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Incidentally, sorry the frequency of posts has dipped here a bit....
Sean's parents are currently visiting so we are off having food adventures and not so much on the posting of the food adventures. We'll get back on track after the long weekend.
Never to be outdone by New York, the LA Times steps up and calls Sydney the best place on Earth to eat.
We found this via the Sydney Morning Herald but you might prefer to read the more substantial main course article. (Below is the introductory exerpt)
Oz at the head of the tableIn Australia's food-obsessed seaport city, chefs bring precision to their craft, reinterpreting Asian and Continental cuisines with the freshest ingredients. The world is taking notice.
(...and while we're talkin LA, big shout out to Carla and Chris!)
Thanks to our friend Debbie for passing along this NYT article "Sydney's Chefs Settle Down but Still Shine" (free reg required) which provides an interesting outsiders perspective on the Sydney Dining scene.
"THEY'RE not trying quite so hard in Sydney's most admired kitchens these days. Having elevated their city into the ranks of the world's great eating towns, right up there with New York and Paris and London, chefs here have begun to focus on making the most of the magnificent raw materials at their disposal rather than emphasizing the razzle-dazzle of old."
It goes on to talk about and to most of the usual suspects - Neil Perry's Rockpool, Luke Mangan's glass, Claude's, Icebergs, Flying Fish, Sean's and the supreme Marque (with nods to a few others).
...is inevitable.
But since we've been in Sydney, Rockpool has been up and down in hats. We've eaten in all the three hatters and all but one of the twos and actually feel like two hats is quite a natural place for Rockpool to sit. It's hard to fault Neil Perry's food, which is imaginative, well handled and above all delicious but something about the experience wasn't as magical for us as a Marque or Tet's or even the more austere Quay.
Magic is however so abstract and tea smoked duck with a leek and gai choy turnover, mango star anise and ginger caramel sauce is so very concrete.
There is a lot to envy about Summer Hill's Envy Fine Foods (aka Cafe Envy). It's cute, cosy and gets drenched in sunlight whether you sit inside the simple space at the front or on the patio out the back.
And then there is the food - simple, well prepared and has more flair than it really needed to convince us (but we shoudl we expect from the people who bring the goods at Manna). This trip, we had a toasty and tasty Reuben-esque sandwichfrench toast with bacon, carmelized banana and poached apple and maple syrup.
Envy Fine Foods is at 109 Smith St Summer Hill
More valuable to some (well most with any sense of budget), than the hats are of course what are now called "favorite ________" but used to be "best _______"
Below is this years' list. And just to be sporting and so you don't think we are skimping on original content we'll included our picks as well.
Favorite Bistro: Tabou (ours: Bistro Stock)
Favorite Mediterranean: Perama (ours: Icebergs)
Favorite Asian: Spice I Am (ours: Billy Kwong)
Favorite Seafood: Pier (ours: Fishface)
Favorite Yum Cha: Marigold (ours: Sky Phoenix)
Favorite Bar: Bridge (ours: we'll never tell)
Favorite Cafe: Bertoni Casalinga (ours: ok we agree)
We'd like to say an extra big congratulations to the Bertoni boys for this accolade.
So the chefs hats are out, err on, and there aren't a huge number of surprises this year on the lists. The angle the SMH is playing is that of Chui Lee Luk of Claude's in Woollahra becoming "the first female chef in more than a decade to secure the much coveted three hat rating," which masks the fact that generally it was a slow news year. (Rockpool has been up and down hats since we arrived here, so it's dropping to two hardly counts as news)
As we alluded to yesterday, Est won the much coveted Restaurant of the Year honor and Mark Best walked away with the Heavyweight Champion of the Chefing World title (very deserved in our humble opinions).
The hats fell this way:
Three Hats went to: Claude's, Est, Guillaume, Marque, Quay and Tet's
Two flew to: Aria, Balzac, Bilson's, Bistro Moncur, Buon Ricordo, Icebergs, Longrain, Lucio's, Omega, Pello, Pier, Pilu, Rockpool, Sean's Panorama, Yoshii
and rolling in with one were: Bather's Pavillion, Bistro LuLu, Bistro Moore, Catalina, Fish Face, Flying Fish, Forty One, Galileo, Golden Century, Grand National, Hugo's, Il Piave, Lotus, Manta, Milsons, Otto, Perama, Post, Restaurant Atelier, Restaurante Riva, Sea Treasure, sushi e, The Three Weeds, The Wharf, Yings
Are we surprised? Are you asking yourself where Sailor's Thai, Aqua Dining, or Zenith have gone? Are you frantically re-reading to see if you missed Three Clicks West or Liquidity? We didn't think so.
The face of this year's 2006 Good Food Guide is clearly recognizable to us as this dish....
....from Claude's, where amongst popping verticals of Grange corks (not ours, we weren't even offered a taste) and hanging luminescent Limoges, we had a really nice meal on Saturday.
The service was a bit patchy but we found that easily forgivable considering that every morsel of ingredient is expertly fashioned into eye(and mouth) candy. Highlights were the cover dressing Smoked Salmon Consommé (above obvs), the shiitake custard (Michelle's fav), the succulent freshwater crayfish, the elegant champagne parfait and the superb bitter orange soufflé.
(we're assuming the tension is mostly resolved and that it scored OK if it hit the cover)
***Ok so this deserves even more attention, our sources tell us that the results have been leaked. We won't tell you everything but if our sources are correct it'll be a big night tonight for both Est and Mark Best.
