BEST NEW RESTAURANT
THE OUTSTANDING NEW OPENING IN SYDNEY THIS YEAR
BENNELONG
SYDNEY
This has been a year of brilliant new openings, only five of which we’ve listed here. But Bennelong did something that no one else could, or did. It brought the Opera House back to the people. Peter Gilmore and the Fink Group are responsible for this massive shift in the Opera House’s history. True, they run Quay across the water, but Bennelong doesn’t need to be treated like a special-occasion-only restaurant. In fact, there are three doable options here: the restaurant for pre-theatre (starting from $80) or à la carte; the Cured and Cultured section where you can eat light or lots, depending on your mood; and the bar area where you can pop in for a cocktail or snack if you wish. We love the yabbies at the Cured and Cultured bar, sitting in their shells upon a bed of saltbush. Place each crunchy morsel upon a buttery-crumbed buckwheat pikelet, swipe on a lick of sweet, deeply fragrant lemon jam and another of cool, cultured cream, fold up and eat. Order unusually rather than safely, because if there is one thing executive chef Gilmore and chef de cuisine Rob Cockerill know how to do, it’s make the most of a humble ingredient. Take the slow-cooked pumpkin starter in the restaurant: it’s velvety sweet and deeply grassy. Toasted pepitas and flax seeds add crunch; the slightly salty cream offers seasoning and freshness; and the shaved seasonal Manjimup truffle provides the gentle perfume of the earth. Do not leave without trying the lamington, available on all three menus. It’s like something out of a Salvador Dalí painting, arriving at the table smoking from liquid nitrogen. It’s constructed from sour cherry ice cream, a wisp of sponge and a garnish of chocolate ganache, all surrounded by shavings of what look like fresh coconut but are in fact shards of coconut gelato, which melt on your tongue like snowflakes. This is the food that our iconic building deserves. Like the house itself, it is splendid, breathtakingly beautiful and deeply idiosyncratic. And it’s relatively affordable. That’s worth celebrating. Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point, Sydney 2000. 02 9240 8000. www.bennelong.com.au. Lunch Fri-Sun noon-2pm; dinner daily 6.3010pm; Pre-theatre daily 5.30, 6pm sittings; Bar and Cured and Cultured counter daily 5.30pm-late.