Arcadia Liquors, Redfern

Arcadia Liquors in Redfern is a fine hideout on a cold winter night – as Matt and I discovered on Tuesday, eating ourselves into toastie comas. The staff made him a "joke" sambo, so big that it hardly fit into the griller. They warned him it was so large and crammed with ham and cheese that it might actually kill him. He survived and ended up with seconds.

I nursed an Escanciador cider as he played beerspotting, giving me a breakdown of every bottle he recognised on the bar's shelves. Alongside all these variations on alcohol are old, curiosity-sparking knick-knacks (provenance: either "long story" or "Mitchell Road Auction House"). Arcadia Liquors has a small-bar feel – with better legroom. There's a lot more space than your XS-sized usual suspect, but the personality's still there. I liked that slow-lane feel of sitting there, losing track of time to cold drinks, an encore round of toasted sandwiches and an unhurried loop of Gillian Welch songs. Time (The Revelator) is still such a great album and this is a fine new bar.

I read in Broadsheet that owners/barkeepers Brett Pritchard and David Jank (The Old Fitzroy) are thinking of having live music at Arcadia Liquors and more cocktails are going to sneak their way onto the drinks list. What they're already doing is pretty cool and, as my friend Jo noted, the mulled wine is unmissable – the perfect tonic for handling winter's temperature drops.

And with a name like Arcadia, lush greenery is a prerequisite – so the bar has an outdoor section, with a vertical garden running down one wall. I wonder if you can hear the Gillian Welch soundtrack out there, too.

Arcadia Liquors, 7 Cope Street, Redfern NSW www.arcadialiquors.com. You can follow Arcadia Liquors on Facebook.

Fleetwood Macchiato, Erskineville

You can easily pick a fight over Fleetwood Macchiato's name. In the week that this Erskineville joint has been open, I've already heard people slam its jokey title while others have hailed its punchline brilliance. What's clear cut, though, is that this is a really good cafe.

It's partly run by Jai Pyne – a familiar face, given that he's the frontman for The Paper Scissors and used to work at Black Star Pastry. Prior to opening this new venture, he was at The Golden Cobra and that roaster can be credited for the supply lines of super-serious coffee at Fleetwood Macchiato. The Debut de Siecle house blend makes for a good long black (minus what I cleverly spilt on my shirt) and, if you're into filter coffee, the menu's extensive tasting notes help make the case for some well-sourced single origins (the Kayumbu from Rwanda claims to have crisp citrus acidity, milk chocolate and vanilla hints and a caramel finish; the personal discovery that it leaves you "unpleasant to kiss" may be an unintentional after-effect, though). If you tend to your own brews at home, you can also buy 250g takeaway bags of what's on offer, too.

Beyond caffeine fixes, there are some interesting beverages on offer, such as Pomegranate Lemonade ($5), "Erskineville" Sparkling Water ($2 for endless top-ups from the inhouse sodastream), Larsen & Thompson teas and a brilliant drink called Little Rippler ($6), which is fresh-squeezed orange and mango juice, with a pinwheel swirl of raspberry reduction on top. It's so damn good – it's the most upbeat, summer-reviving flavour you'll encounter during this ankle-freezing season.

And the food is excellent, too. The Roasted Mushrooms with Miso Butter and Radish Baguette ($11) is straight-out delicious; with its tart addition of pickled cucumber and firepower dose of sriracha hot sauce, it actually reminds me of banh mi. And it turns out that that association is not too far off – the sandwich is loosely inspired by David Chang's pork buns at Momofuku. Will, despite not having an appetite, ended up smashing a Poached Chicken Baguette with Coriander Aioli and Slaw ($11). His crumb-clear plate was an endorsement of how good it was. Another fine lunch pick is the Winter Vegetable Salad ($14.50) – colour-vibrant strips of roasted beetroot, carrot and parsnip, dressed with lemony, garlic tahini and served with chickpeas and salad leaves.

The breakfast options are good, too. Baked Eggs with Napoli and Pangritata ($13.50) are tailored for soaking up with crusty, seed-studded slices from Organic Bread Bar in Paddington. The slow-cooked garlic, tomato and basil sauce is entirely worth sponging up with carbs and the golden-fried grit of bread-crumbs is a tasty bonus. My side dish of Cumin-Roasted Pumpkin ($4) was a good cold-weather companion, too. The Baked Beans ($4) were a little standard-issue, but it's a little ambitious to expect every single menu item to impress. Next time, I'd like to try the House-Made Corn Tortilla ($14) served with Achiote butter, roasted mushrooms and spring onions. And perhaps I could be tempted by the rotating Spanish potato omelette, which gets paired up with "whatever's good + a slice of bread" ($9).

Although the cafe's name suggests diners will be exposed to an endless loop of Tusk and Rumors, the soundtrack is rather current. Beach House, Janelle Monae and Geoffrey O'Connor were a few of the bands who got played during my visits.

So, once you've settled your reaction to Fleetwood Macchiato's name, there's no further argument necessary. This is a cafe that will hopefully stick around for a while, like a classic, always-played-on-AM-radio band.

Fleetwood Macchiato, 43 Erskineville Rd, Erskineville NSW 02 9557 9291, www.fleetwoodmacchiato.com

Hartsyard, Newtown

The old Gourmet Viking site in Newtown has been regenerated into Hartsyard, a brilliant new restaurant run by Gregory Llewellyn and Naomi Hart. The couple score "A for effort" on many fronts: for making their own cocktail syrups, coaxing heirloom vegetables and intriguing herbs from their own greenhouse/garden and ingeniously constructing bar shelves from plumbing pipes – even though that required prepping and securing the pieces with 2000 individual flanges.

The food is very good, too. Llewellyn is an American chef with some heavyweights on his CV – Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud – but his approach isn't strictly fine dining. Llewellyn is the kind of chef who is cool with staff wearing baseball caps in his kitchen; this dress code is one reason he wanted to open a restaurant with Australian wife Naomi (who runs front of house in a friendly, inviting fashion). His menu has quite a hold on us – we first went to Hartsyard when Will got back from three months working overseas and Will has already notched up three Hartsyard visits in two weeks. Our hi-rotation dishes include the charcoal-cooked Broad Beans ($14), which are showered with parmesan curls and are eaten like edamame; for a real flavour charge, dip the beans into the lemon jam and romesco sauce – the outbreaks of sweet-and-sour hits and feisty spice are addictive. We also like the dish that plays matchmaker with six different types of Radishes ($14), teaming them up with rye bread crisps, red onion and butter that's all smoky from burning hickory.

And while there is an excellent salad – made with zingy, lemon-dressed mushroom shavings, celery heart, artichoke and hearty Parmesan crackers and cheese ($17) – Hartsyard is on rather friendly terms with fat: there's a bacon-infused cocktail, a full-on Poutine (in Quebec, it's hangover bait that's traditionally made with hot chips, cheese curds and gravy – here, it's served with cheddar and beer sauce, fried taters, crispy beef strips and oxtail gravy); and Cold-smoked Fried Chicken that Will rates as "amazing", especially as it's served with buttermilk biscuit and sausage gravy ($26). He also digs the Smoked Beef Short-Rib ($32) which comes with bone marrow and the signature kimchi of sous chef, Sung Yeol.

Wildfire is the restaurant that unites the kitchen staff – it's where Yeol, head chef Gregory Llewellyn and pastry chef Andrew Bowden all met. And Bowden deserves some spotlight and applause for the excellent desserts at Hartsyard. Like many dishes on the menu, the Peanut Butter and Banana Sundae denotes Hartsyard's American influence, although Bowden spells out this particular geographical link with pretzel ice cream, salted fudge and banana donut. There's also a Chocolate Cake ($16) that is in no way a wallflower: it's served with a massive corkscrew ribbon of chocolate – and the plate feels like it was inked by a calligrapher, who just happened to be using deep red swirls of beetroot ganache instead. Mandarin foam and powdered beetroot add textural surprise and contrast.

My utter favourite, though, is the Rhubarb Crumble ($16), which Alex Vitlin (Sydney editor of The Thousands) aptly described as "more flower arrangement than dessert" (you can see my dodgy Twitpic of it here, if you're visually curious). I always think of rhubarb crumble as the granny's cardigan of sweets, but at Hartsyard, it is next-level good and subtracts all traces of its daggy winter dessert past. Rhubarb strips are poached and dehydrated and served with strawberry sorbet, savoury parsnip crisps and a textural lottery of malted milk powder, icing sugar and burnt butter crumbs. It's awesome.

It's one of many favourite things at Hartyard. And I have a feeling more favourites could be added to the list when the place opens for weekend brunch soon.

Hartsyard, 33 Enmore Road, Newtown NSW (02) 8068 1473, hartsyard.com.au