Tetsuya's, Sydney

feedsforthree

Jun 11

Location: 529 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Price: $295pp tasting menu, with drinks and oysters ~$700
Website: https://www.tetsuyas.com

Located in a heritage site in the middle of Sydney's CBD, you likely would have walked past Tetsuya's inconspicuous location multiple times before. It is sandwiched between a car park and Sanctuary Hotel, but once you step inside the restaurant you are taken to a tranquil Japanese restaurant with the loveliest garden.

After stumbling upon a readily available booking for two at Tetsuyas, we jumped on the opportunity to try the degustation menu at one of Sydney's most classic and iconic fine dining restaurants.

The first item on the menu was an optional choice of pacific rock oysters served with a light soy sauce and some caviar and green onion. The sauce was reminiscent of the steamed oysters you can order at a Chinese seafood restaurant but toned down, restrained and absolutely delicious. The Pacific oysters were pretty sizeable, giving a nice chew (but perhaps not for you if you are not a huge oyster fan – they are not as creamy as the smaller Merimbula oysters). These were an additional $15 each on top of the set menu.

Entrees began with raw prawn salad topped with caviar and uni. The uni was really delicious, none of the bitterness and raw ocean taste you might get if the uni is slightly off season, but perfectly creamy. The prawns were very fresh and went well with the hints of salty caviar however the rich flavours all together definitely did not allow any one ingredient to shine through. Overall I found this the weakest dish of the night despite the expensive ingredients.

It was a fairly seafood dominated menu tonight (the menu is ever-changing) with the second entrée being seared scallops, a salty crunchy seaweed mixture on top and a tomato consume. The consume was definitely the highlight of the dish, a light umami flavour without any hint of tomato at all. The scallops overall were perfectly cooked but otherwise a nice but unmemorable dish.

The star of the show was next, a dish (to quote our waiter) more recognisable than the chef himself' and the signature dish for Tetsuyas for over 20 years. Tasmanian ocean trout with a light salad of apple. It was a beautifully executed dish, the trout was cooked right to the edge of being over (retaining its deep rich pink colour) and so soft you could cut it with a spoon and nearly no pressure. It was a lovely dish, served with a crumbed seaweed on top. Balanced well with the salad and roe, it definitely needed something acidic to balance out.

Here I also attach the salad served with the ocean trout. It also did well to break up the ocean trout dish and was very well seasoned.

Next we were served some bread, which was truly the unsung hero of the meal. The seaweed croissants were delicious, buttery, flakey and the hints of salty seaweed definitely brought it to the next level, especially for someone who isn't a huge sweet tooth. The sourdough was delicious and who can complain about truffled, whipped butter?

Onto the mains for the night, we were first served a beautifully cooked Murray cod with crispy skin sitting on a bed of grains. The deep fried nettle on top added a welcome bitterness to cut through the dish. Probably the weakest main, depending on if you love the grains served below the fish or not.

Next was the roasted marron with a miso and vanilla sauce. Perfectly cooked, sat back in its shell for presentation purposes and lathered in a delicious sauce – what could go wrong about those building blocks? The head was roasted and charred in a way that added an extra smoky flavour when eating the meat out of the head. Definitely a highlight main in terms of the flavour the sauce packed, simple flavours that just work well.

To finish off the mains we had A5 wagyu served with chestnut mushrooms and a braised daikon. The meat was delicious, so fatty it melted in our mouths. The daikon was unique and interesting – a good palette cleanser after the richness of the meat.

The desserts had a running theme of citrus throughout both, with a calamansi (Phillipino lime/lemon) sorbet served on a lemon myrtle and fennel oil/infusion. The lemon myrtle infusion was very strong. The second dessert was definitely my favourite of the two – nashi pear sorbet with a yuzu chocolate coated cake and tempered white chocolate on top. Delicious.

The petite fours were nothing to write home about, but the cake you are served on birthday occasions was absolutely delicious and well worth it. Covered in a silky dark chocolate with a macadamia centre, it was so good. Highly recommend being able to try this.

Melissa: 4/5 Overall, Tetsuya met expectations. For the price of its set menu I expected no less than perfectly executed dishes with exotic and expensive ingredients and impeccable service.

The restaurant is very low key and tranquil and whilst every dish was a ranged from excellent to perfect, it was not as enjoyable for me as an overall experience compared to other fine dining restaurants. Although a highly enjoyable and delicious meal, Tetsuya is more of a traditional fine dining restaurant in contrast to the places I prefer where you can watch the food being cooked in front of you and being served directly by the chef (e.g. Saint Peter or other omakase restaurants). With the restaurant possibly closing down in August (I may have overheard their lease is now extended until 2024), it is definitely still up there on the list of must try fine dining in Sydney.

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