Category: Degustation

This option is only offered by the cream of the crop, the best of them all, and would guarantee an almost eternal happiness.

Good Food Guide 2020
The Good Food website published the Good Food Guide 2020 on the 30th of September 2019. The guide celebrates the best restaurants in Australia.

The winner of this year’s good food guide restaurant of the year is BRAE in Birregurra, Victoria. They are also sitting at #101 in the world’s 50 best restaurants list. Last year in the Good Food Guide 2019, Brae received the award for Regional Restaurant of the year.

Other Awards in this year’s Good Food Guide 2020

Best new restaurant of the year is JOY in Brisbane, Queensland, by Sarah and Tim Scott.

Lennox Hastie from Firedoor in NSW has won the Chef of The Year award.

Pipit in Pottsville, NSW, was awarded the Regional Restaurant of the Year in 2019. Its head chef is Ben Devlin.

Maggie Beer from South Australia received the Legend Award.

Young Chef of the year award was given to Anna Ugarte-Carral from Momofuku Seiobo in NSW.

Joanna Smith (Igni, Geelong, Victoria) won the Service Excellence Award.

Food for Good award went to National Indigenous Culinary Institute in NSW and VIC. This institute guaranteed jobs for indigenous chefs upon completion of the program.

Bar of the year is Bar Margaux in Melbourne, Victoria.

Sommelier of the year went to Forbes Appleby from Franklin in Hobart, Tasmania.

If you want a good wine, you should go to Yellow in Sydney as they won this year’s Wine List of the year.

The regional wine list of the year went to FermentAsian in Tanunda, South Australia.

List of NSW restaurants with hats in Good Food Guide 2020

Three hats

There are two restaurants in NSW awarded with three hats as listed in the Good Food Guide 2020 website:
- Quay – We have yet to try Quay’s new, post-snow-egg menu.
- Sixpenny – We went to sixpenny in 2018 and it was one of the best dining experience.
The same three restaurants as the last 2 years (Attica, Brae, Minamishima) in Victoria and Restaurant Orana in South Australia also received three hat status.

As listed from the website, the rest of the hats are as follows:

Two hats

Aria, Automata, Bennelong, Bentley Restaurant and Bar, Bert’s Bar and Brasserie, Biota, Est., Ester, Firedoor, Fleet, Fred’s Icebergs Dining Room and Bar, Lucio’s, LuMi Dining, Momofuku Seiobo, Monopole, Mr. Wong, Muse Restaurant, Ormeggio at the Spit, Pilu at Freshwater, Porteño, Rockpool Bar and Grill, Tetsuya’s, Yelow.

One hat – Sydney

10 William St, Alberto’s Lounge, The Apollo, Arthur, Bacco Osteria, The Bathers’ Pavilion, Bea, Bennelong Cured and Cultured, Bistecca, Buon Ricordo, Catalina, Cho Cho San, Cirrus, Continental Deli Bar and Bistro, Cottage Point Inn, The Dolphin Hotel, Don Peppino’s, Felix, Fratelli Paradiso, Gaku Robata Grill, The Gantry, Glass Brasserie, Hotel Centennial, Hubert, Jonah’s, Kepos and Co, Lankan Filling Station, LP’s Quality Meats, Ms. G’s, Nomad, One Penny Red, Otto, Queen Chow, The Restaurant Pendolino, Rising Sun Workshop, Rosetta, Sagra, Saint Peter, Sake Restaurant and Bar, Sean’s Panorama, Sokyo, Spice Temple, Sushi e, Uccello, Yan.

One hat – Regional

The Argyle Inn, Bistro Molines, Caveau, Clementine, Lolli Redini, Margan Restaurant, Muse Kitchen, Paper Daisy, Pipit, The Stunned Mullet, Subo.

The following restaurants lost their hat status

A1 Canteen, Bistro Guillaume, The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, Bodega, Chin Chin, China Doll, Hartsyard, Izakaya Fujiyama, Poly, Stanbuli, Three Blue Ducks (Bronte),

The following restaurants closed permanently

The Bridge Room, Oscillate Wildly, ACME, Billy Kwong, Ble Restaurant, Kepos Street Kitchen, Paper Bird, Sotto Sopra,

Note: Green is a new entry to the list. Orange is the one who lost a hat
Oct 8, 2019
Restaurant Nouri – Crossroads Cooking

When I was working in Singapore last week, I managed to have dinner at one of the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. Sitting at #39, Restaurant Nouri has only been opened for a couple of years. However, they have already had a Michelin star under their belt.

Chef Ivan Brehm and his team gave us this very interesting dining concept called ‘crossroads cooking’. The dining room is also where the chef prepared all of our meals.

They served four pre-dining dishes. They also advised that we could re-order sourdough bread as many times as we want. This is a very good idea as you would want to soak up all of those nice sauce!

The first two that came with the bread was their rendition of silken tofu and vegetable broth. The tofu was more like a dipping sauce for the bread!

The next two was cold kimchi made from abalone with daikon and nashi pear and Chinese bitter gourd salad. I can understand why the two had to be consumed side-by-side as the bitter gourd was really bitter. It accentuated the kimchi cold and sour taste.

The 7-course ‘Omakase’ from Restaurant Nouri

They had an option of 5- or 7- course menu as well as set or omakase. I could see some of the omakase menu was pretty similar to the set menu.

The first course was Hamachi sashimi with caviar and chilled onion consomme. It was a nice and fresh sashimi with very nice vinaigrette… the reason why you should keep asking for bread!

The second course was their rendition of prawn bouillabaisse with saffron jelly. They used the reduction from the prawn head to make the thick soup.

Their rendition of cheong fun (or rice noodles) was one of my favourites on the night. Not only they used black truffle, underneath that green cheong fun there was Alaskan snow crab! Even the foamy bit was very nice!

The second last main dish was kimedai fish with scales and black pepper sauce. Yes, they prepared the fish with its scaled. The scales were very crunchy and almost like crackers The fish was perfectly cooked and went really well with slightly hot black pepper sauce.

I wouldn’t blame you if you think this next dish as a chocolate cake with truffle. They did incorporate chocolate but only as the powder around the plate.

This dish was actually wagyu rib eye with Mexican’s mole sauce. However, they used the traditional ingredients called ‘keluwak’ to darken the colour.

Desserts at Restaurant Nouri

Before we started with the desserts, there was a bowl of Gooseberry granita with peach and champagne. It was very nice and refreshing!

The first dessert looked quite simple but it was actually pretty sophisticated. The dish was Japanese ichigo with azuki beans, sansho pepper and kinome leaf with strawberry sorbet.

The dish was sweet, sour, cold, crunchy… and hot! Every now and then there was this kick from the sansho pepper that made the dish very lively.

The last dish was 48-hour baked orange with assam tea ice cream, cream and some jelly that tasted quite bitter.

I have never tasted something quite like this before.

The final verdict for Restaurant Nouri

Restaurant Nouri clearly deserved its Michelin star and the #39 spot in the Asia’s Best 50 restaurants. They have a unique table arrangement and impeccable service.

Do you think I should go?

Definitely! Chef Ivan will surely treat you well!

Rating:

Nouri

9.5 / 10

Taste: 9.5 / 10

Price: $225 pp for 7-course Omakase

Place: 10.0 / 10

Details:

72 Amoy Street, Singapore 069891

+65 6221 4148

http://nouri.com.sg/

Aug 1, 2019
Kid Kyoto

Kid Kyoto review:

I went to Kid Kyoto with a friend of mine from overseas. You need to venture into the alleyways of Sydney CBD to find this Japanese izakaya.

Since we were not in the mood of choosing dishes, we opted to go for the big set menu of $75 per person. There were 10 dishes for this menu.

Lotus chips, wasabi salt – $6

Red snapper, tiger’s milk, pickled fennel, persimmon – $24

These first two dishes really set the expectations for the night. The chips were really crunchy and nice. The red snapper was very nice and acidic.

Wagyu beef tartare, black sesame dressing, pickled beetroot – $22

Tacoyaki croquette, Katsuobushi mayo, tonkatsu sauce – $17

Grilled King Prawn, lime miso tare – $16

This is when things get really exciting. The image for wagyu beef tartare didn’t really capture the essence of how good it really was.

Creating takoyaki as a croquette brought a different dimension for this Japanese snack.

There was a hint of spicy taste on the prawn but it brought out the smokey flavour of the prawn. The only downside was we only got one each.

The highlight of the night at Kid Kyoto

Corn ribs, smoked chilli miso, rice puff, togarashi – $15

This is the second time I got really excited about eating corn in a degustation. The corn was pretty spicy… but we did not mind that!

It was perfect.

The main

Sake miso chicken, sticky burdock, lotus root – $28

Brussel sprouts, seaweed butter, yuzu – $9

‘Chahan’ Japanese fried rice – $16

While the mains were pretty decent, in my opinion, it failed to lift up the expectation we had during the small dishes.

The miso chicken was nice, but it felt like a regular teriyaki chicken. The Brussel sprouts was a side and fried rice was probably a bit too substantial for being the last three dishes.

Matcha ganache, puff rice chocolate crumb, apple sorbet – $14

Having had a pretty heavy main course, I was glad that the dessert was pretty light and refreshing.

However, it wasn’t spectacular either.

Kunizakari Jousen Jonjozo | Aichi 65% – $45 – Light bodied, crisp and clean finish

Yuzushu | Nara – $45 – Made with fresh yuzu juice & premium sake. Deliciously sweet & sour

We ordered the first sake at the beginning and the yuzu-flavoured one towards the end of the service.

The Final Verdict for Kid Kyoto

The price of the set menu is 75 pp. If we calculate the total cost of individual dishes, it is a saving of $17. Having said that, the dishes that they served were high quality. However the main was a tad underwhelming.

You might want to consider a la carte, if you don’t eat that much (aka drink more) at Kid Kyoto.

Do you think I should go?

If you are looking for an izakaya that is unlike the others, but still served very good dishes, then you should try Kid Kyoto.

Rating:

9.0 / 10

Taste: 9.0 / 10

Price: $75 per person set menu

Place: 9.0 / 10

Details:

17 – 19 Bridge St, Sydney 2000

+61 2 9241 1991

https://kidkyoto.com.au/

Jul 8, 2019
Restaurant Locavore
This week we will write about our experience in dining at one of the best in Australasia, Restaurant Locavore. This restaurant is sitting at number 21 in the list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for 2018. They were a few spots off the world’s top 100 list. To give you a bit more context, out of all of the restaurants in Australia, only Attica and Brae ranked higher than this restaurant!

This will be a super long review because they served us 7 main courses, 2 desserts, 8 ‘snacks’, 8 chocolates and 1 closing dish for a whopping 26-course degustation lunch. The official menu only stated 9 dishes, priced at Rp 1.200.000,- or equal to AUD 150.

They call it ‘Snacks’

Upon arrival at the restaurant they gave us a couple of very pretty flower arrangement that they called ‘Cana’. What we didn’t know that the flowers were all edible! They gave us a hibiscus spray, and kecombrang puree with drops of cricket oil. Super fancy and we were just starting up!
To shorten this review considerably, I won’t go to too much details on the snacks. Each and every one of them were masterfully prepared. The mango and bengkoang dish was quite sweet with a hint of spicy. The pumpkin leaf was pretty filling despite it being crunchy. Then you got the sophisticated black rice blini that had a million taste.

It got better from there, the mushroom custard was very yummy with the distinct flavour of native kelor leaves. Then they had BBQ mango. It was sweet and super smoky. The mango kombucha was a sweet addition to the dish. The tomato sorbet and tomato consommé was quite an eye-opening. The dish was hot and cold at the same time. It was super refreshing!

The last snack was pretty interesting. There were three condiments for the brioche bun: chili jam, cashew nut puree, and freeze dried leftover vegetables… yes, you read that right: they even reused their leftover vegetables! Awesome!

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Main Dish at Locavore

After what seems to be an eternity of snacks, we come to the first dish of the day. Cut the crab was the official name. They transformed the mud crab into a cold salad with jellied crab consomme. They then put a layer of pickled young papaya and bengkoang (instead of mango as the menu suggested). Grated bonito katsuobushi was put as a finishing touch.

We then have Foie Gras Kambing, aka Goat Liver mousse. To complement the strong taste, they introduced pickled wild berries. On top of the foie gras, they had rice flour cracker and a sprinkle of green veggies. They had two garnishes to finish off: first they grated smoked goat heart then sprayed the dish with Rosella kombucha vinaigrette.
The third dish, jagung bakar, paid homage to a snack that most Indonesian loves, grilled corn. The twist here is they use coffee-miso emulsion and coffee kombucha reduction! They also used charred baby corn and added a little termite powder on top of it.

My son loved it so much that they actually gave him an extra plate (and that’s after having most of mine as well)!

The next dish was supposed to be Cabbage and Bacon. However, we had it changed to a vegetarian version. For this, they gave us Banana blossom noodles. The ‘noodles’ were doused with white curry turmeric leaves, that tasted traditionally Indonesian with deep fried green leaves as garnish.

The Signature Dish

Their signature dish is Into The Sawah. Dish dish is a story of everything that live around the Ubud’s rice field. They consisted of the following: Heritage galuh rice porridge, 64 degrees duck egg yolk, snails, frog leg abon, fern tips, wild flowers.

They boiled the duck egg yolk at exactly 64 degrees for 1 hour. That resulted in some kind of state between solid and runny.
Gurita Bakar is our penultimate main course. They twice-cooked the main ingredient, the octopus (or gurita): boiled and then grilled to perfection. They also introduced Mexican-inspired mole using a traditional ingredient, kluwak. Enhancing the taste, they used the sourness of belimbing wuluh and freshness of timun tikus with the pickled spring onions.

Quail, or Burung Puyuh, was the last main for the day. They used two parts of the quail: the quail breast, roasted to perfection, and the leg that was barbecued and glazed. They used smoked pumpkin and charred pineapple gel to complement the dish.

Desserts at Locavore

Looking at the menu, the desserts sounded pretty traditional. Bubur tape is a fermented rice porridge and boni is a traditional fruit from Bali.

Traditionally, bubur tape is warm. At Locavore, the dish was served at room temperature, except for the palm sugar ice cream. Interestingly, the ice cream wasn’t really that cold either!

In addition to the porridge and ice cream, they also have fermented black rice foam (that purple blob in the middle). Probably I would have liked this more if it was a tad sweeter.

If you are wondering about the yellow shavings at the top of the ice cream, that shaving was sugar cured egg yolk!

Boni or blood berry is a native fruit of Bali. They also have pomelo, or what the locals called Balinese orange. They also used pickled rose petals and hibiscus leaves as garnishes. The resulting dish was this complex dessert that was sweet, sour, crunchy, cold and quite heavy – especially being the 17th dish of the afternoon!

After Desserts at Locavore

We were almost packed up for the afternoon before the restaurant manager mentioned there were still a couple more dishes to go. Some members of my group almost gave up upon hearing the news.

The first ‘surprise’ was eight pieces of chocolate in different textures. They used a traditional game board called ‘congklak‘ to serve them. Some of the more notable ones were coffee rice cookie, kaffir lime krokant and dried pineapple dark chocolate.

We finally came to an end with the Mangosteen ice cream. Served on a coconut husk, the dish consisted of fresh longan, coconut flesh, nata de coco and coconut cream with lime skin shaving as garnish.

It was incredibly refreshing and tasty. Somehow we forgot that it was the 26th dish that we had that day.

Drinks at Locavore

They do have drink pairings for the lunch service, but we didn’t go for them. We opted for the normal drinks and cocktails on the menu. One of them was the ‘ashes’ that involved dipping burned cassia bark into your drink!
The final verdict for Restaurant Locavore

Restaurant Locavore is without a doubt the best restaurant in Indonesia. It is comparable to, or probably even better than, most high end dinings in Australia.

The staffs were super friendly and super attentive. The massive plus is that the restaurant welcomes children as well! – I must say it’s super rare for a fine dining restaurant.

Do you think I should go?

Definitely!

Rating for Restaurant Locavore:

9.5 / 10

Taste: 9.5 / 10

Price: Rp 1.200.000,00 + 21% tax ~ $150 degustation menu

Place: 9.5 / 10

Details:

10 Jalan Dewi Sita, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

+62 3619 777 33

https://www.locavore.co.id
Feb 4, 2019
Good Food Guide 2019
Good Food Guide 2019 is upon us! This is the second year that they do the award nationally.

The winner of this year’s good food guide restaurant of the year is Restaurant Orana in Adelaide, South Australia.

Other Awards in this year’s Good Food Guide 2019

Best new restaurant of the year is Laura at Point Leo Estate in Victoria by Phil Wood.

Peter Gilmore from Quay in NSW has won the Chef of The Year award. Quay is a three-chef-hat restaurant 17 years in a row!

Brae in Victoria was awarded the Regional Restaurant of the Year in 2019. Its head chef is Dan Hunter.

Stefano de Pieri from Stefano’s Cantina in Victoria received the Legend Award.

Young Chef of the year award was given to Jodie Odrowaz from Iki Jime in Victoria.

Kylie Javier Ashton (Momofuku Seiobo, Sydney) won the Service Excellence Award.

Food for Good award was given to #SydneyDoesntSuck campaign by the City of Sydney. This campaign aims at reducing plastic straws in Sydney.

Bar of the year is The Dolphin Wine Room in NSW.

Sommelier of the year went to Travis Howe from Carlton Wine Room in Victoria.

If you want a good wine, you should go to Otto Brisbane in Queensland as they won this year’s Wine List of the year.

The regional wine list of the year went to Wickens at the Royal Mail in Dunkeld, Victoria.

List of NSW restaurants with hats in Good Food Guide 2019

Three hats

There are three restaurants in NSW awarded with three hats as listed in the Good Food Guide 2019 website:
- Quay – 2003, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2013. Quay’s chef, Peter Gilmore, won this year’s Chef of the year.
- Momofuku Seiobo.
- Sixpenny. We went to sixpenny earlier this year and it was so far the best restaurant we went to this year.
The same three restaurants as last year (Attica, Brae, Minamishima) in Victoria and Restaurant Orana in South Australia also received three hat status.

As listed from the website, the rest of the hats are as follows:

Two hats

Aria, Automata, Bennelong, Bentley Restaurant & Bar, Biota Dining, Bert’s Bar and Brasserie, The Bridge Room, Cirrus, Est., Ester, Firedoor, Fleet, Fred’s, Icebergs Dining Room & Bar, Lucio’s, LuMi Dining, Monopole, Mr. Wong, Muse Restaurant, Ormeggio at The Spit, Oscillate Wildly, Paper Daisy, Pilu at Freshwater, Porteño, Restaurant Hubert, Rockpool Bar & Grill, Saint Peter, Tetsuya’s, Yellow

One hat – Sydney

10 William St, A1 Canteen, Acme, The Apollo, Bacco Osteria, The Bathers’ Pavilion, Billy Kwong, Bistro Guillaume, Ble Restaurant, The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, Bodega, Buon Ricordo, Catalina, Chin Chin, China Doll, Cho Cho San, Continental Deli Bar Bistro, Cottage Point Inn, The Dolphin Hotel, Felix, Fratelli Paradiso, The Gantry, Glass Brasserie, Hartsyard, Hotel Centennial, Izakaya Fujiyama, Jonah’s, Kepos and Co, Kepos Street Kitchen, Lankan Filling Station, LP’s Quality Meats, Nomad, Otto Ristorante, Paper Bird, Poly, Queen Chow, The Restaurant Pendolino, Rising Sun Workshop, Rosetta Ristorante, Sagra, Sake Restaurant and Bar (Double Bay), Sean’s Panorama, Sokyo, Sotto Sopra, Spice Temple, Stanbuli, Sushi e, Three Blue Ducks (Bronte), Uccello, Yan

One hat – Regional

The Argyle Inn, Bistro Molines, Bistro Officina, The Byron at Byron Resort, Caveau, Clementine, Fumo, Harvest, Lolli Redini, Margan Restaurant, Muse Kitchen, Pearls on the Beach, Restaurant Mason, Shelter, St. Isidore, The Stunned Mullet, Subo, The Zin House

The following restaurants lost their hat status

Aki’s, Banksii, Beach Byron Bay, Bellevue, Bistro Rex, Da Orazio Pizza & Porchetta, Darley’s, Eschalot, Long Chim, Ms. G’s, The Paddington, Rocker, Tonic, Town Restaurant & Cafe

The following restaurants closed permanently

4Fourteen, The Antipodean, Jade Temple

Note: Green is a new entry to the list. Orange is the one who lost a hat
Oct 9, 2018
Sixpenny

Sixpenny Review:

Our restaurant this week is listed as one of the top restaurants in Australia located in a very quiet street in Stanmore, Sydney. They have held two hats status for as long as I can remember. Their chef, Daniel Puskas, is the Chef of the year in this year’s good food guide.

Sixpenny only has two degustation menu: 6 courses and 8 courses. They also cater for children with a 2-course menu for $65 on some days – we actually got 3 for our little one as he really wanted our dessert. As usual, the dining starts with warm bread and butter. Halfway through the service, they gave us a different kind of bread (but not pictured here).

Starter

Lightly pickled cucumber with Rose Geranium, Green Tomato & Cheese Gougères, Sweet Potato Scallop

The starter is not part of the degustation set. They are more like a ‘freebie’ during the service. The trio was wonderfully presented and super tasty. They recommended us to eat from the amazing gougère to the super fresh cucumber and onto the more substantive sweet potato.

Main

There are 4 mains served in the 6-course degustation. This month, the fifth main was the Venison tartare.

Ballina Spanner Crab with Clam butter & Yarra Valley Salmon Roe

The main course starts with very fresh and tasty spanner crab. The crab was very rich and full of flavour.

Dutch cream potato with Oyster emulsion, mushroom powder & button mushroom

This was one of the best dishes of the day. I love the creaminess of the potato and combined with the slightly crunchy raw mushroom.

The crispy kale and zucchini flower added an amazing dimension to it.

Swordfish with Buttermilk, Green Chard & Salted Red Cabbage

Unfortunately, the swordfish was our least favourite of the day. It did introduce the sour element to our dining. However, it was a tad too sour to our liking. The foamy look was also a bit scary.

Rangers Valley Chuck Tail with Mushroom & Marsala and smoked onion

Chuck tail cut is a part of beef that you might not hear very often about. Texture-wise it’s like in between ribs and rump. So, you got the best out of both worlds!

Add the sauce and smoked onion into the mix… and you get yourself a fantastic dish!

They also gave us a bowl of salad for the steak.

Kid’s Menu

In addition to the following 2-course meal, they are also given the same snacks as the adult. The kid’s dessert is also one of the degustation desserts.

Steak

Cocoa Ice Cream with Chocolate Caramel and Almond Sable

Desserts

Mead Vinegar Custard with frozen Raspberries & Strawberry Consomme

If I heard it correctly, it took ten weeks to make the custard. The dessert might look very simple: part frozen raspberries and part custard with strawberry consomme. The combination of the three created one amazing dessert! It was sweet, a hint of sourness, frozen bites of raspberries, and most importantly… yum!

Feijoa Granita with White Chocolate & Dehydrated Feijoa

The second dessert was a bit more challenging to understand. The white chocolate was nice along with the granita. However, the dessert left a lingering taste of bitterness at the end.

The final verdict for Sixpenny

Sixpenny is the best restaurant we visited this year. They deserve the two-hat status for their awesome dishes… and probably not that far off from three-hat quality dishes.

Do you think I should go?
Definitely!

Rating for Sixpenny:

9.0 / 10

Taste: 9.0 / 10

Price: $125 for 6-course and $155 for 8-course

Place: 9.0 / 10

Details:

83 Percival Road, Stanmore 2048

+61 2 9572 6666

May 30, 2018