About Me

Food is one of my many joys in life. It is a common bond I share among my friends and family. Combining food and travel makes it all the more interesting. I enjoy going out for a good meal with friends and family. The array of various cuisines and our fantastic array of produce really makes Sydney such a great city to live in. Blogging is my hobby and my posts on restaurant meals I have had are paid for and not gratis. Any gratis provided to me will always be stated beforehand.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Sepia Restaurant

I have wanted to go to Sepia ever since it opened in 2009. I finally got the chance to do so on Saturday. With anticipation comes high expectations so I was a little worried I would be disappointed when I finally had my meal.

I am glad to say that I was not disappointed at all. Sepia is a good restaurant and I can see why Martin Benn won Chef of the year in the latter half of last year for the year 2011.

Saturday dinners at Sepia are degustation based menus. It was clearly stated on their website. I love trying out degustation as it allows a diner to have a sampling of the variety of dishes the chef wants to highlight but in smaller servings.

Bearing in mind that it was degustation I did not have a menu in front of me so I have struggled a little in remembering all the highlighted ingredients that was described by the waiter for each serving.

There were four seafood based dishes, two red meat based dishes and two desserts.

Seafood dishes: Sea scallop with jamon infused jus (a starter), Yellowfin tuna tartare with leek custard, alfalfa sprouts and roasted beans, Queensland prawn with creme fraiche and served with sliced daikon, and Buckwheat risotto served with Queensland spanner crab and topped with seafood essence. The final seafood dish was Hiramasa Kingfish (sorry I can't remember the ingredients served with the dish - unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the dish). My apologies for the poor quality of the photos - it was quite dark in the restaurant and I did refrain from using the flash.

Sea scallop

Tuna tartare - fantastic textures and flavours


Queensland prawn with daikon - hard to see as it was on a black plate

Buckwheat risotto and spanner crab

Red meat: Venison cooked with beetroot and chocolate and Black Angus beef with truffle based jus.


Venison with beetroot and chocolate - very very nice!

Black Angus beef with black truffle - nice!

Desserts: Blood orange granita with blood orange jelly and crumble, and Chocolate Forest with beetroot sorbet.

Blood orange dessert

Chocolate forest


Verdict: The plating was excellent, overall food flavours and textures were excellent. My highlights were the tuna tartare (fantastic flavour combined with very interesting textures of crunchy and smooth tuna tartare with leek custard. Brilliant!). The venison was delightful and perfectly cooked. I could never have imagined combining venison with beetroot and chocolate. What a combination, an absolutely smashing dish. The black angus beef was also perfectly cooked and I could have had another plate of it.

I loved the blood orange dessert, two more servings please! The chocolate forest was interesting. It definitely had the texture of pine and wood but it reminded my friend SH too much of a bircher muesli texture. But I didn't mind it and I finished it all up!

The service was excellent and the sommelier was good and even suggested a very nice Italian red to SH (who is a wine connoiseur by the way).

We both enjoyed our meal. SH had been here before but only for lunch so the lunch crowd was slightly different to the dinner crowd. We were a little surprised to see a table of 6 where there were 2 little girls dining on a degustation menu. Knowing that Saturday dinner is always degustation only, I did wonder why the family still decided to have the meal with the two girls (under 5 years old) at Sepia. What a shame to see a dessert of chocolate forrest left completely untouched by one of the girls as the family left the restaurant. I am sure the two girls would have found it hard to appreciate the food they were served.

Normally I do not put in a rating for any of the restaurants that I have frequented but since this is a 2 hatted restaurant, I thought why not!
Food: 9/10
Service: 9/10
Ambiance: 7/10 (it was a little noisy)

Sepia Restaurant
201 Sussex Street
Darling Park
Sydney
NSW 2000
Australia
Website: http://www.sepiarestaurant.com.au/

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