Darlinghurst: Apartment Buildings: Meriden

I rather fancy maps. Not only are they immensely practical, I find them rather pleasing to the eye too. So while sleuthing around the City of Sydney Archives last week, I was delighted to come across an old book of City Building Surveyor's Detail Sheets. 

It was a large compendium of about a dozen A2-sized Sydney city building maps, exquisitely and precisely illustrated. I took photographs of all the maps related to Darlinghurst and when I returned home and enlarged them on my computer, I was excited (yes, I was excited) to discover that the building at 40 Hardie Street, where I used to live, is called Meriden. It's an appropriate name too, for it was a merry den indeed.

I'm not certain of what period the Surveyor's Detail Sheets were made, but I will take a wild guess and say the early 1960s. If you look closely at the above illustration, you can see that the Alexandra Flats is still listed as a ''School'' and the Marist Brothers College closed in 1968 - so that is how I came to my scientific conclusion. And, well, if you see the maps, they've got that 60s vibe about them.

I also found it interesting to see that Iona is listed as Hughlings Private Hospital and my beautiful Stoneleigh was going through its ''Greencourt'' period.

Anyway, as I said, I was excited to learn that 40 Hardie Street, my old favourite home, was called Meriden, and this inspired me to do some online sleuthing at the National Library of Australia's Australian Newspaper archives. 

I firstly came across this old classifieds advertisement (above) from the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, dated January 4, 1930. I found similar advertisements in the Herald from 1929, which were published on April 18, November 2 and December 1. 

Rental of a ''Modern, self-contained bachelor flat, comprising large bed-sitting room, tiled kitchenette and bathroom,'' at 40 Hardie Street cost a mere 30 shillings, and interested persons could apply to flat 12.

Then I hit upon this advertisement from March 21, 1953, which lists the building for sale.

But by far the most thrilling discovery was from the Sydney Morning Herald edition of September 23, 1949. Hidden amongst the classifieds was a list of prize-winners for the newspaper's Name a Foal Competition and among them was a Barbara Martin of 7/40 Hardie Street - the very same apartment I lived in for five years. 

When I lie in bed staring at the ceilings of my apartments, I often wonder who has lived there before me and what festivities, dramas and banal domesticity the ceiling has witnessed. I never wondered so much while living at number seven, because the moulded ceiling had been recently covered up. But now I know. And now I am wondering who Ms Martin was, what she looked like and what she did for a living. Was she a school teacher, nurse or exotic dancer?

Perhaps I'll never know.

Darlinghurst: Food: Sushi Yachiyo

Sushi Yachiyo is not one of my usual Darlinghurst haunts, in fact, I went there for the first time about two weeks ago on my first Saturday night home from overseas. The tiny Japanese restaurant at 13 Kirketon Road is tucked away beneath the Art Wall building, whose rusty-looking facade fronts William Street.

I don't really like Japanese food and I especially loathe nori because it smells so disgusting. I hate sushi, but I do love sashimi. And no, I do not like endamame, even if it is complimentary.

I have also never been a fan of the Art Wall, which is essentially a plain office building with a lace-like, oxidised-metal rectangle mounted on its street-facing side. It used to have a billboard-sized Aboriginal artwork perched across the top of the lace-work, but at the moment it just has a blank space with the words, ''Buy this space for art-advertising'', or some such wank. Anyway I don't like it because it looks, well, rusty, and dirty, even when it was freshly unwrapped in 2004. Here is a picture of the Art Wall, with Harry Seidler's Horizon in the background, which I took today:

Nevertheless I was with two female friends, Ruby Molteno and Nina Ricci who is pregnant, and I was happy for them to decide on our dinner location. Sushi Yachiyo opened last year and despite its remote location and small space, is very popular with the Sydney sushi-set. On the night we visited, we called first to book a table, but after arriving we then had to wait about 10-minutes for the previous diners to vacate theirs. It wasn't a big deal and once inside I was rather happy with the cosy and darkly lit space.

There is an open kitchen along one wall, so that if you sit at the bar you can watch chef and owner Mitsuhiro Yashio slicing up the sashimi. The waiters, especially the older mama, were friendly and attentive and we had drinks - lychee juice in a can for me - within minutes. We ordered three dishes to share between the three of us, and the first to arrive was this yumbo grilled salmon dish, which didn't really taste very Japanese at all:

We ate it all up, while struggling to keep our bowls, plates, glassware and chopsticks from falling from our tiny, round table. Soon after, our plate of tempura arrived, causing more traffic problems at the table, but it was eaten quickly too:

The tempura included prawns, fish and vegetable pieces, as well as an oyster, which I didn't dare go near! I prefer my oysters raw. We had decided upon the next dish while standing outside the door waiting for our table. There was a Sydney Morning Herald food-review taped to the window in which Helen Greenwood raved about the ''kami-nabe'':

''A pale clay brazier with a low blue flame is placed on a small wooden plinth and has a fretwork metal, pleated bowl lined with pleated paper called washi on top. We watch as slices of salmon and kingfish, resting on enoki mushrooms, chopped chinese cabbage and a few shiitake mushrooms, cook slowly. The textures of the fish, mushrooms and cabbage are mesmerising."

Tempted by the idea that food could be mesmerising, we ordered it:

Yes, it looks rather odd doesn't it, but my bad flash-photography does not really do it any favours. Sitting inside that paper-fan bowl was a blandish Japanese broth along with mysterious and not-all-that mesmerising mushrooms with pieces of fish.

It was all a bit too much like a lucky-dip for my liking and it was just my lucky-dip-luck that when I dived in with my chopsticks I came out with something white, with the texture of scallop, but curiously flavourless. Good god, what was it? I wasn't sure if it was mushroom or flesh from the sea. I had a few more goes with the chopsticks but realised I am not so brave with food after all. Ruby proved more adventurous and knocked back a broth-soaked oyster, but later, with a bad taste on her tongue, wished she hadn't.

I was more concerned about Nina as I'm told there's a long list of what expectant mothers can't eat, including soft-cheeses, nuts and raw fish. Because of the brazier-style cooking of the kami-nabe, none of the pieces in the broth were evenly cooked, so that food at the bottom of the paper-fan bowl was well-cooked, while the fish and mushrooms sitting near the top were only cooked in parts. I pointed this out to Nina but she wasn't too worried and just poked her chopsticks in to the broth and fished out some more salmon.

Both Ruby and Nina ordered desserts: one looked like a flying saucer and was comprised of a chocolatey-bean paste sandwiched between two crispy round discs that tasted like dried rice-paper. The other was like a vanilla agar-agar and deliciously refreshing.

When we left the restaurant I noticed these wise, slightly unintelligible, but strangly appropriate words chalked up on the rusty-facade outside Sushi Yachiyo's door:

Whatever you do/Whoever you are

It don't make a difference too much/Whan make any difference

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Sushi Yachiyo

1/13 Kirketon Road

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

02 9331 8107