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Travel |
Sydney by Food
On 22 November 2003, I watched the live telecast of the finals of Rugby World Cup 2003 held in Sydney between Australia and England. In the last minute of extra time, Johnny Wilkinson of England drop-kicked a goal that won England the cup. While the Australian rugby team may be runners-up in rugby, Australian chefs are leading the world with their cooking or so claims Aussie food writer Stephen Downes in his book ‘Advanced Australian Fare — How Australian Cooking Became the World’s Best’. Anyway, due to various reasons and a couple of cheap air tickets on Gulf Air, my wife and I were in Sydney in less than a week.
One problem about going to a foreign city on short notice is that you are unlikely to get a reservation at their best restaurants because this usually has to be booked weeks, if not months, in advance. This was exactly the problem I faced with Tetsuya’s, what many people consider the best restaurant in Australia. According to no lesser authority than Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong (see below), you have to book a table two to three months ahead. Nonetheless, I thought I should still visit the restaurant to take a few photographs for my collection. So, on our first day in Sydney, we made our way to Tetsuya’s.
The restaurant’s main gate was locked and it did not look like a restaurant from the outside at all. In fact, my wife said it looked like the headquarters of the yakuza (ie the Japanese mafia and I believe she meant it as a compliment). Anyway, after taking a few photos, I noticed an intercom next to the gate and activated it. Someone called Richard (I am not making this up) answered and I said that I was trying my luck to see if by any chance I could book a table for two for one of our remaining days in Sydney. I mentioned that we only planned to come to Sydney several days ago and was hoping that maybe they had a cancellation for one of their tables. Richard caused the main gate to open and we walked into the restaurant building to meet him. He checked and found they did have one table available and it happened to be on the last night of our trip. How lucky can one get? Naturally, I booked it.
Tetsuya’s is a French restaurant founded by Japanese-Australian chef Tetsuya Wakuda in 1989 in the Sydney suburb of Rozelle. It was relocated to its present place in Kent Street in 2001. There were major renovations done to meet Tetsuya’s exacting requirements and the restaurant also features beautiful pieces of art by his good friend, the late sculptor Akio Makigawa. From our table, we could see a beautiful Japanese garden and hear the soothing sounds of running water but people come to Tetsuya’s really for the food.
One food writer said that Tetsuya should be declared ‘a national living treasure’. Another (whose advice I obviously took) advised that you should eat at Tetsuya’s at least ‘once in your life, if not once a year’. Famous American chef Charlie Trotter said that Tetsuya loves to eat and his love for eating thoroughly influences his culinary approach. Normally, I would rather have a chef who loves to cook so that he does not compete with me in the eating department. A chef who loves to eat would be in a conflict of interest situation and lawyers know that makes it difficult for one to perform well. Furthermore, it would be unfair since the chef always has first access to the food. However, Tetsuya’s reputation was so great that I just had to try his food. In fact, Charlie Trotter ranks Tetsuya up there with elite international chef Alain Ducasse (the only chef with three Michelin stars simultaneously at two different restaurants).
Singaporean foodies will recognise Tetsuya as the chef that the former Prime Minister and now Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong was referring to in his 2001 National Day Rally speech. In that speech, Senior Minister Goh mentioned a lunch he had in London with Kwek Leng Beng at the Kwek’s about-to-be-opened restaurant in one of his hotels. Kwek had told the Senior Minister of the great trouble he had taken to persuade a certain Japanese-Australian chef from Sydney to set up the restaurant and the Senior Minister said:
Apparently, the chef’s Sydney restaurant is very popular. You have to book a table two to three months ahead. Leng Beng spent two years wooing the chef before succeeding. Many other suitors had failed. The chef is very particular. Everything must be exactly right. He delayed the opening of Leng Beng’s restaurant by more than a month because he was not happy with the décor and service. He even checked the toilets and found them not up to his standard. Leng Beng had to redo the décor and the toilets. The chef serves French-Japanese fusion cuisine. We had eight courses. Each dish was exquisite, beautifully presented and uniquely flavoured. After the eight courses though, I did not feel full like I would after a Chinese meal. When I described my experience to my Principal Private Secretary, he said, ‘Ah, the French call it, ‘Menu Dégustation’.’ He had studied in France. He explained that a ‘Menu Dégustation’ was to allow you to enjoy different flavours and styles of preparation of many small dishes, and not to stuff you.
I cannot remember everything that we ate during dinner at Tetsuya’s since there was no menu at the table and I forgot to ask for a copy at the end of the meal. However, like the Senior Minister, I do remember that each dish was exquisite, beautifully presented and uniquely flavoured. I also remember that we had some of his more famous dishes like the lobster ravioli and scallop with foie gras and his signature dish, the confit of petuna ocean trout with fennel salad.
The trout dish really reflects Tetsuya’s fussy nature. In his book, Tetsuya, the chef mentions that the trout for his signature dish are first raised in fresh water before being moved to the brackish waters of Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania after a year. This is to reduce the chances of the fish getting sunburn. (Imagine, a chef worried about his fish getting sunburn.) He also said that the running water of the harbour would keep the fish free from any gill disease. Before cooking the trout, Tetsuya would immerse the fish in grapeseed oil and olive oil with coriander, pepper, basil, thyme and garlic and then leave it to marinate in the refrigerator for a few hours. Tetsuya also takes no more than 10 minutes to cook it and apparently it took him three months to figure out that this timing is the ideal. Anyway, the process leaves the flesh of the trout bright orangey-red and also lukewarm to touch. It is then sprinkled with finely chopped chives, konbu (kelp) and a little sea salt and accompanied by trout caviar and a salad of thinly sliced fennel tossed with lemon juice, salt and pepper and some lemon-scented oil. Tetsuya even suggests some wines to accompany this dish ie a complex Chardonnay: 1997 Leewin Estate Art Series; 1997 Kistler, Chardonnay ‘Durrel’; or a 1997 Jean Boillot et Fils Puligny Montrachet ‘Clos de la Mouchere’. The wine suggestions were lost on me though as I do not usually drink wine and my preferred beverage is actually dihydrogen monoxide (aka water).
Each course at dinner unfolded like an act of a grand play as the waiter would serve the food with a little flourish and follow it up with an eloquent description of what was being served and then recommend how it should be eaten. I was not very comfortable with all the drama but the food was simply delicious and I disgraced myself by eating every last bit of food. Tetsuya rules.
Fortunately, Sydney was not just about Tetsuya’s and there were many other restaurants and eating places I wanted to try. Unfortunately, I only had a week and could not eat everything I wanted. So much to eat and so little time became my constant mantra. Be that as it may, some other eating highlights are mentioned below.
I do not usually eat breakfast or anything much for breakfast but I made an exception for Bill Granger’s famous ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter and banana at his super trendy café, Bills. For good measure, I also had a linguini with organic vegetables for lunch at his other café called Bills 2 in Crown Street, Surry Hills. On both occasions, I was not disappointed.
We had dinner at a delightful Vietnamese restaurant in Surry Hills called Thanh Long that had won an award of excellence from the Sydney Eats 2004 Awards. It serves interesting Vietnamese family recipes that are rarely available from other Vietnamese restaurants and certainly deserved its award.
How can one resist the favourite Chinese restaurant of many Sydney chefs, BBQ King? It is famous for its Cantonese roasts and my wife and I tried a roast duck and roast pork combination with braised tofu and stir-fried vegetables. Yummy.
While my wife went shopping at Queen Victoria Building, I squeezed in a bite at Erciyes, Sydney’s best Turkish restaurant. Sydney Eats 2004 made the comment that ‘if you can find better Turkish than this, you must be in Istanbul’. They are right.
Ideally, food should be eaten as fresh as possible and nowhere else in Sydney can you eat seafood fresher than at the Sydney Fish Market. Furthermore, the Sydney Fish Market is said to be the largest market of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and second in the world only to the Tokyo Fish Market in terms of variety. Here, you can pick whatever fresh seafood you want and have it cooked in whatever way you like. I had assorted sashimi and half a dozen raw oysters at one stall and shared a grilled baramundi with my wife at another. Shiok.
Gelato Bar at Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach was a wonderful surprise. It was where I got the best chocolate éclair that I have ever eaten in my life to date. Looking at the amount of cream it contained would set your heart palpitating and eating it would bring you closer to a cardiac arrest. But wow!
Richard Tan Ming Kirk
Shook Lin & Bok