Haymarket's revamped Paddy's Markets vowed to be a first-rate food hub. Did it deliver?

Sydney Morning Herald

30-05-2025

According to Hay St Market's website, the hub is all about 'eats, treats, beets, meats' and 'sweets'. Either the marketing team is especially excited about the root vegetables on offer or it meant to write 'beats'. A jazzpop- electro-doof soundtrack is incessant, but makes little sense with whatever Dad and Dave vibe they're trying to create around the Traders Bar area with its recycled lumber, wooden Schweppes crates and vintage scales.
For reasons beyond speculation, there are also old Encyclopaedia Britannicas strewn around the bar. Who's reading 'Volume 12: Hydrozoa to Jeremy, Epistle Of' with their Jansz Cuvée? Management should research the City of Sydney's recycling guidelines instead. There are plenty of bins (and a lot of disposable cutlery and boxes), but I haven't found any receptacles to separate cans, plastic and cardboard. Even Westfield has recycling bins for PET's sake.
I have, however, been served a very good martini on three occasions at Traders, which is stocked with some decent booze. You can then take that martini to The Fish + Chippery and down it with thick chips of noble crunch fried in beef tallow. They're not just the best thing I've eaten across six visits to Hay St Market, they're some of the best chips in town.
I'll also bat for the vibrant pho at Luke Nguyen's noodle store, even if you can get twice the amount for the same price at many restaurants nearby. Wan Chai Wok's chow fun with shaggy, soy-seasoned beef is totally fine, as are most of Thomas Hay Bakery's pastries. The cannoli shop's cannoli do the job; barbecued Skull Island prawns at Little Midden have long savoury flavour; Scoop & Sons knows what it's doing with gelato.