Bentley Restaurant & Bar
A visit to Bentley Restaurant & Bar has been on the cards for a long time now. A chance encounter with a day off mid-week, finally enabled the impossible. Down busy Crown Street we go, envying all the Surry Hillers, their plethora of decent restaurants at every corner. Bentley is no exception.
For me, the strength of this place is in their tapas menu. It features a decent selection of well-priced dishes (starting from $3.50) that are interesting both in presentation and taste. First up, two lollipop-looking things; actually white anchovies on a stick, coated in pistachio praline. Sweet, salty, vinegary, crunchy, delicious! We also had gazpacho 3 ways : tomato, dill and almond milk. All 3 had a well balanced flavour with a slight vinegary kick that was very pleasant and refreshing. The crispy fried chicken with aioli, which looked like dregs from the bottom of a packet of salt ‘n’ vinegar chips, tasted so moreish I want to lick the plate. Not pictured but also sampled, was a main dish of slow-roasted pork loin with kohlrabi and crackling.
The best of the two desserts we tried, was the chocolate ‘aero’ – a bar of bubbly chocolate topped with tiny flakes of salt, served with apricot sorbet, foam and sweet basil puree. The mast on top of the sorbet was an apricot wafer; a bit like a thin roll-up. It’s not as pretty as the cherries with smoked vanilla ice-cream, peanuts and cumin, but there was something delightful about that textural aerated chocolate. The first spoonful makes you think it’s cakey, but then it dissolves in your mouth like chocolate would. I kept taking tiny spoonfuls of it to try to describe it, then suddenly, together with the not-too-sweet sorbet, it was all gone.
One thing to note, what with the hardwood floors and bare walls, Bentley is incredibly noisy. Not in the kids-these-days/no-pianos-after-11pm type of way, but loud enough to make it hard to hear your dining companion, who is only sitting centimetres away from you. Give me two tin cans and a piece of string, and I’ll be back in a frilly dress, with a cocktail in one hand, to try more of that wonderful tapas. (And it’s not the dress that would be made of tin and string, of course!)
Bentley Restaurant & Bar
320 Crown Street
Surry Hills 2010
Helen said,
December 7, 2006 @ 1:41 pm
another resto on my “to-dine” list, altho’ i’m not a fan of loud clattering restaurants. always puts me on edge and slightly stressed. the food sounds so sensation that i might just have to pack my earplugs regardless 🙂
chocolatesuze said,
December 7, 2006 @ 4:07 pm
mmm that chocolate aero sounds fantastic and i have got to try the anchovies on a stick!
Y said,
December 12, 2006 @ 9:45 am
It’s definitely worth a visit. And the tapas menu in particular allows you to order/spend as little or as much as you want!