Frank and Blanco

Best Coffee in Sutherland and cool barista!
Give it a shot!
And they open super early for us 7am workers

Just an ok, it’s very narrow, deep block that makes you feel a bit cramped. Also a bit pricy for the food and service that you get.

It took 5 min and 9 seconds to walk to Frank and Blanco from my doorstep. In my heels. That is amazing.
I was a bit disappointed by the cocktail menu. I was looking forward to some form of habanero or jalapeño margarita, but didn’t see any. For a Mexican themed bar, I didn’t see any spicy cocktails at all. So I stuck with beer in protest.
The menu has potential, but I thought the food could use some fine tuning. The corn ($ 8) was simply burnt to get that charred Mexican-​corn vibe, when it could have been caramalised first and then pushed from there. The chipotle spread on the side was fantastic.
The pulled pork tacos (2 for $ 12) got most of their flavour from the Byron Bay hot sauces I was using, and not enough from the pork.
The sauce for the chorizo & potato ($ 25) needed a bit more time to simmer and reduce, and again, relied way too much on the hot sauce we added for flavour. The jalapeños mentioned on the menu were undetectable. The chorizo itself was a bit bland, like the kind you’d buy at a grocery store instead of the kind you’d buy at a Spanish deli.
If Frank and Blanco was in the city, I wouldn’t go back. Since its now one the very few licensed restaurants on the main strip in Sutherland, and I walk by it every day after work, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll drop in once in awhile.

I have so much love for this new little place. Thank goodness we had a booking because Saturday night was buuuusy. It’s a pretty small space so we squeezed past the fairly intense crowd at the bar and were seated in the back section which was much less crowded. Lovely, friendly staff (cheers to the waiter we had — first day on the job and he was awesome). The food was beautiful — they have a small menu and everything we had was delicious. My partner had the soft shell crab tacos and said they were great. I’m vego so was a little limited in choice but we shared a few plates and it ended up being plenty of food. The corn on the cob with the smokey mayo or whatever that sauce was… So good.
The tequila based cocktail list was hard to pick from, they all sounded pretty great — after a quick consultation with a very helpful waitress I went with the grapefruit based «Paloma» and it was perfect.
Churros for dessert, obviously (how could we resist) — the serve was small but it really was the perfect amount to share with coffees.
My only request for the future would be maybe to add one vego «main» option (I don’t know, maybe they would have done one if I asked, I didn’t even worry about it). But seriously, I had such a great meal. Great vibe, friendly staff and quality food. Hope this place does well because it’s a gem and I want to come back!