A Michelin winner’s secret to staying golden
A mainstay of North Terrace dining joined Australia’s first Michelin Guide last night, winning the Bib Gourmand for good quality food at approachable prices. Restaurateur Sondra Deering tells CityMag her secrets to staying golden.
Nestled on the corner of East and North Terraces, Golden Boy has cemented its status as a dining institution with its Tuk Tuk feed-me menu now famed among foodies. Restaurateur Sondra Deering tells CityMag her secrets to staying golden.
Golden Boy’s dining room has had “many lives”, Sondra tells CityMag. It’s been home to pool tables, $10 pizzas and beautiful cocktails, it was a Thai restaurant back in the ‘90s, where there was “this lady that used to make coconut milk down in the cellar”.
It was in 2013 when the city was seeing its small bar licensing change the local nightlife scene that Sondra and her husband and business partner James Hillier realised their Botanic Bar “needed to evolve”.
They opened Golden Boy alongside and its growing popularity then led to it absorbing the old Botanic Bar space and cellar next door to create a second dining room.
“Botanic Bar still has the comfy booths, the marble, the brass and the luxury, and Golden Boy has its own personality, but it all works together,” Sondra says.
Sondra has been in the heritage North Terrace building for about 20 years, and in that time, she’s seen neighbouring businesses come and go; but says the vibrancy and community of the east end is unmatched.
“East End Cellar’s actual cellar used to be our cellar, so we’ve had a long relationship with them, they used to go back and forth with sack trucks,” she says
And there are newer tenants too, like Honeydripper on Frome Street. “If we’ve got a lot of people that arrive early and we can’t get them in, they’ll go for a drink at Honeydripper and then we call them when the table’s ready, that sort of thing,” Sondra says.
Those tables are often filled by Tuk Tuks; the restaurant’s ‘feed me’ option, where guests enjoy a range of dishes from across the menu specially selected based on preferences.
While Golden Boy quickly rose in the Google review ranks in its early days, Sondra says the restaurant didn’t strike gold immediately.
“When we first opened, we had so many dishes on the menu, it was crazy,” Sondra says.
“I remember like the first couple of weeks, we just had to reduce it to what you could do really well, and you’re better off.”
The stayers were the classics of any Thai menu, like the Massaman and green chicken curries.
But there were also non-traditional “dishes everyone loves, so you can’t take it off the menu” like the kingfish sashimi with Nam Jim, a Thai dipping sauce.
Sondra says there was even a time they tried to alter their veggie curry, and realised quickly it was too loved, and “we’ve got to put it back”.
“I think you’re better off having a menu where everything is fantastic, rather than having so much on offer that you can’t do everything perfectly,” she says.
Along with leaving a good curry alone, Sondra says, “consistency is key”, “we absolutely love what we do” but above all, “there’s food, there’s drinks, but it’s how you make people feel”.
To stay golden in a highly competitive restaurant scene, she says to “be clear what your purpose is and maintain that in everything that you do”.
“Just recently I found all our original service manuals, and it’s like how we started out and what we were trying to achieve, and then to see years down the track, our mission, our purpose, our values have remained the same, and I was quite proud of that.
“You adapt and maintain quality and all that sort of thing, but it was a nice little moment to know that where we’ve been, we are sure about who we are, and we have been like that the whole time.
“I think if someone can dine with us, 10 years ago, five years ago, and then dine with us again, and say ‘I had the same amazing experience’, that means a lot.”
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