Restaurant Arras

To celebrate SH's birthday this year, we decided on dining at Restaurant Arras. The restaurant relocated to the old Becasse site on Clarence street in the city in late 2011.

I liked what was done to the restaurant, there was a lightness and brightness to the room which was a stark contrast to the heavy wood interior that was of the then Becasse.

Arras is well known for its range of interesting petit fours and I really wanted to see them and try them out. But the petit fours are only included in their degustation menu. We looked at the menu options and decided to go for the 3 course menu instead. But when we were ordering we asked if we could have the petit fours at coffee time and they kindly said yes!

Service started with canapés of sweet corn and potato and house cured beef with paprika. The sweetness of the corn was intended to offset the saltiness of the cured beef. The beef reminded me of the textures and flavours of beef jerky. I definitely liked the sweet corn and potato, I could have had more of it. The canapé was presented in a glass with delicate edible flowers. Lovely!

Canapes

The amuse bouche was Tuna la nicoise, it was light and refreshing, very summery.

Amuse bouche

My first course was quail with fried bread and blood plum. SH had the roast skate with parsnip, raisins, capers and butter. We both enjoyed our dishes. I was fascinated with the crunchy tendrils on my dish.

Quail with blood plum

Roast skate with parsnip

The second course was roast breast duck with cherries, cabbage, caramelised onions. There were hazelnuts in the dish which provided the required crunchy texture. The interesting texture that I loved was the moghrabieh, lovely pearl balls of Lebanese couscous.

Lamb rump with lots of green

Roast duck with cherries

SH had the lamb rump with a veritable garden of green. It was visually lovely. I could see mashed peas, SH mentioned there was eggplant and just the tonality of the green on this dish was very eye catching. In addition, she thoroughly enjoyed the lamb.

Pre dessert was chocolate mint ice cream with hazelnut and strawberries. The mint flavour of the ice cream was quite strong and to me, it indicated it was a natural mint flavour from a house made ice cream using natural ingredients. Nice!

Chocolate mint ice cream

We both chose not overly sweet desserts. I had the pumpkin ice cream with eggy bread, carrots and tomato. I know... not very sweet sounding is it? But I did enjoy it and liked how different it was to what a normal dessert would be. SH had the rhubarb, rhubarb and rhubarb for dessert.

Pumpkin ice cream dessert

Rhubarb, rhubarb and rhubarb

One thing that we noticed was the colour tone for each dish. There was the garden of green, the plum theme, the cherry theme, the pumpkin yellow theme and the rhubarb theme.

We then had our coffee and tea and out came the very large platter of petit fours. I was so surprised and delighted by the array and the other diners looked at our table in fascination at what was being presented. They must have thought we were having the whole platter. Not at all!! Thank goodness! I chose 5 types and SH who does not have a sweet tooth, decided to have only 2 types.

Petit fours galore!

I loved the variety of the petit fours, there was raspberry ice cream in a cone, fruit jellies, peanut crunch, marshmallow coated with chocolate cake pops and slivers of almonds. Delicious! Sweet tooth heaven!

My selection plus one of SH's

The service was very good, the food was very good and the ambience was very relaxed (note that I used 'very' 3 times in the one sentence). I thoroughly enjoyed myself and so did SH. The best test to any meal is the self posed question of 'would I come back'? Without a doubt 'Yes'.

 

Restaurant Arras
204 Clarence Street
Sydney
NSW 2000
Tel: +61 2 9283 1922
Website: restaurant-arras.com.au

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad