13-course Degustation at Tetsuya's

Rumour has it that the waiting list at Tetsuya’s is up to six months. So lady luck was definitely on our side when we managed to secure a table merely a week before our 10th anniversary lunch.

Oh, in case you are wondering, I suggested lunch instead of dinner because, well, there’s more time for the digestive system to work through thirteen courses. It turned out that Mr foodwink did not need the additional time, but more on that later.

Back to one of the top restaurants in the world. After starting off with some French champagne, thirteen dishes soon marched from the kitchen. One by one they came, each impeccably prepared and plated:
1. Soup of chestnut mushroom & cepe with shaved mushrooms
2. Smoked ocean trout & aruga caviar
3. Leek & crab custard
4. Marinated crystal bay prawns with soy caramel
5. Confit of petuna tasmanian ocean trout with konbu, apple, daikon & wasabi seasonal green salad
6. Terrine of Queensland spanner crab with avocado
7. Grilled fillet of barramundi with braised baby fennel
8. Breast of duck with beetroot treviso & black pepperberry
9. Seared fillet of veal with wasabi butter
10. Cannellini beans with mascapone
11. Green apple sorbet with sauternes jelly and caramelised apple with calvados & vanilla ice cream
12. Lemon scented floating island with vanilla bean anglaise
13. Chocolate ganache with green tea & red beans
14. Coffee & petit four

One of our favourite courses was no 6 – the terrine of spanner crab was silky and the avocado cream underneath highlighted the sweetness of the crab like a best supporting actor. While waiting for the next course, my thoughts momentarily went out to the kichenhands who diligently extracted enough crab meat for our terrines.

Tetsuya’s signature dish was good, but the let down for us was the salty konbu on top. However, there’s no doubt that the ocean trout was perfectly confited (in olive oil and grapeseed oil at low heat) and the interplay between the ocean trout and the shredded daikon and apple was meticulously calculated.

Desserts came 11 courses later, all three of them being some of the best that I’ve had (hello Zumbo). The meal drew to a perfect close with the chocolate ganache, my favourite dessert of the three. Okay, I just love anything with green tea and red bean.

So, you may want to know: at $195 a pop, is it worth it? What I find amazing is Mr Wakuda’s ability to hit that perfect balance between textures, flavours and colours like a French artisan. Perhaps the meal would have been perfect had there been more surprises. Mr foodwink reminded me that perhaps we had set our expectations too high. I relunctantly concurred.

Oh, back to the talk on digestive system. The combination of French champagne with 13 courses proved too rich for Mr foodwink. He threw up THE ENTIRE MEAL after we left Tetsuya’s. I did feel bad for the poor chap, but boy, our 10th anniversary was definitely memorable.

TETSUYA’S RESTAURANT
529 Kent Street
Sydney NSW 2000
+61 2 9267 2900