A recent evening spent at Quay Restaurant has left me convinced that this is, right now, Sydney fine dining at it’s very best. Faultless service, gorgeous views, and the food, oh the food!

We start with an appetiser of salmon, roe and cauliflower cream in a shotglass. Delicious, and a great indication of things to come.

Next, a Sea Pearls dish, which is one of the most interesting I’ve ever encountered. It consists of three balls on the plate – one is tuna sashimi topped with what looks like miniature grapes but is actually what the restaurant calls “green caviar”, a special seaweed sourced for them by a microbiologist. The second is a lump of brandade, covered by tiny individual drops of egg white. The last is a ball of glassy jelly, like a large eyeball, filled with caviar and sliced pearl meat. By description alone, it might sound a little incoherent, and the smokiness of the jelly verges on being overpowering, but the dish works wonderfully together as a play of textures and flavours, and I love every bit of it. We also try the Crisp Confit of Rare Breed Suckling Pig Belly, served with green lipped abalone, cuttlefish and handmade silken tofu, which I’ve been assured was very good, seeing as I was paying too much attention to my own dish, to try it.

For the main, I can’t resist the very luxurious sounding Mud Crab Congee even though it’s listed on the entrees section. And while it might seem weird to pay $36 for rice porridge, it turns out to be everything you’d want congee to be, and more. Underneath the cap of buttery foam hides fleshy, tender pieces of mud crab and broken bits of rice, swimming in a very tasty broth. B has the Crisp Skinned Murray Cod which is perfectly cooked, and he even borrows my spoon to scrape the final dregs of sauce from his plate.

At this point, I’m almost full, but push on we must, for the sake of research. The Caramelised Raspberry Millefeuille is a two storey crunchy, fruity, creamy affair with just the right balance of tartness and sweetness. It disappears before I know it, while B makes short work of his White Peach dessert. The combination of jelly, granita and ice-cream makes for a sweet and refreshing end to our visit.

By the way, Steve, you had better come with us on our return visit, because they have Chateau Pinsan by the glass on the dessert wine list!

Quay Restaurant
Overseas Passenger Terminal
The Rocks
Sydney 2000