Sig Enzo is a backstreet neighbourhood wine bar with standout Italian-accented cocktails and wines, brilliant Sicilian-leaning food and a friendly, welcoming vibe.
All the very best neighbourhood bars give you the impression you’ve stumbled upon a hidden gem, a secret known only to the truly local. Sig Enzo, sitting unobtrusively under an apartment building just off increasingly hip Sydney Road, has a hidden-gem vibe in spades, even when it’s packed to the rafters. Perhaps it’s that this tiny bar feels like a house party, with affable owner Vince Mazzone ever-present out the front, dispensing drinks, flipping records and making small talk with equal aplomb. It might also be that the excellent Sicilian food is deceptively homely, unfailingly delicious and served to your table by the chef herself. It feels intimate and personal, like all good neighbourhood bars should, and you may walk away from a night here conflicted – wanting to tell all your friends about it, but also wanting to keep it to yourself to make it easier to get a seat next time.
In a neighbourhood where the demographic in bars and pubs tends to skew young, Sig Enzo attracts an impressively mixed-age crowd. Come early and you might find families sharing one of the booths inside, millennials knocking back Aperol Spritzes out the front, and lone diners both young and old fronting the bar and chatting with the owner while waiting for their freshly shucked oysters, Sicilian chickpea fritters or house-made spaghetti with nettle pesto and egg yolk to arrive. With its compact dimensions, flattering golden-hued lighting, excellent stereo system pumping out a playlist that favours soul and jazz, and drink and food lists compiled with care, attention and quality in mind, this is a place that truly gets what hospitality is all about.
When it first opened, Sig Enzo billed itself as an aperitivo bar, and while there are traces of its former life among the drinks – short but solid lists of Italy’s bittersweet amaro liqueurs, vermouth and Spritzes – there’s a more open approach now, albeit with a distinct Italian accent. An ever-changing list of wine mostly comprises Italian grape varieties made in Australia and in the mother country, with a generous selection by the glass. But the not-to-be-missed winners here are the cocktails. Vince puts an Italian spin on classics to excellent effect – the Brooklyn, for instance, adds Averna Amaro to the rye and vermouth mix, while the Italian Margarita is made with amaretto almond liqueur from cult Victorian label Marionette.
