It's been the longest of times that I have wanted to dine at Tetsuya's but never got the chance till my recent trip to Sydney. Initially, I wanted to make a dinner reservation but it was fully booked, luckily enough, they had an opening for lunch which I happily snapped up! :) Tetsuya's is no stranger to controversy; losing its third chef's hat in 2011 and unable to regain it's "glory" since. That may be the case but it didn't stop me from wanting to visit the place. According to John Lethlean's article in 2013, "risk is not on the menu", I understand why some people may think that but to an extent, I think "if the man himself has perfected what he has created, why mess with it?". My dining experience at Tetsuya's was nothing short of amazing, the food was delicious and the service was impeccable. There are so many dishes from their degustation menu that I would gladly go back for more :)
"You are the bread to my butter and the breath to my life" - Julia Child
How can one say no to bread and butter, especially if it's truffle butter? I am not sure how many times I divided up the piece of bread but it was enough to savour the truffle butter to my satisfaction.
As Julie from "Julie and Julia" says... "every time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's this?' the answer is always going to be butter". Exactly.
The oysters were great but that dressing, my goodness, I would have happily bottoms up a few shots of that. The ginger and rice wine vinegar dressing was absolutely delicious, flavours were perfectly balanced.
One of my favourite seafood would have to be scampi, I absolutely love the texture of it. For me, scampi tastes like a cross between lobster and prawn. Whenever I am up in Sydney, I always make sure that I drop by the Sydney Fish Market for my fill of scampi sashimi. The thanks definitely goes out to my heng dai, Tubby for popping my scampi cherry...my life has never been the same since.
Tetsuya's signature dish is nothing short of amazing. A very simple looking dish but to me, it was perfection on a plate. The texture of the ocean trout was just perfect, it was firm and not too fatty that you can really taste the textures of the fish. The burst of flavour that you get from the konbu was "OH WOW", everything on the plate worked well.
How good does that lamb backstrap look? It tasted even better in my mouth.
When the waiter placed this dessert in front of me, the first thought that entered my head was "basil soup for dessert? will this work?". Needless to say, I was proven wrong. It was definitely a surprise that the flavours worked so well together and I absolutely loved the crunchiness of the apple granita.
Yes, some can argue that it's just a chocolate cake but the attention to detail and the perfect chocolate coating on the outside...it's just so pretty and oh so delicious. If they were feeling generous and wanted to give me another one of these, I would happily devour it with no questions asked. Last but not least, we finished our meals off with the petits fours :)
To sum up my dining experience at Tetsuya's, it was simplicity at it's best and I enjoyed every minute of it.