Gastronomic heaven - Degustation at Marque (1/7/06)

It was good! It was sooo good! Stupid people at eatability do NOT know what they are talking about!! GO do the degustation at Marque!!

Ok, you'll have to excuse this raving post, because I am going to rave. But it was soooo good!

As I mentioned last post, I was a little bit worried when I read the reviews on eatability - it's rated an average of 6.9, which is really crap considering it's a 3 hat restaurant. Anyway, after a short wrestle for parking (it's on Crown Street in Surry Hills sandwiched between Bills on one side and Billy Kwong on the other...all these celebrity chefs!) we arrived at the restaurant which was small and fairly dimly lit. But it was SMALL. Wouldn't have been more than 50 seats really. I concur with what was said by some reviewers about how the tables are kind of close together - I mean, the table of 2 next to us was so close to the table of 2 next to them that they struck up conversation with them over dessert. And people going past me DID bump my chair a few times. And the room did get pretty noisy once it was full. But these gripes may be overlooked when compared with the quality of the food.

(I'm going to go through every dish. Every dish is worth talking about!)
1. Appetiser: Chaud-froid egg with homemade grissini - if I'm not mistaken, this dish is currently on the front of the 2006 SMH Good Food Guide? But it's basically a little soft egg sitting in its shell with the top cut off. Apparently the idea is that the whites on top (which are foamy - like the consistency of cappucino foam except stiffer) are cool, and the yolk down the bottom is warm (hence "chaud-froid"). The taste was mildly sweet, mildly tangy from the use of sherry vinegar (NOT that our waitress explained this however. More on that later.) and savoury, with satisfying crunch from the grissini.

2. Almond Jelly with Blue Swimmer Crab, Almond Gazpacho, Sweet-Corn Custard, Caviar and Popcorn Powder - it's a tough call, but this was my favourite dish of the night. The almond jelly was less like "jelly" and more like a floating island (poached/steamed meringue - but softer). A peak shaped mound of this was placed on top a dollop of caviar and quite a generous amount of crab. The gazpacho and the custard were sprinkled around the plate, and the top of the jelly was dusted with the popcorn powder (how COOL is that...who would have thought of grinding up popcorn and using it as a seasoning??) All in all, the mild sweetness of the almond jelly and the custard/gazpacho really complimented the sweetness of the crab, with the popcorn powder giving an aromatic nuttiness and the saltiness of the caviar cutting through it all. A triumph, I say!

3. "Risotto" of Calamari with Yamba Prawn and Lobster Foam - that was all our waitress announced when the dish hit our tables, and she didn't do the little finger movements to indicate inverted commas either. So when we couldn't see rice immediately, we were sort of confused. But we found what we thought was rice underneath a sheet of prawn - a whole prawn had been flattened into a disc-shaped sheet. No idea how they did this, but the texture of the prawn was still fresh and crisp, as opposed to bashed up and bitsy like you might expect a prawn which had been hammered into a sheet to be like. The mound of risotto was accompanied by the orange lobster foam, which was basically a foamy lobster bisque. The taste was rich, and I think the foam added texture and character to the dish (as opposed to being a token use of foam as some places are wont to do these days, if you believe the press). At the first bite of the risotto though, it was clear that it wasn't actually rice, but calamari cut up into little rice sized chunks! Very impressive, and very yummy =).

4. Potato Mille-Feuille with Smoked Bonito, Olive Truffles and Sesame Salt - this was basically a few fairly thick sashimi-style slices of smoked bonito with a sprinkling of seaweed and the olive truffles (I have no idea why, on the website menu, truffles is in inverted commas. Does that mean they weren't truffles? No help from our waitress! Oh well. They tasted like truffles to me!), sandwiched between 2 thin slices of crisp potato. NO idea how they got the potato like that...the texture was like glass, and it was transparent like glass as well. The sandwich arrived with a small pile of sesame salt next to it, and we were advised to take the top layer off the sandwich, sprinkle on the salt, then put it back together and take it up in our hands and eat it like a sandwich. So that's what we did...it was amazing! The potato layers gave an amazing crunch with each bite, contrasting with the soft smoky bonito. The sesame salt gave an added subtlety to the bonito. This was bf's fave of the night.

5. Warm Salad of Mixed Mushrooms with Mushroom Jelly and Truffle - A mixed saute of mushrooms with a cube of mushroom jelly topped with a shaving of truffle (which the waitress neglected to tell us about...I mean, isn't having a shaving of fresh WA truffle on top of a rather simple dish worth trumpetting? I think she forgot her dish script because she was a lot better later on, after she revised maybe??). The mushrooms were tasty, and the mushroom jelly was set with agar, and was an intense mushroomy flavour. I'm not really a truffle glutton, but you probably can't really go wrong with a mushroom/truffle combination since the flavours are similar.

6. Rabbit with Wakame and Cashews - 3 pieces of different sections of rabbit with the wakame (seaweed) and cooked cashews with a buttery sauce. The rabbit was beautifully tender, and the flavours of the seaweed and the sauce and cashews were balanced and harmonised. There was probably more to this dish, but it was overshadowed by the next dish....

7. Roasted Pigeon with Savoury Chocolate Tart and Parsnips 3 ways - Bf described the roasted pigeon as the best piece of meat he'd ever had in his life. The dish had 2 pieces of rare roasted pigeon which was juicy and tender, and a confit leg (which was probably superfluous but a nice thought). The chocolate tart was a slab of flaky chocolate flavoured pastry. The parsnips 3 ways were in a smooth and creamy mash, a roasted whole baby pasnip and little pearls of parsnip sauteed. The chocolate tart perfectly complimented the earthiness of the pigeon, and the sweetness of the parsnips really lifted the whole thing. Absolutely lovely!

8. Sauternes Custard - that's all the waiter said when he dropped 2 little bowls of custard on our table. (Some how I'm thinking the wait staff didn't really take us seriously as diners. Oh well!) But from eavesdropping on what waiters said on the other tables, the custard was made with dessert wine and topped with caramel. Anyway, that stuff was rich. The custard was satiny and rich with the alcohol - like creme brulee without the brulee bit, and the caramel was incredibly sweet but not disgustingly so. It really worked, but would probably have enjoyed coffee with it.

9. Cocoa Vermicelli with Yogurt Sorbet and Candied Cumquats - any other place, if they had been making this dessert, would perhaps have been satisfied with just having a nest made out of straight dark chocolate stands, but at Marque, the cocoa vermicelli was just that - slurpable chocolate noodles, which were then twisted into a little nest, perfectly balanced with the tangy yogurt sorbet, and the sweet and citrusy cumquats.

So yeah! If the night had ended there, it would have been utterly perfect. However, I'm going to gripe over the mix-up that led to us waiting for about 45 minutes for coffee and petit fours (of salty caramel chocolates [not at all as bad as it sounds - tasted like butterscotch] and ruby orange jellies [ruby orange is apparently a new fruit- a cross between a ruby red grapefruit and a blood orange]). I asked for a glass of warm water part way through the meal to soothe a coughing fit, and it arrived in a coffee cup with a little tea pot. So when it came time for coffee, the wait staff saw my tea pot and assumed we had been served, so we ended up having to remind them, having waited 40 minutes, and a further 10 minutes for the coffees to appear.

Gripes also over the patchy wait staff descriptions. As I have alluded to, it seemed like our waitress had forgotten her script, because when we heard other waiters giving their descriptions of the dishes, they were a lot more descriptive. Either that, or she didn't really take us seriously as diners, which would have been awfully presumptuous and rude if that was the case. I think if you're going to NOT have a menu, then the description a waiter gives of a dish becomes even more important, so bah.

BUT, like I said at the beginning of this essay (and props to you if you made it this far!), the gripes can be overlooked due to the quality of the food. And the value for money, at $125 for the degustation, is fabulous. I mean, when you get to some of the other 3 hat restaurants (Tetsuya's, Claude's), you're paying $175. From what I remember of Tetsuya's anyway...I preferred Marque. I think Mark Best's food is more accessible. And while there may not be the extravagant use of seafood, truffles, foie gras or other luxury ingredients, HOW Marque is cooking their ingredients is stunning.

I will be back!