Morgan McGlone is a chef with a reputation. Regarded in Sydney as the guy who turned fast food on its head with his Barangaroo-based Belle’s Hot Chicken franchise — where he turned “really f***ing hot” into a legit sauce flavour — he also hails from an interesting fine-dining background.

McGlone toiled under the man widely described in the US as the best southern chef in the world — Sean Brock — at Husk in southern Nashville, where he says anything short of 400 covers was a slow day.

And now he is overseeing the entire food offering at Hotel Harry — aka Harpoon Harry Bar & Grill; a colourful pub plonked on that grimy corner of Wentworth Ave and Goulburn St in Surry Hills that was once famed as a speak-easy for cops and their contacts.

Cops still frequent it — it is across the road from the Australian Federal Police headquarters — along with the requisite mishmash of inner-city trendoids.

Its whole Americana/honky-tonk aesthetic is a nice fit for McGlone’s brand of southern cooking, and the venue has already hosted a series of Belle’s pop-ups.

The public bar menu, unveiled several weeks ago, is loaded up with things such as clams casino, devilled eggs and fried-green tomatoes, as well as a lamb rib rack and shrimp po boys.

But it’s the new formal menu, served in the oh-so-genteel upstairs dining room, that finally got its big reveal this week. And a word of advice: leave the calorie-counting bores at home.

There’s a starter of St Louis pork ribs ($22), brined for six hours and rubbed with smoked paprika, onion and garlic powder, brown sugar and coffee grains before being cooked — low and slow — for a further eight hours, then served with a tangy barbecue sauce and crackling.

Drawing from the French influences of Louisiana is a crab ravigote ($22); Fraser Island spanner crab stirred through a lightly acidic cream sauce infused with celery seed, pickled green tomatoes and lemon juice.

There’s beef tartare (of course) with smoked oyster, and crispy pigs ears wrapped in lettuce and served with pickles and red pepper sauce.

For mains, a sensational Kurobota pork chop (a hefty 300g) cooked over charcoal and served atop a bed of slowly braised cabbage with a dollop of homemade mustard.

But the dish of the night, for me, is the shrimp and grits — fat, juicy Crystal Bay prawns, peeled (including tails thankfully) and sauteed with spring onions, zucchini, lemon juice and butter, and served on white corn grits sans cream — just a smidgen of butter.

McGlone says he has made “thousands” of servings of this and it shows. It’s perfection.

The desserts are predictably satisfying.

The best is a simple dish called fried apple, which is green apples caramelised with butter, sugar and cinnamon rolled in a pastry that is made with a combination of lard and butter. They’re dunked in a deep fryer and served with a dreamy housemade cinnamon ice cream.

But there are a few misses. The worst: an outdoor smoking section adjacent to the dining room. This is an arrangement that sends sporadic wafts of Winnie Blue through the place. (“I’ve heard of smoked meats but this is ridiculous!”)

Also a vegie plate, comprising some genuinely good condiments such as creamed corn and succotash, carries a lofty $30 price tag.

But overall, given a lot of this US barbecue-style food comes with a fair bit of posturing, this feels as close as it gets to the real deal.

Originally published on dailytelegraph.com.au