You can understand a certain frustration from the locals when the average
British visitor thinks that the best dining experience to be had in Sydney
is Doyles fish and chip restaurant on the beach at Watson's Bay.
There is nothing wrong with Doyles, which serves perfectly decent battered
fish and good chips. There is a nice cold lobster or mud-crab salad if you
fancy something a bit smarter and some good Australian whites. But after all
the improvements in the dining scene in the past 25 years, it's a little
galling to be judged by what is really a chippy.
The location helps enormously, though - you can dip your toes in the Pacific
Ocean with the fabulous skyscraper backdrop of the central business district
with, naturally, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge thrown in for good
measure. So euphoric was I with the location when I first got there in the
mid-1980s that noticing a British celebrity, Mel Smith, at a nearby table, I
uncharacteristically bounded over and exclaimed that I had been at Oxford
University at the same time as him.
“Sorry, mate, don't know who you are,” he said.
I was much embarrassed, but know now how hard it is to remember everybody if
you're constantly meeting people. I mentioned it to him when I met him some
time later - he said he had just got off the plane and was so jet-lagged
that he wouldn't have recognised his own mother.
Ask me now where is best for seafood on the water and I would say Icebergs in
Bondi and Pier at Rose Bay. A couple of years ago, a lunch at Icebergs
provided me with a moment of complete pleasure - you know those times when
just for an instant you see it all.
The restaurant is Italian, and the food mostly seafood. It's a beautiful,
simple restaurant with glass and light wood everywhere, all the paintwork is
in the aqua shades, there are informal wicker armchairs to sit in and a view
across the most famous beach in Australia.
The restaurant is on the northern side of the crescent-shaped beach, so you
are actually across the water, behind the breaking surf. You order maybe
some crab with chilli and soft polenta or some harbour prawns caught that
morning dipped in flour and deep fried for a moment. Everything in the
restaurant - location, interior, food - comes together: this is Australia.
Pier is the other restaurant to which I always return. Like Icebergs, its
location is the last word in dining on the water. It is built on a pier at
Rose Bay, and wherever you sit the reflection off the water is all around
you. White tablecloths and chairs with blue glass everywhere. All you need
is a glass of crisp riesling such as Geoffrey Grosset's Polish Hill and you
are ready for some great fish.
There is no meat on the menu, simply the best fish and shellfish that the
owner and chef, Greg Doyles, can get his hands on. No chef I know pays more
attention to the detail of buying fish. The result is a menu that tries to
deliver the freshest, simplest tastes.
I ate there last Wednesday and had the best carpaccio of fish outside Tsukiji
fish market in Tokyo: reassuringly thick cuts of Tasmanian salmon loin and
some thinner, long slices of the fattier belly, so loved by the Japanese.
There were thick slices of tailer and kingfish - two other fish with a high
oil content.
Being completely won over by the freshness, I also ordered a carpaccio of
trumpeter fish with a tomato and lime water vinaigrette and a main course of
Murray cod, which has a delicate fattiness that only the best freshwater
fish can deliver. Pier is expensive, but worth every penny.
Oscillate Wildly in Newtown (city fringe) is a small brasserie which has the most amazingly inventive menu in Sydney...
Mich, Sydney, Australia
The Lord Nelson is a top place and the landlord has been there for 22 years so rare these days. Off for a glass of Polish Hill and whiting !!
Fishman, Sydney, OZ
Forbes and Burton (at the crossroads of Forbes and Burton Streets in Darlinghurst) is a great choice of local restaurant. The staff are excellent and the raw sandstone walls with flashes of red make a great backdrop for consistently good food. Also open for great breakfast and lunch!
Dr Gary Nicholls, Brighton, UK
Bodega food is great. Pity the price of the wine is very expensive. Not a BYO.
tom, Sydney, Australia
I am not convinced about Pier, over priced and good, but not excellent. If you want to be in Rose Bay Catalina is better at half the price and much friendlier service.
Quay, on Circular Quay offers the best seafood in Sydney. The sea pearls rate with anything i have ever eaten in Europe.
CS, Sydney , Australia