfect, and you can easily piece apart the flavours. Yum.

The most interesting “small bite” comes with the lovely interplay of thick-cut, juicy melon drizzled in candied fennel and ‘nduja with a nice slab of fresh tuna on top. It’s not quite as common as the prosciutto-melon combo you’ll spy in just about any regional Italian restaurant, but it should be. The pop of spice from the fennel really jazzes up the many hues of sweetness that roll across the tongue.

I’m not dialled into meme culture enough to lie and claim that I judge a restaurant on its bread. No one does. It’s just a thing people like to say. But the bread-and-butter service would ideally much better if The Charles was to claim full bottom-to-top perfection. The loaf ($7 each) itself is nice, but the air pockets are just so over the place that there’s not really any consistent surface area for the butter spread smoothly onto. Don’t judge The Charles on its bread.

*Provencal Casarecce gives some of the best value on the menu ($28) for hungry budget bandits.*

Do, however, judge them on their oysters ($39/$78). Beautifully sourced, perfectly prepared and served with a slightly sweet, tangy mignonette on a bed of ice. The punchy price may turn some away from this fairly standard choice, but if my sea nuggets are anything to go by, it’s a very good choice.

Lobster agnolotti ($39) is easily the most eye-catching thing on the menu for anyone who likes those big, indulgent and wealthy-sounding dishes. Surprisingly, it’s not as heavy as it is on paper, with a beautiful floral twist from the saffron that cuts through the saucy dish. The sweet chunks of lobster are essential, but there’s nowhere near enough to have both pasta and flesh in one bite, which is what really makes the dish.

At $11 cheaper, you get more pasta, and bang, with the Provencal Casarecce ($28) tossed with peppers and olives on a bed of pesto rosso. There’s a lot—too much— going on, but the aggressive clash of textures and tastes is pleasant enough. Plus, you get a lot of it.

While the support acts seem to be more inventive and out-there, main dishes at The Charles take a more home-style approach. The pasta is soulful, but it’s nowhere near as good as the flawless Bannockburn chicken ($49) with ricotta gnocchi, squishy autumn mushrooms and chestnuts. You’d expect a gravy-like consistency from the hearty dish but this is remarkably well-balanced with a generous cut of protein from Victoria’s most reliable free-range farm.

*The beautiful dessert trolley at The Charles.*

There’s plenty to look at when you’re sitting in the Grand Brasserie. Those magnificent high ceilings tower over a sophisticated scene that feels unlike anything else in Sydney. Go upstairs to the bathroom and look back over the balcony; such a scene would be rare before Sydney entered its opulent era with atmospheric dining rooms like the ones at Swillhouse’s Hubert and The Point Group’s Shell House.

But the most eye-catching thing in this entire restaurant rolls around the brasserie, fuelled by nothing but sugar and a pastry chef who clearly knows his stuff. The Charles’ three-tiered dessert trolley is an entire universe of picture-perfect cakes ($20 a slice) and interesting petit fours ($7-9 each), sliding around to tables with waiters who are likely going insane from explaining the many different options to each and every curious diner. Google Lens could never.

There’s Russian honey cake—a beautiful, beautiful Russian honey cake—sitting next to a chocolate, banana and peanut slab, passionfruit meringue tart, and an earl grey and grapefruit Charlotte. Then you’ve got smaller plates of burnt honey and fig madeleines, basil and lime bonbons, maple and pecan caneles are much more. It’s a pretty feather in the cap for a dining experience at The Charles, so you’ll want to save stomach space.

In all honesty, The Charles has most likely been good for quite some time since my early-days visit. The dining room gives such a deep sense of occasion that it’s no wonder it helped boost Etymon’s profile to the point where they are now one of the city’s beefier hospitality groups, with a clear-cut dominance of upper-premium dining over the bridge and more than just a few expensive-looking interiors.

And it’s heaving, with no single table staying empty for long. I look around and there’s a constant carousel of dressed-up diners. There’s an energy here that laughs at any claims Sydney isn’t rushing towards its world-class ambitions