Bentley Restaurant & Bar (Sydney CBD)

Bentley used to be located in Surry Hills but earlier this year relocated to the business part of town. It is now located on the ground floor of the Radisson Blue hotel. It made it a lot easier for me now that Bentley is in town (literally) to have an early birthday dinner with my dear friend SH.

SH is, I must say, a wine buff and for special meals she tends to frequent restaurants that have a good wine list. Bentley was earmarked by her because they have a good sommelier and have a reputation of having a good repertoire of wine. Having recently won the NSW Wine List of the year, expectations were high!

I found the interior to be quite interesting, it was very modern in look and feel. And it was quite dark. Sigh! :(

One of the first things SH does is to scrutinise the wine list to decide what she wants.

When the young lady attending our table asked for her choice of wine, there seemed to be a slight miscommunication and no matter how many times SH pronounced the label, the young lady failed to understand her. You can imagine how frustrated SH was starting to become. She had to resort to opening the wine list to show the actual label name and vintage she wanted.

To make matters worse, when the wine was being poured, there was no showing of the bottle to her nor was there even a chance to taste the wine before the glass was filled. And on top of that they did not even provide the right wine glass for the pinot noir! Poor SH was quite offended with the whole process and I think that set off a rather negative view of the service at Bentley.

But let's talk about the food. :)

We started with a complimentary Smoked eel and mash crisp. I thought it was going to be a warm bite but surprisingly when I bit into it, the filling was cold but the pastry was crunchy. Very interesting contrasting texture of cold and crunchy.

Entree of Alpine salmon, malt, mandarin, and black sausage crumbs. SH was thoroughly enjoying this dish. The verdict was delicious!

Entree of Quail, smoked celery, and white soy dressing. I was enjoying how perfectly cooked the quail was. The meat was tender, and had a nice touch of pink. The texture of the celery shaved lengthwise was different and this provided the much needed crunch.

Main of Kurobata pork, macadamia milk, wattle crumbs, and rhubarb. I liked that there were elements of our native greens being used in this dish. SH couldn't help but enjoy the dish. She mentioned that the flavours and textures made it a delicious dish.

Main of Moreton Bay Bugs, Snapper and Shellfish broth. This was my plate and I thoroughly enjoyed this dish. Loved the succulent Moreton bay bugs. But the surprise of the dish was the piece of black brioche sitting to the side. It turned out to be squid ink brioche with dollops of mussel emulsion on top. It was recommended by the waiter I soaked the brioche in the broth and and the flavour would stand out. Boy, was he right!! I absolutely loved the brioche, it was smokey yet I could taste elements of the mussel. The brioche brought out amazing flavours to what would have been a standard shellfish broth. Loved it!

We also ordered a side dish of Sugar snaps, zucchini, asparagus and pine nuts.

Dessert time came and I chose the sweet while SH went for the cheese.

Violet ice cream, coca honeycomb and blueberry. It was so pretty to look at and I gobbled it all up in minutes. The blueberries definitely brought the dish together. And I loved the violet sticks!

SH had the Ossau Iraty, a semi hard sheep's milk from France.

Was the food good? YES! Chef Brent Savage did not disappointed us with the quality of the food, that's for sure! But the whole experience was slightly let down by the wine incident and left SH feeling a tad disappointed. I am however surprised that a restaurant of such calibre did not have their sommelier attend to most tables during the wine selection. Things could have turned out much differently if that had been the case.


Bentley Restaurant & Bar
27 O'Connell Street
Sydney
NSW 2000
Website: www.thebentley.com.au/

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