Review: This relaxed shack’s fish sandwich is worth the eight-hour drive from Sydney (2024)

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“How good is The Salty Mangrove?” asked our barista, half-rhetorically, at a Mullumbimby bakery the other week. “Weird name for a cafe, though.”

With all due respect to my new, vape-fragrant friend: strong disagree. The Salty Mangrove is an excellent name for a fibro-cladded bolthole surrounded by high tides and old-growth forest.

It’s not really a cafe, either, although you can certainly trundle up in the morning for a long black. A short, smart co*cktail list means the venue can work as a bar, while the kitchen – helmed by chef-at-large David Moyle – cooks the kind of easygoing holiday food that can lead to a four-hour lunch, even though the menu only features a dozen or so items.

If you were lucky enough to eat at Franklin in Hobart around 2015, you might remember Moyle’s knack for coaxing maximum flavour from seafood with minimum fuss. There wasn’t a fish in the country quite like his whole, wood-roasted flathead with lemon leaves and miso.

Since leaving Tasmania, Moyle has worked at restaurants up and down the East Coast, and opened The Salty Mangrove with a few local creatives last year. You can find it in New Brighton, a small coastal village dozing just north of Brunswick Heads.

The beach is a short, sandy trail away. Salt marsh and sunsets lie to the west. It’s not hard to imagine you’ve taken a few hundred wrong turns and ended up in a Mississippi oyster shack, albeit one with lots of very blonde, very tanned children running about, and the occasional surfer hauling a McTavish Noserider. Order at the counter. Sit on the deck. Sip on a Mezcal Sunrise ($16). Brazilian jazz-funk might be playing in the background.

Prior to Moyle and his mates moving in, the site was more standard-issue cafe. Instead of scrambled eggs and avocado toast, there’s now a modest breakfast offering a “weed and feta pie” ($12). It is, perhaps, not for all locals. “What happened to the default banana bread?” reads one online review.

But the place is still packed on a rainy Saturday morning, and there are cinnamon scrolls ($7) and a dense banana cake.

That Greek-style weed pie ($12) is suitably sharp and flaky, full of spinach, dandelion, chicory and radicchio.

The same clutch of bitter greens is used for a fish “dumpling” salad ($26), featuring head and tail offcuts of snapper rolled into little nubs, wrapped in vine leaves and charcoal-grilled.

The rest of the fish is used for a crumbed snapper sandwich ($26), a beaut, post-surf lunch with crunchy, thumb-thick fries ($7). This is a small revelation. The Northern Rivers has plenty of great restaurants, but delicious lunch spots where you can wear thongs are harder to find.

Oysters ($5 each) are among the best I’ve had all year – super-briny Merimbula bivalves served simply with lemon. A special oyster-storing fridge helps ensure consistency, says Moyle during a visit in May. “My whole thing with Salty was to shuck oysters to order, have great hand-cut chips, and we’d figure the rest out from there.” A noble pursuit for any kitchen, really.

Head chef Alex Bentley runs the pass when Moyle is out of town, and he can sure whip a smooth taramasalata ($14). A liberal dose of salted mullet roe bolsters raw garlic, oil and lemon juice, while flatbread – pillow-soft on one side, crisp on the other – is $6 for all your dipping needs.

Keeping with the understated, vaguely Greek theme, the bread also swaddles a kofta-ish lamb and buckwheat sausage dolled up with marinated peppers, labne and a small forest of mint ($22). Team it with a $15 glass of Minim 2022 “Hitch” Sangiovese.

“My whole thing with Salty was to shuck oysters to order, have great hand-cut chips, and we’d figure the rest out from there.”

David Moyle

Although the deck is open daily for pastries and deli-style sandwiches (including a burly, $10 focaccia with pickled squash, cabbage and romesco), the full lunch menu only runs from Thursday to Sunday.

At dinner, I’m told, there’ll be one or two extra proteins cooked on the bone, such as lamb shank or whole-roasted flathead (welcome back!). Time your run right and you might find yourself there for a collaboration event, such as the recent Mumcha brunch with Melbourne’s ShanDong MaMa.

I’m half-tempted to do the eight-hour drive next time there’s a vine leaf-wrapped Dolmade Parde menu produced in partnership with the crew from Coolangatta’s Bar Evelyn. Or when there’s another outdoor gig from West African musician Amadou Suso or the mood takes Moyle to barbecue more mud crab specials. It’s a place where you feel like you’re doing something with your day without doing much of anything at all.

How good is The Salty Mangrove? Very.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine

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