Here are comments based on a recent visit to Sydney.
Sydney, November 1995
We first went to Sydney in 1981, then again in 1991 and most recently November 1995, and there has been a dramatic change since our first visit in restaurant cooking. Like England and America, the quality is going up by leaps and bounds (while the quality of restaurants in France seems to us to be declining). In fact, if you eat ‘seriously’ for a week or so, you could save enough over eating in Paris to pay for your air fare!
‘Modern Australian’ cooking is based first on outstanding raw materials, and the influences are more Mediterranean (all restaurants serve bread with olive oil rather than butter) and Asian than classical. Here are some notes on the restaurants that I liked on the latest visit. In late 1995, Aus $2 = UK £1, US $1.60. Since things are changing so quickly, I would recommend that you buy a copy of the Good Food Guide which is published by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Tetsuyas, 79 Darling Street, Rozelle, (02) 555 1017
This is the most creative and interesting cooking of any restaurant in Sydney, and would be very highly considered in New York, London or Paris.
Tetsuya Wakuda (known as Tets) mixes classical and Japanese technique to produce a refined and individual cuisine.
The restaurant is in an out-of-the way location, and you enter by an unmarked side door. The decor is unremarkable, but it is pleasant to spend an evening there surrounded by people exclaiming regularly how good everything is. I understand that they can sell wine, but the two times that I have been everyone brought their own. There may be a menu, but I haven’t seen one: everyone seems to have the set dinner of four courses, followed by two desserts, which is $80 before service.
Most recently, the first course was a large plate of five small dishes: tea and tomato soup in a demitasse cup, sushi with blue swimmer crab, fennel salad and wakame seaweed, oven baked Tasmanian scallops, and a foie gras mousse which seemed out of place. I was with regular clients of the restaurant, and Tets is a generous guy, so he also threw in six Tasmanian oysters with a soy vinaigrette, and pickled eel with sushi rice and cucumber.
The next course was a ‘confit’ of Tasmanian ocean trout (sea trout in Europe) with capers and parsley oil, on a bed of capsicums; a spectacularly tasty dish. Then a breast of wild duck with duck jus, and roast rack of lamb with eggplant ravioli and miso sauce, served with crunchy mange touts and bak choi. The first dessert was Cape gooseberries with Sauternes jelly, followed by a large plate of five small desserts. At the end of this we felt comfortable, not at all stuffed.
Service is particularly intelligent. Somehow a small dining room staff and three chefs produce all of this at just the right pace.
Note: the next three restaurants compete with Tetsuya’s in quality, and two of them have wonderful views of one of the most beautiful harbours in the world.
Bennelong, Sydney Opera House, (02) 250 7578
I would recommend this for dinner, watching the lights of the city and the ferries arriving and departing from Circular Quay, and the next restaurant for lunch. Gay Bilson ran for many years Berowra Waters where we had what we thought was the best restaurant meal of our 1981 trip. Decor is ‘minimalist’ but I think that the view is more attractive than some job-lot pictures and tired flower arrangements.
The food is ace, and gutsier (literally - offal features prominently on the menu) than the other restaurants in this report. It’s an interesting mix of ‘modern Australian’ and European country cooking. Crab cake with coriander and mint from the former category is a good starter, but the two stars were polenta with Portobello mushrooms, and a salad of pork bits (including head cheese), veal tongue, olives and oranges. Roast pigeon, with liver stuffing, and braised brisket with braised leeks satisfied as main courses. Poached lemon with candied lemon and pastry cream was an interesting and fresh dessert. and baked spiced custard with saffron poached pear was rich and good.
This is expensive, about $120 per person including wines and service, but worth it. Two quibbles: minimalist decor is fine, but they could put cutlery on the tables without compromising the style; second, I thought the wine list should have been organised by either region or grape type or even price, but as far as I can see the listing is random.
Level 41, Chifley Tower, (02) 221 2500
>From the 41st and 42nd floors of this office building, you get a
spectacular view of Sydney harbour all the way to the sea. Even the loo has a view: the urinals in the gents have a picture window just on the top of the porcelain, and I am told that the ladies also has a view. The decor is ‘refined’, sort of like a good gentlemen’s club in NY.
I wasn’t able to sample many dishes there, but started with Sydney rock oysters with chilled green tea noodles. This is a great combination, and rock oysters are ubiquitious in Sydney restaurants, and also very good; medium to small, very creamy and luscious. Then I had a lettuce salad (lots of rocket/arugula and watercress) with strongly peppered sauteed sweetbreads and asparagus. Sadly I had to rush to catch a plane so couldn’t have dessert, but you could allow $75 for food before service and wine. There is a very good wine list, reasonably priced.
Rockpool, 107 George St, (02) 252 1888.
We first ate there in 1991 shortly after chef/proprietor Neil Perry opened it, and it was very good then, better now. Decor is modern, the room is long and thin, with three different levels. Service, as everywhere else in Sydney, is very good.
I had a salad of white asparagus and Morton Bay bugs (shellfish) and very good mussels with saffron jelly, a rather small portion (only one bug) but good; crab ravioli in shellfish broth and local oysters were also very good starters. Herb-crusted cod with sea urchin butter, and spice-crusted tuna with aubergine/eggplant salad were both very good main courses.
Allow $100 per person including good wines and service.
Bather's Pavilion, The Esplanade, Balmoral, (02) 968 1133
This is casual and good fun, with a great location on Balmoral Beach. The restaurant has cream and white walls, undistinguished modern paintings, staff with long white aprons who aren’t fussy or formal, a nice bar, and quite good food. The one idea that I will pinch from them is their ‘citron presse’ at the bar - a very good blended mixture of lemon, lime and orange juice. I have been twice now, and I will go back the next time I am in Sydney. I am told it is great for brunch on the weekend, and I can see that I would like to go then.
Cicada, 29 Challis Ave, Kings Cross, (02)358 1255
This restaurant is very highly regarded by people who live there and who know a lot about these things, but I wasn't thrilled by the food on my one dinner there. Fish soup with saffron and harissa was spicy and good, rare tuna with eggplant and hummus and red pepper OK, duck confit with lentils and bak choi not as good as I would expect a confit to be in Europe. The lime souffle served with lime sorbet was ordinary, frothy egg whites with a hint of lime flavour.
Service was good, but recommendations from the wine waiter weren’t. Allow $100 per person. Though this is rather negative, I will go back next time that I am in Sydney.
The Edge, 60 Riley St, E. Sydney (just S. of William St), (02) 360 1372
We ate there the first night in town, and I think it is a brilliant casual restaurant. No reservations, but on a Sunday night everyone seemed to be seated after about 15 minutes at the bar. They cook pizzas in a wood-fired oven (mine was tomato, basil & boccamcino cheese and it was great), make really good salads like mushrooms and rocket which I had, and tasty desserts like my banana tart with coconut ice cream.
For three courses, allow $40 per person, plus wines, plus service.
Darly St. Thai, 28-30 Bayswater Rd, Kings Cross, (02) 358 6530
Sorry, but here is where I part company from the GFG and from friends who like this. I had lunch there, and I think that the restaurant is boring then, in spite of good service. The decoration is dismal; I am told that it cost a lot, but it is naff in the light of day. The quality of the cooking is about the same as you would get in one of the better Thai restaurants in London. It apparently buzzes in the evening with the local Kings Cross crowd, but I wouldn’t return.
Victorias, 36 Victoria St, Berry NSW 2535 (044) 642211
This is 2 hours’ drive South of Sydney, and it is a very nice guest house in a nice small town. Victoria Somerville who cooks, and her partner David Glover who does most everything else, run this four bedroom guest house along very individual lines, and they serve very good food, with no choice. The night that I was there there they gave me a very good duck soup, with duck and watercress wrapped in rice paper on the side, then blue-eyed cod with chemoulah, a sort of lemon relish, and an excellent strawberry tart.
The furnishings of the house please me, not least because it is full of books, but also because their taste is so good. For dinner, bed and breakfast (home-made lemon curd and marmalade, both v. good), allow $140 per person, excluding wine because it is unlicensed. There’s also a nice cat, properly fat which encourages me to think that the food is consistently good.
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