Quay
We've ticked off another three-hat restaurant from the book. This was is called Quay and is round the corner from the Opera house in the Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay.
I picked it as the best restaurant to visit next on the grounds that it won best restaurant in Sydney in 2003 and 2005 and a dessert from there is featured on the front of The Book.
We went with the UK chief executive William, so I have three sets of dishes to report on rather than two, although Sean and I spoiled that somewhat by having the same main course. My choice was slightly limited by the superabundance of mushrooms (all fancy ones) on the menu.
William had spring vegetable salad with flowers and herbs, goat's curd cigars and lemon jam to start. I had been tempted by this but it seemed a little unexciting compared to the other starters. It looked very exciting when it arrived though - the "cigars" were pastry cigars and the salad looked good as well. I had the mud crab congee, which contained very little rice and a lot of crab. It was absolutely delicious - as soon as I started eating it I wanted to order another one! Sean had one of the most complicated starters, this was "Crisp confit of rare breed suckling pig belly, gentle braise of green lipped abalone, cuttlefish, handmade silken tofu, Japanese mushrooms" Sean said it was nice, although the tofu part only got an "alright".
For main course Sean and I both had "Roasted John Dory, gentle braise of sea scallops, spring vegetables" and William had the complicated one: "Crisp skinned Murray Cod, shaved baby squid, abalone, congee rice, shiitake, fresh water chestnuts, black moss". The John Dory was fantastic and William similarly complimented the Cod. All of William's accompaniments were in very small quantities, we struggled to find the black moss but eventually did (it did just look like black moss but I have no idea whether it really was a moss).
Sean had cheese and so I had the five-texture chocolate cake to keep him company. Unfortunately none of the textures was actually "cake"; there was chocolately, biscuity base, chocolate mousse, chocolate layer on top (it was exceptionally nice chocolate), white chocolate ice-cream in the middle and then chocolate sauce poured into the middle (melting the ice-cream and forming a pool) for the fifth texture. It actually provided a sixth as well - towards the end it started setting. The pudding was OK, lots of restaurants do chocolate puddings of this ilk and I'm rarely impressed (although strangely unable to not order them) - I prefer a simple home-made chocolate torte. Next time I will have the "Caramelised raspberry and rose scented mille feuille", which is the dish featured on the front cover of the SMH Good Food Guide. The cheese looked fantastic. I missed the exact descriptions as I was having chocolate sauce poured at the time, but one was a sheep's milk cheese, one was Roquefort and on a soft French (-style?) cheese. They went pretty quickly.
We were also brought petit fours with out tea, although disappointingly there was only one type and it was a rather sickly chocolate cigar with caramel cream. Still, I managed to eat my two and Sean's two.
We've ticked off another three-hat restaurant from the book. This was is called Quay and is round the corner from the Opera house in the Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay.
I picked it as the best restaurant to visit next on the grounds that it won best restaurant in Sydney in 2003 and 2005 and a dessert from there is featured on the front of The Book.
We went with the UK chief executive William, so I have three sets of dishes to report on rather than two, although Sean and I spoiled that somewhat by having the same main course. My choice was slightly limited by the superabundance of mushrooms (all fancy ones) on the menu.
William had spring vegetable salad with flowers and herbs, goat's curd cigars and lemon jam to start. I had been tempted by this but it seemed a little unexciting compared to the other starters. It looked very exciting when it arrived though - the "cigars" were pastry cigars and the salad looked good as well. I had the mud crab congee, which contained very little rice and a lot of crab. It was absolutely delicious - as soon as I started eating it I wanted to order another one! Sean had one of the most complicated starters, this was "Crisp confit of rare breed suckling pig belly, gentle braise of green lipped abalone, cuttlefish, handmade silken tofu, Japanese mushrooms" Sean said it was nice, although the tofu part only got an "alright".
For main course Sean and I both had "Roasted John Dory, gentle braise of sea scallops, spring vegetables" and William had the complicated one: "Crisp skinned Murray Cod, shaved baby squid, abalone, congee rice, shiitake, fresh water chestnuts, black moss". The John Dory was fantastic and William similarly complimented the Cod. All of William's accompaniments were in very small quantities, we struggled to find the black moss but eventually did (it did just look like black moss but I have no idea whether it really was a moss).
Sean had cheese and so I had the five-texture chocolate cake to keep him company. Unfortunately none of the textures was actually "cake"; there was chocolately, biscuity base, chocolate mousse, chocolate layer on top (it was exceptionally nice chocolate), white chocolate ice-cream in the middle and then chocolate sauce poured into the middle (melting the ice-cream and forming a pool) for the fifth texture. It actually provided a sixth as well - towards the end it started setting. The pudding was OK, lots of restaurants do chocolate puddings of this ilk and I'm rarely impressed (although strangely unable to not order them) - I prefer a simple home-made chocolate torte. Next time I will have the "Caramelised raspberry and rose scented mille feuille", which is the dish featured on the front cover of the SMH Good Food Guide. The cheese looked fantastic. I missed the exact descriptions as I was having chocolate sauce poured at the time, but one was a sheep's milk cheese, one was Roquefort and on a soft French (-style?) cheese. They went pretty quickly.
We were also brought petit fours with out tea, although disappointingly there was only one type and it was a rather sickly chocolate cigar with caramel cream. Still, I managed to eat my two and Sean's two.
posted by Zoe at 9:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home