Sticky Bar home roast starting Wed 4th March

We're starting the Sticky Bar home roast on Wednesdays.

Come up and see us at the bar between 6.30m and 9pm on Wednesdays for a home roast feed and a glass of wine from the Sticky brew barrel for $15.

In times like these you can't go past a good value feed from your friends at Sticky.

Starting Wednesday 4th March.

Sticky Bar is Open upstairs at Tablefor20

Sticky Bar has officially opened upstairs at Tablefor20 [182 Campbell St].

We do a limited range of great wines, Italian beers but our specialty is the sticky. A little low key after hours goodness to wipe off the day.

You'll find my mate Benito upstairs running the place, Sticky is his gig and if it's too early for a sticky, he's a master at mixing cocktails. Just tell him what sort of drink you feel like and let him do this thing.

You don't need to eat at Tablefor20 to come, we're open from 6.30pm onwards so feel free to come straight up anytime or if you're eating downstairs, come up for a drink after dinner.

The bar is above Tablefor 20 and the entrance to Sticky Bar is via Taggarts Lane, off Crown St, in Surry Hills. Come round the back and look for the number to call either me or Benito then go into the elevator and press 6.

Salute
Michael & Benito

Welcome to Table for 20

Welcome to Table for 20, well to the site at least. If you've not been before it's probably worth telling you a little about what we do.

We put on a shared table dinner party a few nights a week. It's pretty low key, we don't do trendy, we don't do restaurant reviews or fancy promotions. We just do local feeds, for people that live locally. It started off with our own 'hood dinners', a bunch of us ate together at one house or another, most of my mates don't have family here so it was kinda important to have a feed and a bit of community with people regularly, like family.

The dinner party kept getting bigger & bigger so that's when we moved to 182 Campbell Street in Surry Hills. Now we do a big dinner party Wed - Sat nights, it's mostly locals but anyone's welcome. Life can be so busy and we all tend to get caught up in the day to day stuff so these extended dinner parties are a chance to sit down & eat with others who live or work close by. The food comes out on shared platters and the idea is that you serve the people around you and share it amongst the group on your table. It's a good excuse to get to know people and really aims to move away from the private single table dining experience to something more laid back and communal.

We do a 3 course set menu every night and the idea is that it's a dinner party so we all eat the same thing. If you do have any dietary requirements (or anyone on your table does), you need to let me know beforehand so I can work out something else to accommodate you.

The building we operate out of is owned by Hope St who are a mission who do a lot of good work in the Surry Hills area with people who are less fortunate than us. We think what they do is really important and we're proud to be part of their community, so 10% of our takings go towards Hope St every night.

So here's the deal - We do a 3 course set menu every night, you can BYO or drink mine. The cost is $60 Wed, Thurs, Fri & Sat.

Just ring me (Michael Fantuz) if you want to be fed on 0416 096 916.We're at 182 Campbell St, Surry Hills and it's legs under the table by 8pm.

You can also book lunches during the week and functions on Sat nights if you have a bigger group.

That's it from me. We look forward to having a feed & a bottle of something special with you sometime. Salute

Michael

Innovative Restaurant Marketing

If this is your hood we'd love you to come for dinner

My mates & I who live in the local area get together for regular "hood dinners" meeting up for a good feed & a bottle of red. Usually we'd take over someone's house for the occasion.

My background is hospitality so I would usually end up in the kitchen, others would bring dessert or something to start with. Everybody brings wine & even then there's never enough...and Table for 20 works in pretty much the same way. My mates are in the kitchen cooking, friends drop round with bits & pieces and my mum is a fantastic Italian cook so I'm still partial to serving a bit of her home made Tiramisu on occasion.

It started getting out of hand when the neighbourhood dinner table moved beyond 10 people and so we started Table for 20 to keep the tradition going .. but now we're feeding up to 40 people on some nights.

There's a core group of us who started bringing mates along and those mates brought other mates and before we knew it we had people who sort of knew eachother or were loosely connected in some way eating together regularly. We liked the idea of having a regular meal & bottle of wine with friends but also the chance to meet new people who live locally as well...

Everyone who comes to Table for 20 is usually introduced by someone whose already been here, so people come because they like the idea of hood dinners and for some reason it seems to work.

Anyone who lives in Sydney will agree there's no shortage of good restaurants here but the one thing we thought the 2010 area was really lacking was somewhere low key where you can just come & have a feed, open a bottle of wine, meet a few new people and have a laugh. I think sometimes people get so caught up in their day to day lives and we all tend to get pretty isolated and just stick to our immediate groups that we have time for.

My friends say coming to Table for 20 is kinda like coming to my place for dinner except that the dinner party seems to keep getting bigger and you never know who you're going to meet...I like the idea of that.

Restaurant Review - yourrestaurants.com.au

Truly unique restaurant concepts are few and far between on our homogenous dining scene, but Table for 20 attains this illusive goal with their "'hood dinners". Based on the guerrilla-dining concept (where underground restaurants operate out of private homes, spreading the word via text messaging), Table for 20 is designed to feel like an intimate extension of owner Michael Fantuz's home.

Diners text Fantuz (0416096916) to book their place at the communal table - kind of like an RSVP to a universal invite - arriving with bottle in hand by around 7.30pm. The tone is that of a private dinner party (albeit a very large one, including strangers as well as friends) and the homely space and the serving of the food on large platters help to facilitate this mood.

Unlike most dinners at a mate's place, there's naturally a cost involved; however, a portion of this goes to the Hope Street charity - adding a virtuous feel-good vibe to proceedings. In a city adept at sitting at communal tables without making eye contact, Table for 20 aims to bring a bit of sociability to an arguably antisocial neighbourhood.

Shelley Tustin