Danks Street Depot, Sydney Airport

There are many things I associate with airports – tearful farewells, joyous reunions, the romance of leaving your cares behind and travelling to faraway places and, unfortunately, bad airport food with jacked up prices. But all this has changed with Danks Street Depot’s outpost at Sydney Airport, with many more non-fast food dining options to come.

I first ate here when seeing Mum off on a trip in November, and again a month later when Monsieur Poisson and I left for holidays ourselves. There were small changes to the menu in that short period between visits, which is testament to Danks Street Depot’s mission to use seasonal, sustainable produce.

A word of note: do not attempt to order the following two dishes between two people unless you’ve been just rescued from being stranded on a deserted island for days (or similar unlikely scenario), as it is simply way too much food! The ‘Silverbeet Hash’ is laden with potato chunks and is understatedly billed on the menu as “Two poached eggs, herbed tomato, sourdough toast & butter”. Danks Street Depot’s take on the Reuben contains corned Wagyu braised in balsamic, sugar and spices but leaves me wanting more sauerkraut. There are plenty of fluffy-centred and well-seasoned hand-cut chips on the side, and it is saddening to be unable to finish them.

Our second visit saw us show much more restraint prior to a mid-afternoon flight. The ‘Spaghetti Picante’ is light, non-greasy and provides plenty of tasty crunch with garlic, chilli, capers, anchovies, breadcrumbs and parsley. A beetroot and orange salad topped with fetta and walnuts affords us some much-needed hydration prior to 9 hours of being confined to a pressurised aeroplane cabin.

And what of cabin food? Well, economy class offered us the usual frozen dinner meals flanked by tubs of potato salad and bread rolls (though Lurpak butter is a nice inclusion), with the light meal towards the end of the flight comprising of a cheese and mustard sandwich on (dry) wholemeal bread, Cadbury’s chocolate and a muesli slice.

The overnight return flight to Sydney was much the same, but with fruit salad, a muffin and juice for breakfast.

At least there’s the comfort of knowing there’s good food at the airport before embarking on a holiday trip. There’s also the comfort of good coffee at nearby Don Campos – I highly recommend their piccolo affogato which skews the ratio of vanilla ice-cream to espresso much in favour of the ice-cream.

Espresso coffee is not one of Hong Kong’s fortes – something which Monsieur Poisson missed whilst we were there – but more on that and other things in a series of posts on Hong Kong to come!

Danks Street Depot, Sydney Airport

Terminal 1, Sydney International Airport NSW

Tel: (02) 9669 0755

Don Campos

2/21 Fountain St, Alexandria NSW

Tel: (02) 9690 0090

happy eating!