Quay (again! :D)

Hello everyone!! Long time no see!! Things been really crazy at work and also outside of work. Why? Because October was really a very popular wedding month! I had 1 wedding at the end of Sept, then 3 more in Oct. Those in Oct were all close family members i.e. my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law and my brother. Very happy for all these newly weds, at the same time also very glad that finally no more weddings to go to this year - it was tiring (for myself and also for my wallet :p). Now I can go back to my 'normal' routine and continue to TRY to blog regularly :p 
Anyway, I celebrated my birthday couple months ago. Even though I try to have at least 12 months gap between visit of any restaurants, I couldn't say no when my sister say she's going to buy me nice dinner for my birthday, not especially when it's Quay :) (I've visited Quay earlier this year to celebrate Robin's birthday). She wanted to try the snow egg after watching it on masterchef. So she said to me "I'll buy you dinner at Quay, you go there with me. I want to eat snow egg". Like I would say no to that :) 

So, we started our dinner with some drinks down at the bar. I had this yummy drink which I have forgotten what it was called. All I remember was it had mint, lime (??) and was very refreshing. If I took a photo of that drink menu I probably could remember which 1, but the very "smart" me of course didn't take a photo of the drink menu. 

Amuse bouche - smoked mackeral, cucumber, crème fraiche and obviously a few other ingredients that I can't remember :p The last time I went we had a smoked fish amuse bouche too. Even though the piece of mackeral was so small, it was full of smokey flavour. While the crème fraiche added creaminess, the cucumber added the crunch to the texture. The combination was just perfect - full of smokey flavour, creamy when put in mouth, crunchy when bitten. 

Salad of pink turnips & breakfast radishes, pickled beetroot, goats curd, blood sorrel, olive, pine resin, balsamico. This wasn't my entree, but I did had a taste of that tube looking thingy. It was incredible! It was like thin layer of crunchy fried biscuit/pastry (don't know what's the best word for it) cigar filled with creamy creamy goats curd. It was so good! 

Raw Chinese artichokes, Hiramasa kingfish, smoked eel, horseradish, nasturtiums, octopus, pickled kohlrabi, egg white & radish flower. Honestly, I don't know half the ingredient of this dish. So I wouldn't know what's what. I just know there were so many different ingredient that gave different texture to each bite. Didn't need to know what's what as long as everything tasted good :) 

Organic heirloom carrots, cumin, fennel & celery seeds, comte-infused curd, almonds, amaranth. This was Robin's dish. I think I tried some of his carrot, but don't remember much about it. 

This was my gentle braise of pearl oyster, sea scallop, shaved squid, lettuce hearts, tapioca scallop velvet, oyster cream, wasabi flowers. This was very very good! Scallops were big and thick and fresh and sweet! The only reaction I had when I put it in my mouth was just "mmmmm......." Had to try to eat as slow as I could so that I wouldn't finish it too quickly. The squid was so thinly shaved and so tender. The crunchy lettuce hearts had accompanied them well. 

Milk fed suffolk lamb leg poached in salted butter, slow cooked crisp lamb belly, pantelleria capers, nasturtiums, purslane, artichoke emulsion, bergamot jam. Both Robin and sis had the same dish. According to them, the meat was very very tender and but didn't really feel like goat meat. However, the smaller piece of lamb belly had real intense lamb flavour. 

Mine was the slow cooked partridge stuffed with pumpernickel, morels and ethical spanish foie gras butter, faro, hazelnuts, cinnamon, cloves, rye, white asparagus cream. The partridge meat was so tender so soft with the creamy stuffing inside. The other stuff that accompanied the meat i.e. the hazelnuts and rye and stuff felt a bit like crunchy and chewy breakfast muesli :p 

Eight texture chocolate cake featuring Arnedel Chocolate. A round piece of cake was brought to the table first. Then the waiter pour the warm chocolate ganache on the top of the cake and it made a 'crater' on the cake. Robin tried to separate the 8 things that gave the 8 textures, but he kept on counting and only managed to find 7. I didn't even bother :p All I know was it was very rich and creamy and yummy.

This was my dessert - Fresh custard apple, vanilla, warm caramelised brioche, palm blossom sugar, cream, wild thyme honey. My favourite component of this dessert was the brioche. So crispy on the outside, so soft and buttery on the inside. It was just perfect on its own. I didn't really like the other components though. I thought they had this cough syrup kind of after taste. 


Overall, the food was great! Couldn't get any better birthday dinner meal than this. However, service wise was a little disappointing. Compare to my first visit, it seemed like this time they were very short staffed. Also, at my first visit, the staff was very alert, very attentive. They would come over to ask if we needed anything with just eye contact. However this time, we waited for ages for someone to look our way so that we could get the bill. Then had to wait for ages for someone to come and take our credit card to pay for the bill. (By the way, most of the dishes that sis had weren't show here e.g. snow egg because they were either showed in my other Quay post, or Robin ordered the same dish, so I just posted 1 photo).


Price: $155 per person for 4 course dinner
Location: Overseas Passenger Terminal, 
The Rocks, Sydney 2000
Phone: (02) 9251 5600



It was very very hard to take photo there because of lighting. It was quite dim there. That's why all my photos here are very grainy. Had to dial up the ISO to take these photos. I forgot to put my watermark on these photos too. I thought better post it while I'm in the mood to write rather than wait for myself to put watermark on them which could be a couple weeks later.