All The Hats I've Eaten - 2016

The 2017 SMH Good Food Guide was released back in October.

When the previous guide was released, my personal tally was 20 Sydney hatted restaurants.

Now it is... 


...20 Sydney hatted restaurants.

I went to four new places - which I don't think is a bad effort when you have three small children. However, two venues on my original list closed and two more lost their hats.

Therefore, I am fine dining neutral for 2016.


The 16 still-hatted restaurants I visited prior to 2016 are:

Three Hats: The Bridge Room, Quay

Two Hats: Aria, Bentley Restaurant & Bar, Guillaume, Icebergs Dining Room & Bar, Momofuku Seiobo, Monopole, Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spirce Temple, Tetsuya's

One Hat: The Apollo, The Bathers' Pavillion, Billy Kwong, Bistrode CBD, Kepos Street Kitchen

You can read a few words on each of them HERE.


Here are the four new entries, plus as a bonus, a review of my one regional hat experience!

AUTOMATA (two hats)
I thought this place was au-to-ma-ta, but it turns out you say it au-tom-et-a.

I went there for my birthday and was very impressed. It was great food and better value - the five-course tasting leaves you with change from $100. The highlight was a vegetarian course that was possibly the best vegetarian dish I've ever eaten... mostly because it tasted meaty. I'm not a very good vegetarian.

I respect the food chain too much.

I eat everything, but I also have it from multiple sources that they are extremely accommodating with dietary requirements too.

Service was in the modern fine dining style, where they go for relaxed and casual yet attentive. It can often be hit and miss, but in this instance was mostly hit. The only issue I had was the drinks. Selecting wine takes effort, so I don't mind jumping at a wine pairing. The problem is the menu had a beverage pairing. So you get wine. But also beer, sake and whatever else the sommelier decides on to push the boundaries. To his credit, it mostly worked, but I'd rather just drink wine.

Overall, I will put this on my high rotation list, which given my current family situation means I will return in about four years.


FELIX (one hat)
Felix is part of the Merivale empire of pubs, bars and restaurants.

It is a French bistro in concept. In reality, the food feels more like a Mod-Oz take on a few obvious French classics, rather than a true French bistro. And the service has a similar vibe - a bunch of people primarily acting at being French rather than being genuine bistro style. 

It's typical Merivale where so much effort is placed into all the staff looking like models and the fit-out looking like a pristine re-creation of whatever theme Justin Hemmes has taken on now, yet it just seems a bit superficial.

So Felix was good, but not good enough that I want to go back. 

Of course, one day Hemmes will officially own everything in Sydney and I'll have no choice but to frequent all his venues all the time, or be sent to the Merivale Re-Education Centre.


GLASS BRASSERIE (one hat)
I went there on a Tuesday night, using an online voucher received as a gift. I think almost everyone there was also using a voucher. Some of them may have never been to a restaurant without a voucher before.

I remember thinking, I'm pretty sure Luke Mangan isn't in the kitchen tonight, as I selected my two courses from the voucher-approved options of the cheapest things on the menu, while drinking my complimentary glass of house white.

It was nice but it's virtually impossible to gauge a restaurant from this kind of experience.


HARTSYARD (one hat)
The restaurant that arguably started the conversion of Enmore Road from the forgotten strip off Newtown to the hottest food street in Sydney.

Hartsyard is modern fine dining. Lower your service expectations slightly, expect it to be a bit loud, and enjoy sharing the American-inspired dude food on offer.

Some dishes missed the mark, but they do serve one of the best non-Korean versions of fried chicken in Sydney. It's up there with the hot n' spicy at KFC on the corner of George and Bathurst Streets.


Bonus Entry:
RICK STEIN AT BANNISTERS (one regional hat)
I went there about five years ago as part of a weekend down the coast with a few people.

The best part was the oysters. They did a great job sourcing a variety of oysters, shucking them, and serving them chilled on a platter covered in rock salt. 

The worst part was everything else.

Bannisters should be an embarrassment to Rick Stein. It has to be the most terrible thing the highly successful celebrity chef has ever done. It's worse than all those extramarital affairs and leaving his wife and business partner of decades for a young mistress. It's worse than the time I saw him make a fish pie on TV where the fish heads were sticking out of the pastry.

The trouble started with triple cooked chips that were a soggy mess and needed to be returned to the kitchen.

The sommelier smelt - I can't remember whether it was alcohol, cigarettes, or both - and even worse, he had no fucking idea. He was the kind of sommelier who, when asked a fairly standard question about the wine, would turn the bottle around so you can read the back of the label. This is also how it was discovered he'd bought out the wrong bottle of wine.

Then came a shard of plastic, chipped off a tupperware-style container, in one persons main meal, which is not only off-putting but extremely dangerous.

And on top of this, they were running at the very top end of Sydney à la carte prices at the time.

In retrospect we probably should've done a runner. Instead we got the plastic meal and the chips taken off the bill only.

It is easily the worst fine dining experience of my life. I still get angry when I hear about people going there.