To
see: the wonderful harbour the Opera House, Balmoral
beach (quiet) and Manly beach (spectacular), the Botanical Gardens, the Rocks
(some “old” Victorian buildings), the Maritime Museum for those who like such
things, the Aquarium where you walk through a glass tank of sharks and the
cliff walk near Bondi.
Food
rating: 4/10
Phone (00 61 2) 9358 1652
Open dinner only, daily
Pricey at around GBP 65 a head all in. Nice atmosphere - trendy but relaxed. Service was excellent. The main problem is that they are trying to
introduce too many flavours e.g. a passion fruit dessert with a passion fruit
sauce did not need some strawberries as well.
The best dish was very tender veal wrapped in bacon. The sommelier was
brilliant, with an excellent wine waiter, knowledgeable and glasses perfectly
topped up without prompting. Stella had
tuna cooked rare with a very peppery crust, served with rocket salad and aioli
- the fish was well timed but there was too much pepper, which dominated the
rest of the dish. Mashed potatoes were
decent. Stella had coconut mousse topped
with dark cherries in cherry jelly with a cherry sauce. 2/5 overall, an expensive
but enjoyable experience. Last visited February 1997.
Tetsuya
Food rating: 8/10
Rated the one world-class Australian restaurant, with a fusion of French
and Japanese cooking. It is a 20 minute cab ride from Circular Quay
along
Coffee
was good with rich chocolate truffles and squares of chocolate with nuts (3/5),
bread rather ordinary (bought in, really only 1/5). Service was very good. The menu here was identical to the last
visit, and dishes off this menu were noticeably less good, so I wonder how wide
his abilities stretch - cooking the same dish for lunch and dinner every day
for two years gives you plenty of chance to practice. Still probably the best
restaurant in town - certainly with the most original cooking. . Last visited February 1997.
Rockpool
Food rating: 5/10
Phone (00 61 2) 9252 1888
Open lunch: Mon-Fri, dinner Mon-Sat
Flash
atmosphere - very fashionable clientele.
Starter of harbour prawn lasagne with asparagus and
Stella
had John Dory with Indian bread (paratha) and tomato
sauce laced with coriander - a decent 2/5.
Roast duck was pleasant.
Chocolate orange mousse cake was odd in that the majority of the dessert
was chocolate mousse, in which there were pockets of raw egg white. This sat on a base of thin chocolate sponge
with thick slices of orange peel (2/5).
Overall a better meal tonight than my last one here. Best dish was a passion fruit
soufflé with passion fruit ice cream - (3/5).
Main problem is the high price - over GBP 70 per head, and though
service was good it is all a bit precious.
Last visited January 1997.
Quay (used to be Bilsons)
Food rating: 6/10
Circular Quay West
Phone (00 61 2) 9251 5600
Open, lunch Sun-Fri, dinner daily
On Circular Quay itself, with a marvellous view over the harbour. Starter nibble
of cream cheese with chives on a tiny round of toast (4/5). Ex Robuchon trained
chef. A starter of tuna was very finely
judged, served with a sauce of oriental spices and Chinese cabbage -
excellent. Ravioli of prawn and truffle
was excellent, with a fine prawn sauce - 4/5 for this dish. Good service - easily the most consistent of
the trip.
Starter
of marinated salmon with a delicious salad of "mache"
leaves in a "how do they do that?" French dressing
(3*/5). Main
course of beautifully cooked John Dory with a smooth but slightly bland pea
puree and crispy allumette (match-stick) potatoes
4/5. With
wonderful mashed potatoes a la Robuchon 4/5.
For
dessert, peach mousse with peach sauce had good texture with pieces of peach,
but was a little bland (3/5). We drank
Craig Avon Chardonnay (unoaked) One of the best three meals of the
trip, along with Cicada and Tetsuya. Last visited February 1997.
Bathers Pavilion
Food rating: 1/10
4 the Esplanade, Balmoral
Phone (00 61 2) 9968 1133
Open lunch and dinner daily (also breakfast at
weekends from
Lovely
view over Balmoral beach, though the building itself
is rather faded and weather beaten. 1/5
overall which given a price tag of GBP 60 per head for lunch is pretty
excessive. You are paying for the great
view.
Garlic
bruschetta was full of garlic but a bit too
olive-oily. Prawn and coriander roll was
adequate but with an overcooked outer skin, served with excellent cucumber
relish marinated in French dressing with dill.
A blue cheese tart was good, with light pastry and creamy very cheesy
filling, served with a rather ordinary onion and fig chutney. A barramundi was served as a Thai style
curry, and this was pretty good, offered with "flatbread", a sort of popadom effect served with chutney.
Grey
snapper was served with green mango slivers and bean sprouts, with a sweet
potato cake (too stodgy and bland) and an excellent sweet chilli sauce, with
plenty of bite (3/5). Accompanying
button mushrooms were pleasant.
Hazelnut
waffles were served with poached apricots and praline ice cream, -pleasant
rather than inspiring. We drank Mount
Mary Chardonnay. Last
visited February 1997.
Bennelong
Food Rating: 3/10
Sydney Opera House, Bennelong
Point
Phone (00 61 2) 9250 7548 and 9250 7578
Open dinner only, Mon-Sat
In
the Opera House itself. Starter nibbles
of small choux puffs with cheese sauce (2/5).
A difficult menu, with a tricky set of ingredients. There is a wonderful view over the harbour,
with pleasant but very slow service. On
the night we went the air conditioning was unable to cope and condensation was
dripping down the windows. It has a
rather eccentric menu that is trying to be bold but is just unappealing.
For
starter I had a reasonable quail ballotine. Stella was unable to find a starter she
wanted to eat. Plain French bread
2/5. Mahi mahi with a peppercorn and soumek
crust, on a bed of sliced carrots, served with puree of yet more carrots,
curried. This was very good, nearly
3/5. For dessert, Stella had a summer
padding served with a syllabub steeped in alcohol (2/5). I had a passion fruit Bavarian cream (= cake)
with passion fruit sauce, which was OK 2/5.
Coffee was fair 2/5, served with dry meringues containing peanuts (not
very appetising). Piper Brook Pinot Gris and Wilton Estate Semillon were the wines tried. Last visited February 1997.
Bel Mondo,
the Rocks
Friday 7/2//97
Food Rating: 1/10
Very
pretentious up market Italian with ever-so-precious service that could have
been transported direct from
Guigal Chateau Neuf du Pape and de Bortoli Noble One were the wines we tried. Last visited February 1997.
The Pier
Food Rating: 2/10
594 New
Phone (00 61 2) 9327 6561
Open lunch and dinner daily
Nice
setting on a pier in Rose bay, a 15 dollar cab ride from the centre. The dining room is long and narrow, and is
rather noisy due to the uncovered wooden floor.
Starters were mixed: a salmon mousse had a stringy texture and hardly
any flavour behind the salmon itself, on a bed of rocket and deep fried capers,
this was really only a round-up. Yet
slices of salmon "pastrami", were very lightly smoked, with
peppercorns at the edge, and utterly delicious, easily 3/5. Both were served with lightly toasted
"rye" (wholemeal) bread - the first decent bread of the trip. For main course, my yellowfin
tuna was rare, pleasant enough, with some rather dull boiled potatoes - a sauce
was needed. Stella had fried fish in
insipid batter with chips, which were decent but no more than that. Home made tartare
sauce was excellent though (3/5). Again,
barely 1/5 for these main dishes overall.
Just
one dessert was tried, and this was very fine, a perfect passion fruit soufflé
with passion fruit sorbet, again 3/5 and at least as good as that at the Rockpool a few days earlier. Wine list was good, a good sommelier
recommended 1991 Seppelt pinot noir, which as quite Burgundian and delicious - buy some if you ever see
it. This place was very hard to mark,
but around 1*/5 may be correct, veering between round up and 3/5. Service was OK but a little inattentive,
other than the excellent sommelier/wine waiter.
Coffee and English breakfast tea was served with a small almond
biscuit. Last visited
February 1997.
The Wockpool
Food Rating: 3/10
Phone (00 61 2) 9368 1771
Open dinner only, daily
A pleasant room in modern style in Potts Point, delivering a meal of
unfulfilled promise. Starters were "larb
of cod", a Thai-style dish of small pieces of cod mixed in with green
vegetables, leaves, peanuts and lemon grass in a spicy sweet chilli sauce. This was a stunning dish, the chilli sauce
avoiding any sense of cloyingness, the tastes distinct (3/5). King prawns were very delicately cooked,
served with delicate snow peas (mange tout) and sweetcorn,
in a fine soy-based sauce (2*/5). Sadly
the meal could not keep up the momentum.
A main course of chicken with chilli sauce suffered from overcooked
chicken (barely 1/5) while a whole steamed snapper, served with garlic and
spring onions in a soy sauce, was pleasant enough but lacked any real impact
(1*/5).
Desserts
tried were honey and cinnamon cake (1*/5) with pieces of fruit (melon,
pineapple, blueberries, blackberries) in a raspberry coulis. The other was ginger creme
brulee with sesame biscuit, served with the same
fruit garnish (2/5), the biscuit pushing 3/5.
Coffee was decent but unremarkable, while boiled rice was competent
enough. We drank Gerwurtztraminer
from Moorilla Estate, which was a very good Tasmanian
wine. Service was quite good (2/5). Overall 2/5.
Tim Adams botrytis-affected Semillon was the dessert wine. Last visited February 1997.
Level 41
Food Rating: 5/10
Level 41, The
Phone (00 61 2) 9221 2500
Open lunch: Mon-Fri, dinner Mon-Sat
Despite
(or perhaps because) its featuring in the movie The Matrix, the food is getting
more erratic on recent visits. Unlike a
previous meal 5 months previously, the service was poor - slow and forgetful. Bread was ordinary (1/5). The starter (we both had the same) was the
best dish: tagliatelle in a champagne sauce with
shreds of black truffle and good Parmesan.
The pasta was excellent, the truffle lending a lovely aroma - 4/5 would
not be too high a mark for this.
Sadly
everything went down from here. Beef
fillet was decent enough, on a bed of mash but with some rather overcooked
mushrooms and a jus that lacked intensity (2/5 only). Prawns with "potato waistcoats"
were prawns wrapped in a thin sheet of potato and deep fried. The prawns were tender enough, but the
stir-fried beansprouts onions and cabbage
accompanying them were burnt (1/5).
Preceding this was a little cup of chicken soup with lemongrass
(2/5). A dessert of truffle cake with
raspberries and a raspberry coulis had good texture
and flavour (3/5), while fruit sorbets (strawberry, kiwi fruit and mango) were
in a millefeuille arrangement where the sesame
biscuit layer was too hard, and surrounded by fresh fruit (mango, strawberry,
blackberries, blueberries, kiwi fruit) and passion fruit sauce (2/5 at
best). Coffee was good, with a large
espresso for once meaning that (coffee 3/5).
Petit fours comprised a tasteless Madeleine, a square of
chocolate-coloured sponge which was also tasteless, and a biscuit containing
raisins, which was good (1/5). Service
was 1/5 only, the wine list very fine but with no sommelier. Penfolds Magill Estate 1986 was very good, followed by Noble One de Bortoli (good as ever). Very expensive at GBP 85/head, as
to an extent you are paying for the fine view from the top floor of the
skyscraper over
None
of the culinary dynamism of