Lunch at Quay

Over the last few years I have become pretty serious about my cooking, and in the last few months I have decided to push myself even further and harder- I have just bought a water circulator and am also delving into the great, mysterious depths of dessert like never before. The reason, then, that I am going to these restaurants is to try and learn things from those who are the best in the business- each restaurant experience is an investment in my future.. or that's how I justify it at least.

So, I booked myself in at Quay, touted as Australia's best restaurant. That's a serious accolade, and as I would come to discover soon enough, a pretty hefty burden to carry.

Initial impressions were great- complimentary parking right at the door, a friendly greeting and then being led through the beautiful dining room to a table with this view:

With the opera house in full view if I turn my head to the right, Quay surely has best view of any restaurant in Sydney. When I ate at Quay last year to celebrate my mum's birthday, it was a dinner in the midst of a thunderstorm, and it was spectacular to the point of distracting me from the food.

Kingfish sashimi, tapioca pearls, smoked horseradish cream

The meal started with some nice sourdough and this, the amuse bouche of little cubes of kingfish, partnered with smoked horseradish cream. This combination worked well, and significantly better than the lime creme fraiche that was paired with the sashimi in the last amuse bouche I had at Quay, which I felt overwhelmed and clashed with the fish a little.

Confit of pork belly with abalone

On my last visit, I ordered partridge breast with bitter chocolate black pudding for an entree, and while it was nice, I was forced to look on enviously while my mum enjoyed this dish. Peter Gilmore has taken the classic combiation of pork and scallops and given it a twist with shaved abalone and cuttlefish, chive flowers, japanese mushrooms and handmade silken tofu. The pork belly were perfect little cubes of soft meat with paper-thin crackling and is exactly the way I aspire to cook it in the future.

The dish as a whole was very nice, but not the best pork belly dish I've tried. Reading the dish description on the menu, I wasn't convinced that tofu would be a natural partner to pork belly, but I imagined that this dish would disabuse me of that opinion. It didn't.

Confit lamb, spring vegetables

The waiter ran through the specials and some of the menu items for me, including a dish of snapper, or as he pronounced it, 'schnapper'. I was tempted for a moment to order the schnapper and, to accompany it, a glass of schnapps, until I realised that would make me an arsehole of epic proportions.

Anyway, I basically had to order this dish- I know the guy who provides the lamb to Quay and I was keen to check out his produce. I'm glad to report that it was a pretty serious piece of meat. Depite the menu claiming the lamb was cooked 'confit', i'm pretty sure it was sous vide, though it could have benefitted from a bit more browning in the pan, or carbonisation, if you will, to finish. The lamb was accompanied by some nice veggies, a cheese infused milk curd and a pleasant nutty blend of roasted quinoa, sunflower seeds and the tiniest pine nuts you will ever see. Peter Gilmore definitely seems to have something for miniature vegetables and flowers on his plates.

8 texture chocolate cake

What gives, Gilmore, only 8 textures? This beautiful dessert has its final texture added at the table- a hot chocolate sauce poured directly onto the immaculate chocolate disc, which then melts into it. I'm not sure if i could discern 8 textures, but then, I wasn't really counting either. Any way you look at it, it's a spectacular dish, particularly if you like chocolate. Featuring Amedei chocolate, it also delivered the kind of overwhelming abundance of flavour that had been lacking in the meal so far- I have come to the conclusion that a big part of the Quay philosophy is concerned with that which is elegant, understated, subtle. Myself, I am more of the school of the big, bold, punch-you-in-the-nuts kind of flavours.

That's not to say that I had a bad meal at Quay. In fact, I think it would be next to impossible to have a 'bad' experience there, it's simply that, as I wrote earlier, the title of 'Australia's best restaurant' carries with it a serious weight of expectation, and for me, i'm not sure it lived up to that.