…As I was saying, the whole point of the trip to Sydney was to go to Tetsuya’s. Dave actually booked it back in February, that’s how long a wait there is, and even then we could only get in for lunch. I’ve been wanting to go for years, since we went to the Fat Duck back in 2007 and I decided I wanted to eat at all of the 50 best restaurants in the world. Back then Tetsuya’s was something like number six and the only Australian restaurant on the list. Now, it’s plummeted right down to number 58. Barely worth going to, right? Oh, I kill me.
How to describe it? The place itself is a little haven in the middle of Sydney, so unexpected amongst the office buildings. You walk down an ordinary, fairly dodgy-looking city street and come to a wrought iron fence with a hedge, behind which a driveway winds back to a long low building. Inside everything is serene with dark beams and lovely artwork. Our table was at the window overlooking a Japanese garden, with gravel, delicate leafy plants and a gorgeous pond, This is what I’d like to do down the side of the house, I told Dave. What, even the pond? He said. Well no, obviously not the pond, although wait, are you offering to put in a pond? Because I’d kind of like one.
Where was I?
The food is a ten-course degustation menu mixing Japanese flavours with French techniques. There’s also the option of getting wines matched to each course. We did that when we went to the Fat Duck and it was fabulous (so much so that we hunted down some of the wines afterwards), but then at Vue Du Monde in Melbourne the servings were miserly and not very impressive so it put us off. Instead we started with a couple of glasses of Champagne and then got a really nice bottle of Sangiovese.
Now I’m warning you, I am not a food writer, which is about to become painfully obvious to you, but the food – oh! The food! It started with bread and black truffle butter, then an amuse bouche of potato soup with a coddled quail’s egg. A couple of oysters with a ginger vinaigrette followed, then egg custard with sea urchin; Kingfish sashimi; confit of ocean trout; snapper with scampi; steamed spanner crab; spatchcock with black truffle; wagyu beef cooked shabu shabu style. Then onto the desserts! There were four of them, my style of meal. First there was a hay-infused icecream which tasted delightfully like fresh grass clippings, then tarte tatin and bread and butter pudding, and finally Dave had carrot cake with a salty caramel icecream, and I got a molten chocolate pudding with a candle.
Wait, is that more than ten courses? One, two, three… well, I guess the oysters were an optional extra and you wouldn’t count the amuse bouche or the bread and butter. Although, that butter, it was divine. After we ate our first lot of bread, in a roughly 1:1 ratio with the butter, the waiter offered us another roll each. “Well…” I hesitated, thinking of the times I’ve gone to Ezard’s in Melbourne and eaten so much bread as a vehicle for their parmesan olive oil I almost couldn’t fit in my dinner. Or Yellow River in Islington, where if you ordered takeaway they left you alone with a giant bowl of the most delicious prawn crackers ever and always acted surprised when they came back and there were none left. I’m trying to show some refinement, you see. “Are you sure?” the waiter pressed, so I allowed him to furnish me with a second roll. (And then I disgraced myself by being caught cleaning out the ramekin with my finger and rubbing the last smears on my gums. But by then I didn’t care.)
Every single dish was light and delicate with the most subtle flavours. My favourite was the ocean trout, no wonder it’s his signature dish, and my favourite dessert was the tarte tatin. Strangely Dave thought that was the weakest dessert and raved about his carrot cake instead.
We don’t have any photos of the meal. Dave did take one of me but it was after the butter incident and quite a lot of wine so I’m all flushed and there’s some sort of weird spotlight on my cleavage, so I won’t be sharing that. Instead here are a few pictures I pinned on Pinterest. (Oh, is that an addictive thing, or what?)
Here’s a photo of the garden, from about where we were sitting:
and the confit trout
and the birthday chocolate pudding. I want birthday chocolate pudding every day.
Towards the end of the meal the waiter slipped a piece of paper in front of me, saying, “I thought you might appreciate this.” It was the recipe for the butter. “Oh, you don’t know what you’ve done,” I said. The main ingredient is Tetsuya’s own black truffle salsa. “You can get this at David Jones, can’t you,” I said, attempting to show how knowledgeable and capable of reading their website I was. “Yes,” he said, “or you can open your bag.” And he slipped a jar of it in my handbag. Because as everyone knows, the first hit is always free.
(I really liked our pusher waiter.)
And then it was sadly over, after coffees and macarons, and we drifted back through the shoppers to the hotel. And then? We napped. For hours. Oh the decadence of it.
