The Mouth: Why is no one dining at Quay?

It has food and views to dine for. So what forces are at play making it so easy to get a booking to dine at Peter Gilmore’s destination restaurant?

Views to dine for: Quay restaurant. Picture: Supplied

So there we were, scarfing more than a grand’s worth of food and booze between two people, looking out at the Harbour Bridge and wondering just what the hell was going on.

Oh, look, here’s some perfectly cooked marron with a spicy house-made Korean gochujang, and a couple of Rieslings of different sweetnesses to wash it down.

How about some bone marrow noodles and mud crab? Don’t mind if we do!

Smoked eel cream, yes, wow, how good … can we buy this buy the tube?

Ah, what have we here … an artful little bowl containing pig jowl and some sort of custard all topped with a sheath of salami and swimming in a pool of liquid made down of the concentrated essences if not souls of countless sea and land creatures and just to offend the vegetable rights movement, some mushrooms, too.

Smoked eel cream, young almonds and Oscietra caviar at Quay. Picture: Supplied

You get the idea.

And yet, despite the fun of having an absolute blowout, eating food you would never in a million years make at home unless the Pope was coming over (and only then to prank his vows of poverty), it seemed that not everyone agrees.

Head chef at Quay, Peter Gilmore. Picture: Richard Dobson

If you haven’t twigged yet, the Mouths were at Quay, Peter Gilmore’s destination restaurant down at the, … well … quay, having snagged a table that very morning, on a whim, just because.

Now we get that paying the equivalent of three dozen of the city’s most expensive schnitties at Five Dock is not what everyone would call a good time or a sensible use of one’s hard earned.

But at the same time, it is absolutely remarkable that a destination restaurant with epic views (except for the Royal Caribbean aircraft carrier parked just outside, but we were facing the Bridge) would not be better subscribed.

Perhaps it is a case of shaking off the Covid blues, or that too many people remember it in its old guise when it had as much charm as a car dealership where they’d rolled out the Camrys for a fine dining pop-up.

Roasted pasture-raised duck at Quay. Picture: Supplied

Maybe, too, the Australian market is moving in another direction, and people want more razzle dazzle: Witness the mini-renaissance in tableside service, which may play against Quay’s very friendly but low-key service.

But there may be darker forces at play, too.

A friend reported a similar experience at a high end hotel restaurant, while as an experiment we logged onto the website of a new hot bistro in town, Brasserie 1930, and found that despite raves everywhere there are still a number tables to be had.

For those who know their economic history as well as their food, there may be a worrying clue in that newcomer’s name.

Quay Upper Level, Overseas Passenger Terminal, The Rocks, Sydney.

— The Mouth is an anonymous critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.