The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally.
We went to local restaurant Yummy King on an online recommendation for some suckling pork. Unfortunately they were sold out of suckling pork for the day (we were told that they usually run out around 2PM, earlier during festive seasons), so this is what we had instead.
We started, after a couple who had only just finished their meal were hurried out of their table so that we could be seated, with this classic complimentary soup with some pork bone, carrot and potato. It had a light and wholesome flavour, perfect to drink during the extremely short wait for our food to arrive. My partner always enjoys this, no matter where we go.
We had the double varieties BBQ with rice ($13) with BBQ pork and roast duck. The quantity was quite ample for the price, especially considering you can get this with the huge mountain of rice, a good amount of protein, and a free soup for just $13. The roast duck (燒鴨) was pretty good, with good flavour, skin and texture with a good combination of meatiness and fattiness, with not much bone.
The BBQ pork was less good in our opinion – cooked a bit sweeter than we like, with also a different cut of pork than we are used to (or is it just cut in a different direction?) I honestly think that the char siu (叉烧) that my partner makes at home with the recipe from The Woks of Life is better.
We also ordered an entire serving of roast pork ($15.80) by itself. Contrary to the disappointing char siu, Yummy King’s roast pork was actually some of the best I’ve ever had. The flavours were perfect, with just a little bit of salt and other seasoning coming through, but not to an overpowering or oversalted extent. The skin was incredibly crispy and tasty throughout the course of our meal, and the meat was tender and juicy, with not much fat. This was really some very top tier siu yuk (燒肉), and I would not hesitate to recommend it.
The ginger and shallot sauce, along with all other sauces like duck sauce were self-serve from a little sauce stall at the back of the restaurant. As it was end of day, the ginger and shallot sauce had gotten a little sedimenty.
Because we are cosplaying as responsible adults this year, we ordered a serve of steamed Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce ($10). Truth be told, we could’ve had better value getting a set menu for two, but my partner specifically wanted gai lan over choy sum (a little bit of which came with th BBQ meats anyway). These were super green and probably quite healthy, though we are told by my partner’s mother that greenness comes from the addition of oil in the cooking process.
SUBSEQUENT VISIT (APRIL 2023)
The soy chicken, had for takeout, was pretty good. Exactly what it is, no more and no less.
The suckling pork ($78/kg) was really delicious. So juicy and fatty, and yet crispy at the same time, with just the perfect fat to meat to skin ratio. At the asking price, not something we can have all the time, but I’m so glad we were able to come back and get this.
OTHER THOUGHTS I went out onto the street to find the nearest ATM because my partner thought that they told her there was a 4% card surcharge, something she’s since backed down on since she now claims she doesn’t understand the language perfectly (never mind the fact that she grew up with Cantonese at home). A 4% card surcharge would be highly suspicious but without clear evidence of this there’s not much more to say.
The roast pork is delicious. Don’t expect to be allowed to stay much longer than your eating time. They’re super busy and popular, with a line out the door when we arrived.
I watched Lucas Sin’s cha chaan teng video for VICE at least three times over the last few months of lockdown here in Sydney, and have had a hankering for some Hong Kong Cafe style food ever since. Luckily the Instagram algorithm saw it fit to serve me photos of Hong Kong Bing Sutt’s delicious looking beef noodle soup over the same period of time, and while I was unable to order takeaway via the app (as I am illiterate) I took myself and my Cantonese-speaking girlfriend over there the first chance I could.
Hong Kong Bing Sutt’s milk tea ($5.30) is extremely rich and dark, likely owing to the traditional method of brewing Hong Kong milk tea which undergoes multiple prolonged steeps through a silk stocking filter to ensure deep extraction. While this is only imagined (the brewing of the tea was not witnessed by me), the rich and smooth flavour of the tea was directly confirmed. While the hot version served at the restaurant comes unsweetened with some sugar on the side, HKBS also sells bottled versions of its chilled pre-sweetened milk tea for $7 a bottle, which are also pretty good, if pricey.
The Mixed Beef Noodle ($15.80) was what drew me in initially, and was actually pretty great in reality. It comes default with thin egg noodles, stewed beef brisket, beef tripe, beef tendon, and beef tendon balls, though many of these elements can be customised to taste. The beef brisket was represented by both fatty and less fatty pieces, all of which were rich tasting and cooked to an extreme degree of tenderness. There was no skimping on any of the other components, including the deep soy marinated tendon and tripe, and even shared between the two of us we felt like we each had enough. The soup was flavoured with chu hou paste, which is a traditional sauce for Cantonese style beef brisket, and nice and warming. The noodles were not extraordinary, rather acting as a mere vehicle for the rest of the very good bowl.
I wasn’t such a huge fan of the BBQ Pork and Over Easy Eggs with Rice ($16.80), but my partner loved it. I felt that the big slabs of char siu were actually not as flavoured as I am used to, which was fine, but didn’t help to carry the bulk of the rice underneath as well as I would have liked. The over easy egg was very well done, extremely soft and runny in the centre. It was only at the bottom of the rice that we found some soy sauce. I think ultimately this was a dish that would have been more suited to being served in a claypot with a bit of thick soy sauce on top, and the bowl format just didn’t work as well.
This rice noodle roll was fine, but too vegetarian for me. The rice noodles themselves were soft and not too oily, coated in a sauce of sesame seeds, hoisin, and probably peanut butter. The sauce wasn’t overpowering, but I just like my chang fen with a bit of prawn or meat in it.
The scrambled eggs and beef satay sandwich was pretty yum. This, the rice noodle roll, and the hot signature milk tea came to a combo total of $13.80, which is pretty decent. The satay beef was good, as was the very light and soft scrambled eggs. The bread was mostly de-crusted, although some edges still had a bit of unfortunate crust.
SECOND VISIT
These are the chicken wings in house made Swiss sauce ($8.80). I’ve recently been trying to lower my carb intake, so sadly many of the items on the menu at HKBS were mildly off limits to me on my second visit. The Swiss sauce in this dish is similar to the Swiss made stamp on my Chinese-made “Rolex” “Submariner”. More of an abstract vibe than a statement of origin, Swiss sauces are a purely Chinese based invention, a mixture of sugar, dark soy sauce, and shaoxing cooking wine. Classically boiled and shocked in an ice bath, these wings exhibited a good tender texture with a firm skin, however I must admit that after a couple of wings the strong shaoxing cooking wine flavour put me off having any more.
The beef brisket with special curry sauce and rice ($14.80) was a really good value, large meal of a classic Hong Kong style curry, big chunks of beef brisket, and potato served alongside a ball of rice. I appreciated that the curry and rice were served separately, minimising mess and also the desire to eat all of the rice. The beef brisket was tasty, though in my opinion could have been cooked to a higher degree of tenderness. The flavour of the curry was good overall, with the sauce highly compatible with the supplied rice.
The crispy pork belly with red beancurd sauce ($13.80) was really quite nice. The exterior batter is extremely crispy and made with fermented red bean curd (jiang dou fu 酱豆腐), which imparts a slightly salty, slightly sweet, and quite funky taste to the pork, almost similar to marmite pork ribs. The meat encased in the super crispy batter was moist, tender and fatty pork which tasted great on first eating, especially with the red sauce that neither my partner nor I could pinpoint as sweet-and-sour or sweet-chilli. Unfortunately as with many deep fried dishes this dish was a victim of entropy, and as our meal progressed on the loss of heat to the environment dulled its shine.
VERDICT Overall I enjoyed, though I think charging $7 for a small bottle of milk tea is a bit absurd.
After a couple of aborted attempts at eating at Nikkei over the past year, my partner and I finally made it over there to try their $88 pp Japanese-Peruvian tasting menu, inspired by the apparently quite significant Japanese diaspora in Peru. This is a restaurant from the group that runs Osaka Trading Co (which I did not love), but is much better.
The first thing I noticed and enjoyed was this sweet wooden communal dining table. It looked expensive, perhaps carved out of a single tree, and potentially a lot of money. I’d love to have one of these tables in my home one day, to entertain no one. The second thing was this nice drinks menu, bound in a very Midori Traveler’s Notebook esque leather covering, complete with a little bit of patina which I hope continues to develop as the restaurant continues to exist.
Our first little nibble were the empanada bites, two of which were allocated to each diner. These small deep fried bites were crispy and crunch, mostly unidentifiable generalised fried stuff (perhaps it is the edamame but reconstituted?) filled with a small amount of surprisingly large-grain choclo (Peruvian) corn and topped with parmesan cheese. The smoked mayonnaise topping and bottoming, which held the bites to their paper base, was well liked by my colleagues around the table.
These Hokkaido scallops were quite special, presented in a huacatay (Peruvian black mint) butter, tangy acevichado (ceviche-like) salsa, and tiny balls of arare cracker. The scallops were sweet with a nice torch-born sear to them. The sauce that they were bathed in was both creamy and citrusy, while the lightly puffed arare cracker added additional textural interest, like tiny rice puffs. I would recommend eating this with a spoon to not miss out on all of those beautiful flavours in the sauce.
While not all colleagues around the table were impressed by the ceviche de pulpo, I actually thought it was quite good. This was a classic-ish ceviche with a nice tender octopus instead of fish, bathed in a marinade of lime juice and spices, and served with cancha corn, or toated corn kernals. My partner, lover of citrus but hater of certain seafoods, enjoyed this dish, as did I. I thought the flavours were quite bright and fresh, and again enjoyed the variety of textures and flavours offered by the crunchy toasted corn.
The causa sushi is in my opinion an attempt to innovate just a little too much. On offer was a piece of scampi nigiri topped with ikura, and a piece of yellowfin tuna gunkan each. The twist here is that Nikkei has used a mashed-potato base as opposed to rice, an ingredient we were told is common in Peruvian cuisine. While I had a bit of hesitation to eat raw scampi (thinking back to this allergic reaction I had at Moxhe) I told my two anaesthetic colleagues that I was for full resus and went to town on the first scampi I’ve had in a very long time. I think I might have become desensitised.
The seafood was fine, the scampi was sweet and the cubed tuna a little spicy and actually quite tasty. Unfortunately I wish they had just stuck with rice though, as the texture of the causa just didn’t do it for me. Poor rice in sushi can mean the difference between good sushi and bad sushi, and not-rice sushi just makes it all that much worse.
The wagyu maki that followed renewed my sadness that the causa sushi was not just regular sushi. The rice in this was actually quite good. The lightly seared thinly sliced MBS8+ rib eye was well liked by one of my learned colleagues, though to be honest I was less of a fan of the meat itself, but still a fan of the overall package. I enjoyed the mixture of yakinku sauce and anticucho sauce, a sauce we were told was commonly used in Peru for grilled chicken, as well as the crunchiness of the vegetables rolled inside the warm sushi rice.
The chuleta de cerdo was again another dish that was well liked by all the friends around the table except me. I personally thought that the Tokachi-style kurobota pork rib eye was a bit too fatty for me – certainly there was enough lean meat to go around, but perhaps my first piece was just 40% fat and it just set a bad tone for the rest of the dish. I can’t criticise the meat’s tenderness or sweet-savoury flavour, but it is just unfortunate that the texture of the first bite was offputting. What I did enjoy thoroughly in this dish was the delicious sweet potato chips, which were thin, tasty, and went well with just a bit of the meat’s sauce. This dish was served with some charred lemon to squeeze onto the meat, but I didn’t find that it improved my experience. Again – the three other diners on the table universally loved this pork but I just need to tell you how I feel.
I wasn’t crazy about the ensalada de verano. I thought that while they did innovate a little with some spicy yuzu kosho, the leaves were a bit bitter. Whatever. It’s vegetable.
This matcha alfajor dulce de leche ice cream sandwich was actually quite good. A bit difficult to crack without smushing the ice-cream out from under the biscuit, but really quite pleasant tasting. Not too sweet.
THOUGHTS I quite enjoyed the opportunity to eat all of these Peruvian ingredients (particularly interesting corns and sauces) that I’ve never had the chance to eat before. Some of it was quite different, but still tempered in the familiarity of all the Japanese food that my partner and I tend to eat. I quite enjoyed the raw seafood based dishes at the start, moreso than the cooked dishes towards the end, but I do think that overall Nikkei gets a recommendation from me. Many blessings to this crew. (I also enjoyed the unobtrusive but good and knowledgeable service.)
Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Memento Mori is one of the spookiest cafes in all of Rosebery. The constant reminder of our impending deaths is something I usually only experience while hanging out with one of my senior intensive care colleagues. I never thought that such a feeling could be distilled into a cafe, but the wizards behind Mentmore and Morley named their restaurant just so.
Wow. Let me tell you about these textured plates. They’re from IKEA, but I couldn’t identify them on IKEA’s online store. Again wow.
While I cannot quite tell you the name of this veal scaloppine style dish with assorted vegetables, I can tell you that it was quite good. I especially enjoyed the tomatoes.
Pork knuckle and Vietnamese slaw
The seasonal special, pork knuckle with Vietnamese slaw was around $30. It was a whole pork knuckle, slow roasted with skin on. The skin was quite crispy and delicious, and the meat tender. I was initially skeptical of the Vietnamese slaw, but the acidic flavours helped cut through the fat perfectly. A good pairing.
Coffee was no better or worse than standard.
While the name of Memento Mori was spooky, this did not extend to the food, which was a mixture of Italian and Vietnamese cuisines. I can recommend going to get spooked.
When you spend $290 per head at Sydney’s most lauded restaurant I think you’re allowed to expect something truly special. Unfortunately special isn’t quite the word I would use to describe our meal at Quay, which we had just before Christmas 2020 to celebrate my partner’s brother’s med school graduation.
Amuse-bouche
The amuse-bouche, a small and delicate tart filled with oyster cream and topped with seaweed, was in my opinion the best morsel of the night. The oyster cream had a very intense fresh oyster flavour, packing an almost illegal amount of umami in this tiny morsel. The pastry was extremely thin and delicate, however still able to provide a nice mouthfeel and also the structural integrity required to hold the tart together. If the entire meal had been up to the quality of this amuse-bouche then this would have been an entirely different review altogether.
Raw hand harvested seafood, virgin soy, aged vinegar
The raw hand harvested seafood, virgin soy, aged vinegar was our first listed course of the eight-course degustation menu, and our first encounter with Quay’s interesting array of custom crockery. The “hand harvested” seafood alluded to in the dish’s description included raw scallop, octopus legs, and pipis. The bottom layer of very thinly sliced raw scallop was very nice, with a subtle sweetness and no bitterness. My partner remarked that this was the only time she has ever enjoyed pipi, and one of the few times she has ever enjoyed octopus (apart from as takoyaki). The flavour created by the combination of virgin soy (pre-tainted soy would be far too “common” for this kind of restaurant) and aged vinegar was unexpectedly and delightfully light. This was a good dish.
This is the poached marron, green almonds, pomelo, flowers. Our waitress described marron as a kind of crustacean “native to the shores here in Australia”, which if I’m being honest kind of offended me, as if weren’t also from the shores here in Australia. The dish itself was quite small. Marrons aren’t really that small, but I guess baby ones might be. The flavours of this dish were very mild, with very little being added in terms of taste by the almonds or flowers. I just wonder if she introduces the dish the same way to the Caucasian Australian diners.
My partner’s brother isn’t a big fan of crustaceans and is allergic to some. His plate was three different types of radishes. He did not look impressed.
The bread course was unlisted, but one of the better ones of the night. We were each served a toasted crumpet with house cultured cream and Yarra Valley salmon roe. I really liked the warm butteriness of the crumpet. It was quite crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, and obvious that no butter had been spared in the name of health. The cream was the better of the two accompaniments. I couldn’t help but feel like the Yarra Valley salmon roe was a bit of a skimp. Yarra Valley salmon roe, while fitting with the “locavore” local food trend, is well known to be heavily marinated and salty. It doesn’t really compare to salmon roe used by the better sushi restaurants which is more buttery and lighter tasting.
The smoked eel cream, seaweeds, agretti, ice plant is one of the differentiating factors between the $240 tasting menu and the $290 tasting menu. The story told to us is that the chef boils five eels in five litres of cream, and reduces the mixture until it is boiled down to just one litre. The final result is sweet and creamy, however it was difficult for any of us to really appreciate the eel flavour. At most we could appreciate a hint of smoke. I think any concept of eel flavouring was more imagined than actual, and I’m sure that if Quay’s diners were not told of the presence of eel beforehand it wouldn’t even be a consideration. The three types of seaweed atop the cream provided a nice sour tanginess which contrasted well with the richness of the cream.
The shittake and squid noodles, sour koji butter was hyped by our waitress in exquisite detail but left us feeling disappointed. We were told how the buckwheat noodles were infused with shittake mushroom, and how the koji butter was poured in to give it an additional umami kick. Though the plating and presentation were good, the flavours in this essentially mazesoba dish were too light and subtle. The umami kick which was promised didn’t really happen. Our waiter later told us that this was his favourite dish, which is an opinion that I don’t share.
The meatiest dish of the night was the slow cooked pig jowl, umami custard, black pig salami. Chef Peter Gilmore has apparently been using Berkshire pig jowl in various dishes for over a decade. Berkshire pig is breed known for high intramuscular fat content, which helps to create more tender, juicy meat. We found this dish to be quite juicy and flavourful, and enjoyed the fatty meat, as well as the salami on top. The layer of “umami custard” actually lived up to its name this time, and did provide a rich depth of flavour to the dish. Yummy. I might pick up some Berkshire pig to cook with myself.
I wasn’t a big fan of the Maremma duck, orach, gooseberries, onions, Kampot pepper. We were told that the chef breaks down an entire duck just for this little piece of meat, discarding the rest. Our waitress mentioned with glee that the skin of the duck was replaced by the orach, gooseberries and onions, which was kind of bewildering to me as someone finds the layer of crispy skin and fat over duck meat essential. Ever worse than the concept was the reality – the dish had a strong caramelised onion smell and taste, which I think unfortunately overpowered the taste of the duck as well as that of the sweet gooseberries. This dish was a great way to completely defeat the purpose of eating duck. Tetsuya’s duck course was much better than this.
The white coral dessert. made of liquid nitrogen frozen white chocolate coral atop peach and vanilla ice creams was definitely a standout of the meal.
The Moo dessert was part of the extended menu, featuring salted caramel, Dulce de Leche, prune jam with aged Madeira, jersey milk ice-cream, whipped jersey cream, dark cocoa tuile biscuits. The most striking things about this dessert was the quite extreme custom crockery (non-edible) that it came in as well as the surprisingly cheap and plastic dessert spoon given to us to eat with. The prune jam was the strongest flavour within the dessert and unfortunately the tanginess of the jam did take over a bit. This was a house specialty that, while special to the house, wasn’t great.
A petit-four, a nice little berry tart featuring the greenest strawberry I’ve ever eaten.
The Apple Island Fog ($30), served with liquid nitrogen, was not great. Don’t eat the petal.
DISCUSSION
Quay has two separate dining rooms, one lower level which is a bit more spacious and quiet, and one upper level offering 360 degree views of Sydney Harbour, which was more crowded and noisy. We were not given a choice of where to sit, and were led to the upper floor on arrival. While the views are nice, it definitely pays to either have lunch or a Summer dinner at Quay, as there’s not much to see once the sun sets.
I do want to make a special mention to the one Asian guy who was eating his $290 meal in a T-shirt and shorts all by himself. That’s real money.
VERDICT
I couldn’t help but feel – given the quality of the meal – that we paid as much for the view and the restaurant’s name as we did the food. Quay’s signature nine course degustation really wasn’t as special as I thought it would be, and was really comparable in quality, taste, and execution to many of the much cheaper ($100-150/head) meals we’ve had recently. If you’re looking to spend over $250 per head on food alone in Sydney I’d easily recommend Tetsuya’s instead.
My first introduction to fine dining was at Sepia after I had just finished med school, and this was the kind of experience we were trying to replicate for my partner’s brother. My meal at Sepia is an experience I’m constantly trying to recapture, but I think if my first ever fine dining experience had been at Quay I would’ve given up on the concept entirely.
I probably won’t go back to Quay unless someone has a wedding here.
