Category: Modern Australian

The term Modern Australian arises when the influence of globalisation, mainly the exotic flavour of South East Asians, is fused with contemporary food.

Ester Restaurant and Bar

Review:

Mat Lindsay, Ester Restaurant and Bar Chef

Ester was named new restaurant of the year in this year’s Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2015, so we are obviously here to put the claim to the test! Thanks to Miss Piggy on her review about Ester, we already have pre-defined list of what we want to eat there.

What we were not aware of was the fact that the food in the menu is meant to be shared for the whole table! They have the option of a la carte or a banquet menu of seven dishes for $65 pp. The six of us decided to have the a la carte option that ended up costing us $60 pp including drinks. We had four entrees, four main dishes and two desserts.

Entrees

Order the house baked bread if you do not plan to order chicken liver pate, because the chicken liver pate came with the house baked bread. I encouraged you to order this dish as the liver pate was smooth and tasty. They provided sliced beetroot to balance the strong pate taste.

house baked bread 3 p.p.

chicken liver pate 17

I had a mix feeling for the next two entrees. We had a massive expectation for the roasted oysters (you can order one, half or dozen). However, I think my expectation was a bit too high when comparing it to Tetsuya’s Oyster Vinaigrette. It’s still a nice oyster with quite a lot of garlic.

roasted oysters 4/22/40

The lobster sausage sanga on the other hand was awesome! Served on top of warm white bread, the sausage was incredibly juicy and obviously sharing one plate was not enough!

lobster sausage sanga 9 each

Our last entree was ricotta gnudi with lobster sauce. Gnudi is a variant of gnocchi with ricotta as its filling. I love the fluffy texture of the gnudi and they mixed really well with the strong tasting of lobster sauce. For the complete experience, I suggest you to order this dish with the next one on the main dishes part.

ricotta gnudi / lobster sauce 16

Main Dishes

King prawns, with brown butter and capers, is the name of the dish. They gave you three gigantic prawns per dish and you can also opt for an additional prawn depending on the number of guests on your table. The prawns were grilled to perfection and I think the dish was perfectly priced.

prawns / brown butter / capers 26

The only vegetables dish of the day came in the shape of cauliflower with almond and mint. The cauliflower was grilled maybe a bit too much but the mint sauce and almond worked quite well. It was actually quite refreshing!

cauliflower / almond / mint 16

As there were quite a few of us, we decided to order the whole snapper rather than the fillet. The snapper came with saltbush and vinegar. Luckily we have a skilled debone person in house, so we had no problem eating the fish.

whole snapper / saltbush / vinegar 45

The last main dish of the day was a special, off-the-menu item: Crispy Roast Duck with burnt honey and fennel seeds. I wonder why he doesn’t make this the mainstay on the menu because it was incredibly tasty! The duck was perfectly cooked with very crispy skin and very juicy meat. I really couldn’t get enough off it! I think this is the best value for your money!

Crispy Roast Duck / burnt honey / fennel seeds 39

Desserts

I hope you save your tummy for desserts as the two that we ordered were excellent. First we had three milks. I know the name sounded really lame and unappealing with a little hint of curiosity. “What is ‘three milks’?” might probably be the most frequently asked question at the restaurant. Three milks is a combination of dulce de leche (aka caramel), panna cotta and sheep’s milk foam. You get the crunchy caramel and crumbs, nice and sweet panna cotta and sour and airy sheep’s milk foam. If you love desserts, you would NOT want to share this!

three milks 11

Last, but definitely not least, is the salted caramel semi-freddo. I thought when they talked about freddo, it’s that frog from Cadbury. Semifreddo is an Italian word for half cold or semi-frozen. The salted caramel was quite sweet and flavoursome.

salted caramel semi-freddo 4

The final verdict for Ester Restaurant and Bar

There is no mistake that Ester Restaurant and Bar was crowned the 2014 Best New Restaurant in Sydney by Sydney Morning Herald. Everything we had there was terrific! Three milks is the one that you must order when you are there!

Did you know?

Ester changes their menu depending on the seasonal availability. Keep an eye on Bone marrow dish if it’s available at the restaurant when you dine there. We were unlucky as the dish was not on the menu when we were there.

Rating for Ester Restaurant and Bar:

8.5 / 10

Taste: 8.5 / 10

Price: $50-60 per person or $65 banquet menu

Place: 8.0 / 10

Details:

46 – 52 Meagher Street, Chippendale

+61 2 8068 8279

http://ester-restaurant.com.au/

Sep 29, 2014
Rockpool

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Unfortunately, Rockpool has closed its doors in 2016. They are now rebranded as Eleven Bridge.

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Rating:

9.0 / 10 Taste: 9.5 / 10

Price: $79 for three courses

Place: 9.5 / 10

Review for lunch menu:

Neil Perry is probably one of the better known chefs in Australia, not only because he has quite a few up market restaurants in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, but also Qantas’ consulting chef. We went to Neil Perry’s flagship restaurant, Rockpool, for a three-course lunch. Rockpool has just reintroduced lunch menu when they moved to Bridge Street at the end of last year. As expected, we won’t be doing the degustation menu for lunch.

Before any of the dishes arrive, customary (and complimentary) bread and butter were always served. There was also a side of ricotta cheese with a hint of olive oil for an added flavour. I really loved the combination of the butter with a hint of honey and sourdough bread. It really boosted the feeling that it was going to be a nice lunch.

Entrée

For the first entrée, we had rainbow trout ‘grenobloise’ with capers, lemon and butter sauce. The rainbow trout was excellent! The trout’s skin and the little grenobloise bits were really crunchy, but the meat itself was perfectly fried. However, the lemon butter sauce was too sour to my liking.

We also had chirashi zushi of squid, prawn, kingfish and tuna for our entree. The one thing stuck in my mind was this kimchi-looking thing that had very strong taste but without any lingering hot effects. The chirashi zushi had a beautifully balanced flavour.

Main

We originally ordered rib eye (that commanded an extra $20), but then the waiter apologetically said that the last rib eye was ordered just before he entered our order. Slightly not happy (but would have $20 cheaper bill), we then opted to go with Angus beef fillet, poached oysters, potato and prune terrine with a carpet bag sauce. After doing some ‘googling’ about carpetbag, oysters were actually a great combination for the steak.

The next dish was almost like eating a super fancy Chinese dish (that doesn’t involve shark’s fin or abalone), Suckling pig with shiitake oat porridge, preserved eggs, puff crackling and Ceylon spinach. The suckling pig was presented in a bread crumbs roll that resembled crackling skin of roast pork. It was quite a heavy dish with lots of meat and oat porridge. The heavenly bit was obviously when you reached its fat.

Sides

Since we switched the main dish, we also had a slight adjustment to the sides. Eventually, we ordered Rockpool salad with palm sugar vinaigrette. We were so happy that we made the switch! As a big fan of sweet stuff, I truly loved the palm sugar vinaigrette. It was so heavenly sweet and for salad haters like me, coming back for second was virtually impossible! … yet, I had my third and fourth bites!

Dessert

The ‘Strawberries and cream’ ricotta parfait with strawberry compote, crème Chantilly, sparkling wine was quite literally sparkling. I loved the sound of the parfait cracked open. It was actually a bit too sweet and I think that was because of the Moscato they used for the sparkling wine.

For the second dessert, we had Passionfruit soufflé with passionfruit ice cream. Delivered straight from the kitchen, I was recommended to cut a hole in the middle of the souffle and pop the ice cream into it. I loved how full of taste the souffle was. The combination of hot and cold also worked wonders!

The final verdict for Rockpool

Having lunch at Rockpool was probably one of the best lunches we had in life. Granted that having a three-course for lunch might be an overkill, but every dish was executed perfectly.

Did you know?

Rockpool Sydney has an interesting concept for its degustation menu. It starts at $125 for eight tasting item and one additional choice. They also have options for two and three choices as well as their wine matching.

Details:

11 Bridge Street, Sydney 2000

02 9252 1888

http://www.rockpool.com/sydney/

Apr 13, 2014
Three Blue Ducks

Rating:

8.5 / 10

Taste: 8.5 / 10

Price: $150 for 2.5 people

Place: 8.5 / 10

Review:

A little prelude before my review of Three Blue Ducks restaurant: My wife had wanted to go to this restaurant before we eventually had the occasion to do so. I would probably describe the restaurant as French-style modern Australian with Asian influence. The only downside here was that I did not bring my big camera with me and had to rely on my iPhone! Three blue ducks menu is a very simple piece of paper on a clip board. I think it is quite beneficial as they change dishes seasonally. The dish was divided into four categories: smalls, bigs, sides and sweets (I think you can figure out what they mean).

It is obvious that we have to select seafood as our ‘smalls’ dish as five out of seven selections were seafood dishes in three blue ducks. Our first option went to snapper ceviche ($14). It was a beautifully presented dish that gave us a fresh start to our dinner. The next one was an unconventional corn, chawanmushi and crab ($17). It came as the ‘swipe’ presentation on one end of the plate.

We also took out their special of the night, beef brisket with chimichurri. When the wait person explained the special for us, all I could hear was ‘Beef brisket… slow cooked for x amount of hours… then cooked with chimichurri’. However, since I am a big fan of chimichurri, I took this option. I know my picture really didn’t do justice here, but the beef was great. It was very soft and you didn’t even need a knife to cut it up!

Now, we move on to the ‘bigs’ dishes. It would be a sin if you go to three blue ducks without actually trying their duck menu. On this occasion, it was duck, chilli jam, mushrooms and greens ($32). I was actually quite reluctant to try because of the word ‘chilli’. However, when a one hat restaurant in Australia specified chilli on the menu, you wouldn’t be expecting a blistering hot one! I had to share the duck with my son, because he chose this more than the beef brisket or chawanmushi we prepared for him. I guess he wasn’t wrong because it was clearly the best dish of the day. We didn’t even leave a single drop of the sauce!

Our other ‘bigs’ dish was wallaby, broccolini, pickled grapes ($30). We tried this out of pure curiosity. How many restaurants listed wallaby as an item on their menu? Possibly not many! The interesting part of this perfectly cooked wallaby was a hint of wasabi on its sauce. To be honest, we had difficulties in actually recognising that it was really a wallaby meat.

They have some unusual items for side dishes, the ‘sides’. However, we found that they were the best value for money and tasted pretty great! For the first dish, it was a rich and flavoursome mushroom and grains dish ($8), they used different types of mushrooms and grains that were most likely consisted of barley and quinoa. We also loved the roast carrots, honey and almonds ($8). Not only they provided a sweet dimension to our dinner, it was also presented in quite a decent size.

I must say the ‘sweets’ section had a list of dishes with quite unusual ingredients. We decided to pick apple & pears, ginger & mint custard ($14). It was quite an interesting mixture of sour apple sorbet, diced pears, and strong flavour of ginger and mint sauce. They also used savoiardi (or ladyfinger biscuit) that soaked up most of the strong-tasting custard.

The final verdict for Three Blue Ducks

It is quite rare that we went to a restaurant with high hopes and met with equal or better presentations. Three blue ducks restaurant actually exceeded my expectations as a one hat restaurant!

Details:

141-143 Macpherson St, Bronte

02 9389 0010

http://www.threeblueducks.com/

Feb 24, 2014
First Drop Cafe

Rating:

7.5 / 10

Taste: 7.5/10

Price: $15 – $20

Place: 7.5/10

Review:

This week we are visiting First Drop Café because of my coffee aficionado friend. It is a quite homey corner cafe with such a believable waitress. She convinced us with a story that the New York Style Peanut Butter Shake ($5.50) was the people’s favourite and swayed me away from my original Summer Juice ($5.90)! (Watermelon, Pineapple, and Mint) It wasn’t quite what I expected tho. The shake was quite savoury and it could use a bit more sweet in it.

Since it was not quite afternoon yet, we decided to order from its breakfast menu. They have quite a few choices with mouth-watering descriptions. Check out their Harvest Benedict ($15.90): Sauteed spinach and grilled asparagus on a bed of thyme infused oven baked field mushrooms… fancy! On this occasion, they did forget to put the asparagus on the plate, but it was quickly rectified.

They also have Schwarzenegger Omelette ($16.90), but you must be prepared to quote Arnie if you order this: ‘I’ll be back!’ It is a meal truly for Arnie: High protein egg white omelette with atlantic salmon, asparagus and capers.

I was tempted to order Homemade Beans ($17.90) because it had the in bracket ‘Our Signature Dish’. However, I didn’t really fancy beans and my friend actually ordered it. It was actually quite a nice combo of beans, chorizo and poached egg, with extra sour dough for the kill! Taste wise? It didn’t disappoint but still not my cup of tea.

I ordered Rustic Chorizo Breakfast ($15.90) that I thought had the best description on the menu: Scrambled eggs with free range chorizo, sprinkled with paprika, sitting on a bed of fresh spinach, topped with an onion jam, served with Sonoma sourdough. I’m not quite sure how free range chorizo would look like, but that’s another matter J they had a generous serving of chorizo and onion jam which I think is going to be my new favourite breakfast dish!

The final verdict for First Drop Cafe

I was very happy with the food and service at First Drop Cafe. If it wasn’t for the shake, I would have given them an 8.

If you want to see their lunch menu, please visit this page.

Details:

69 Baptist Street, East Redfern, 2016

02 9690 1611

First Drop Cafe on Facebook

Oct 24, 2013
Societe Food and Wine Bar

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Unfortunately, Societe has closed its doors for good.

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Rating:

6.5 / 10 Taste: 6.5/10

Price: $15-$25 for breakfast

Place: 7/10

Review:

Societe Food and Wine Bar is the latest upmarket, modern Australian restaurant. We went there for breakfast, towards lunch time. I can see they have a lot of tapas, but we didn’t order them.

Let’s start with my order: Societe BIG benny. Along with Societe big breakfast, it was the biggest and most expensive serving dish on the menu at $ 25.5. Directly taken from the menu, it was smoked salmon, haloumi, poached eggs, avocado, spinach & hollandaise sauce on Turkish bread… a whole lot of stuff for a breakfast! It was beautifully presented and pleasing to see. The salmon and eggs were nice but forgettable hollandaise sauce and pretty salty haloumi cheese.

On a lighter note, there was Euro Bruschetta for $15.9 or $3 more for one poached egg. Without the egg, it would be a nice vegetarian dish consisted of avocado, basil, tomato, grilled haloumi and drizzled with olive oil on Turkish bread.

Not so very different than these two, my friend ordered B.L.A.T. ($16.5). It stands for Bacon, green Leaves, Avocado and Tomato. It was prepared on a wooden chopping block with aioli on Turkish bread with chips.

Breakfast is incomplete without a cup of coffee, I ordered Latte like I always did. The best thing of the day came in the form of babycino. It was frothed over the top and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.

The final verdict for Societe Food and Wine Bar

There was really nothing outstanding for Societe Food and Wine Bar to command such a premium price on their breakfast menu. The only redeeming factors about the restaurant were their dishes’ presentation and my son’s happy face looking at babycino.

Details:

1/ 9 – 15 Danks Street

Waterloo NSW 2017

+61 2 9698 8899

Apr 16, 2013
Marque Restaurant

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Unfortunately, Marque Restaurant has closed its doors in 2016.

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Rating:

9 / 10 Taste: 9/10

10-course Degustation: $160 + $5 non-optional water

Place: 9/10

Review:

Marque Restaurant is currently sitting at number 61 in the Top 50 restaurants in the world. They were the 2011 Restaurant of the year (by Good Food Guide). There were very minimum decorations outside the restaurant, a black slab with their logo on it. You could easily miss it when you walked down Crown Street.

As with most degustation restaurants, they don’t serve a la carte menu. You do have a choice to add Cheese dish in your 10 degustation courses with/without matching wines.

Potato Maxims with Oyster and Wakame

The first dish was potato chips! Quite frankly wasn’t the start I would expect from a three-hat / top restaurant. It did come with sprinkled wakame seaweed and a gastronomically-transformed oyster. Obviously crispy, golden brown chips as one would expect from this restaurant.

Blue Swimmer Crab with Almond Gazpacho, Almond Jelly, Sweet Corn and Avruga

The second dish looked more sophisticated (it was harder to see since the plate was also white). The top layer was some kind of mousse sweet corn, followed by almond gazpacho and blue swimmer crab at the bottom with a side of Avruga caviar. There was a strong seafood taste for this dish and enhanced by the almond gazpacho.

Tiger Prawn with Avocado, Buttermilk, Hazelnut and Sea Urchin

A simple-looking dish was our third course with a pretty complicated taste. You could notice straight away the grilled avocado from the burnt side and the seared tiger prawn. The avocado was drizzled with sea salt. Mix them up with the gooey mixture in the middle and you got yourself a sour, salty, charred and slightly sweet taste in your mouth.

S.A. Calamari with Celery, Apple and Mushroom Broth

For the fourth course, I wasn’t sure why it had to be mentioned as ‘S.A. Calamari’ as opposed to regular calamari. It was brought to our table nice and clean with a pitch black squid ink cube. The waiter/waitress would then pour the mushroom broth into the plate and the cube quickly dissolved. It was an interesting combo of crunchy apple and celery with soft calamari and refreshing mushroom broth.

John Dory with Cabbage, Green Strawberries, Fish Milk and Roe

Our fifth dish began with a question ‘pickled green strawberries???’ According to wiki, it actually exists! The second ingredient foreign to us in the menu was fish milk. I still couldn’t figure out what it was.

Back to the dish, this one was truly worthy three hat status. The fish was incredible, and the additional sour taste of green strawberries and cabbage was perfect.

Sourdough and Rye Bread

Nice and filling bread half way through the meal was just exactly what I needed! A bit burnt on the side, but I managed to get two for my oversized tummy…

Organic Free Range Chicken with Pate, Leek and Shallot

Back to business for sixth course and the dish kept getting better. It is interesting how they grilled a stalk of leek and just present it cleanly on the plate. The highlight for the dish was the perfectly poached chicken with long, deep fried shallots. It was accompanied by a very soft (and yummy) pate.

Mandagery Creek Venison with Smoked Beetroot, Egg Yolk, Cured and Jam

Best dish of the day (according to me) was the seventh course. It was a raw venison meat with some herbs with egg yolk and smoked beetroot. Don’t think about the yucky raw meat you see every day in your butcher. It was nicely prepared and it was kind of similar to the Japanese/Korean Yukke. The smoked beetroot gave an extra sweet and refreshing feeling to the meat and it also cleansed your palate.

Mandagery Creek is an Australian Venison Farm. More details can be seen here.

Apricot, Coffee and Lemongrass

The eighth course looked like a blob of cream. However, one would expect a whole lot more than a blob of cream in a three hat restaurant. As a starter, when we smelled the dish, it was heavenly! Then you tried to dig in and that’s when the fun started. The outer layer was soft lemongrass cream with an apricot jam base. Inside the cream was this exciting ice cold coffee cream.

Cherries, Blood, and Chocolate

It was really hard to describe this ninth course. I only could identify the cherry sorbet on top and the bitter dark chocolate in the middle. However it was a whole lot more in the dish. There was the crackling burnt-caramel sheet, processed fruits (cherry?) around the sheet and salty taste coming from inside the bitter dark chocolate.

It was exciting, even when I am not a big fan of dark chocolate!

Sauternes Custard

For our last dish, we were given what looked like a soft boiled egg. When you scooped it up, you would notice that it was definitely not egg! It was very nice and soft custard with strong flavour of Sauternes wine.

By the way, the outer casing was really an egg shell.

Coffee and Tea

The Custard was served alongside your choice of coffee or tea.

The final verdict: I can understand why Marque is a three hat restaurant. However, if I compare it against Quay and Tetsuya, I would definitely choose those two. Granted that all of the courses were nice and flawless, but it lacked a dish that could make us say ‘Wow, I couldn’t stop talking about or thinking about it’.

Did you know?

Although one of our guests was pretty late in coming to the restaurant, my wife didn’t appreciate the way head maître d’ (which was apparently Mark Best’s wife) treating her and our son. I think she didn’t really fancy kids in the restaurant and she might have thought kids were troublemakers.

It was a little dent in our otherwise enjoyable culinary experience.

Details:

5/355 Crown Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010

+61 2 9332 2225

Jan 15, 2013