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At $185 for a fixed price 10 course menu with no a la carte option, Momofuku Seiobo is special occasion dining.

The food is described as inspired by the flavours of the Caribbean and celebrating the best Australian produce. They don’t include even a sample menu on the website so you are taking the food somewhat on trust, although they do ask you to specify any dietary requirements and are happy to make menu modifications to suit.

On the night we dined the restaurant was fairly full even though it was a Monday, the dead zone of Sydney dining and even more surprising given there is no signage at the front of the restaurant, making it very difficult to find. The majority of the diners appeared to be tourists where either staying at the Star or had been visiting the casino.

The website indicates you need to allow 2 1/2 hours for the meal, although on the night we were there the courses arrived with little or no break in between and so it was much closer to 1 1/2 hours.

The menu leans very heavily to vegetarian and seafood, with only one of the courses out of the 10 containing meat. A lot of the dishes incorporated quite strong seafood flavours such as mullet roe, xo sauce and caviar so you really need to be a big seafood fan to enjoy it.

The food is best described as experimental. And as is the case with experiments, some work and some don’t. The first course was plantain with garlic and chicharrones (fried pork rinds) which was served in a mortar and pestle with instructions that we needed to crush the ingredients ourselves. A bit too gimmicky for me for a fine dining restaurant and even my friend who is a huge fan of garlic found the garlic overwhelming.

In some cases the flavour of the sauces completely overwhelmed the main ingredient. This was particularly the case with the scallop with coconut and allspice. If the waitress hadn’t told us there was scallop in the dish we would never have guessed as it was finely chopped and completely overwhelmed by the coconut. Both my friend and I felt the dish would have actually been better if it was a plain grilled scallop without the sauce.

The star of the night was the one beef dish so it was a shame there weren’t more meat based dishes. The marron and coconut bakes was a close second, although I wasn’t a huge fan of the chef bringing the live marron to our table to ïntroduce” us to what we’d be eating later. I’m happy to accept the seafood is fresh, you don’t need to prove it to me.

Because there wasn’t a menu when each dish was served we received a very detailed explanation of all the ingredients in the dish. Ten points for the enthusiasm with which the explanations were given, but the process felt a little too contrived, especially as almost every dish was served by a different person.

They seemed so focused on describing the food they forgot the basics of service which meant we were regularly left with empty wine or water glasses.

The menu concludes with 3 decadent dessert courses so make sure you save some room. Credit goes to the chef making pumpkin seem at home in a dessert.

Overall it’s the kind of restaurant that you visit once for the experience, but there other restaurants in Sydney such as Nel restaurant ( https://nelrestaurant.com.au/ ) which do a better degustation menu.

The Star
80 Pyrmont Street Sydney

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I normally stay away from hotel restaurants as I think they are strictly for people staying there who don’t have the time or inclination to venture outside. So how did I end up at Silverster’s? By accident.

I received an email from Good Living about an upcoming wine dinner which included a great sounding menu and so I signed up for it without really focusing on where the restaurant was. Although in my defence, they only showed a street address for the restaurant and studiously avoided mentioning it was in the Marriott. I suspect this means I’m not the only person who avoids hotel restaurants.

After eating at Silvester’s I may have to rethink my attitude to hotel food as the food was wonderful. So much effort was put into the presentation of the food and it was so colourful you couldn’t help but want to eat it.

The first dish was the Yellow Fin Tuna you see at the start of this post. The Yuzu Kosho dressing gave the tuna a great chilli citrus kick and the rice paper crisp added some nice crunch.

Next course was Spanner Crab. Cudos to the chef who had the skill and patience to cut enough wafer thin slices of avocado to make more than 100 serves off this dish. The avocado and the grapefruit perfectly paired with the Spanner crab filling.

Following the seafood theme, our next course was Glacier 51 Toothfish. I will admit not only had I never tried this fish before but I had to google it to work out where it came from (if you’re also curious it’s the sub-Antartic, about 4,000 kms from mainland Australia).

When I read this fish lives 2,000 kms below sea level I was expecting flesh somewhat like swordfish or tuna (perhaps not logical since these don’t live in the depths but my thinking was surely it would have to have hardy flesh to survive that low). Again, I was very pleasantly surprised.

The company who farms the fish has done a better job than I ever could of describing it so I’m going to borrow their words: “projecting waygu-like characteristics with a complex yet delicate mouth feel that coats the palate appealingly, making it a pleasure to eat. Its snow-white flesh and broad scalloping flakes display a clean and sweet flavour and the elegant balance of flavour and texture in Glacier 51 Toothfish provides a culinary versatility rarely found in fish fillets.”

Just when I thought I couldn’t fit in any more food they brought out the Pinnacle Beef Short Rib with smoked miso glaze. While the beef was melting in your mouth tender it was also very rich and after all the food that we’d already eaten, even my partner who wasn’t met a protein yet he doesn’t love was struggling. We were too full to really do this course justice.

Our last course was a refreshingly light Blood Orange Sorbet. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of it, because somehow despite being so hideously full we both found the room to eat all of it before I remembered to take one.

Overall a great experience. Loads of very good food, probably more than we needed and at $129 each including matching wines incredibly good value.

This may well be the hotel restaurant that changes your mind about hotel restaurants.

https://silvesters.com.au/
Bulletin Place, Sydney