Sydney’s finest restaurant worth spending your last bucks on

If everything is really going to hell in a bucket, then it is nice to be able to at least for an evening enjoy the ride. Even if it means breaking the bank, writes The Mouth.

The question before us, dear reader, is a simple one.

At a time when headlines scream inflation, cost of living, war, pestilence and plague, is there really any place for seven-plus courses of intricately plated luxury with a price of admission that realistically approaches four figures per couple?

To resolve this quandary this column recently enjoyed a night out at Oncore by Clare Smyth, halfway up the Crown Tower – as always unannounced and on our own dime, it is important to stress when big money special occasion meals are on the line.

Let’s be really clear here: That the whole experience was as close to perfection as we’ve ever found in Sydney or indeed elsewhere is unarguable.

UK chef Smyth’s cooking was the star of the show, deservedly, and she was front and centre in the kitchen when we visited.

British chef Clare Smyth, of Oncore at Barangaroo.

Her signature potato and roe dish (trust me) is a genuine little bit of genius with bonito beurre blanc that made us forget our table manners and go all KFC, running fingers across the bowl and then licking them like toddlers. No one seemed to mind.

A bright concoction of onion (oh, sorry, “alliums”) and aged cheddar and a broth someone clearly slaved over was sort of an inside-out French onion soup that set the course for a spectacular venison and haggis main that was finished with a complex sauce that somehow involved a slug of Glenlivet old enough to be on its second marriage.

The venison dish at Oncore by Clare Smyth. Picture: Supplied.

: The famous potato dish at Oncore by Clare Smyth. Picture: Supplied.

Both moor-ish and more-ish, as it were.

The physical space, too, is quietly spectacular. For once, money has actually managed to buy taste, and everything gleams and hums without at all being in your face.

Look, there is almost no fault this column could find the meal, though we did our best.

We are no Michelin-starred chef, but we would not have squirted that thyme oil into a gorgeous bonito broth that came with the first course and should have been allowed to speak for itself.

Nor do we have a Masters of Wine, but – and this is more substantive – the matched pairings were more greatest hits than voyage of discovery. Everything we drank was lovely but nothing came as a surprise.

To bring us back to the original question some people, not unfairly, will say that in an era of belt tightening this sort of restaurant is if not obscene than at least unnecessary.

But this column thinks the opposite is true: If everything is really going to hell in a bucket, then it is nice to be able to at least for an evening enjoy the ride.