Sun Kitchen on Albert Park lake aims at high rollers but doesn’t fully shine
With mains that can set you back between $128 and $168, Sun Kitchen on Albert Park Lake has a menu and cellar that are pitched at high rollers. But is it a true match for its top end competition?
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They call it crab with sauteed milk; I’d call it breakfast from the heavens.
On a stunning, black ceramic plate channelling a Star Wars hyperspace jump comes a puffy cloud of whipped milky egg whites in which an equally stunning amount of chunky crabmeat is strewn.
Joined by tiny slices of asparagus that add their unmistakeable (if unseasonal) vegetal tang, pine nuts for heft and nutty creaminess and a scattering of dried scallop slivers for umami depth, it’s an absolute knockout of a dish.
It’s also $68.
Downturn? What downturn?
Unashamedly pitched at the pointiest end of Melbourne dining, Sun Kitchen is the new Sichuan/Cantonese rebrand of what was Albert Park’s fancy fine diner, The Point, which had, for the past couple of years, also housed a yum cha restaurant on its ground floor.
Now it’s two levels of hot pots and dumplings and tanks full of snow crabs and crays, abalone and coral trout and if you pre-order the Imperial Claypot, that seafood can be yours for $398.
The menu is big. Huge. Unwieldy, even. It is, however, helpfully annotated with the kitchen’s signature dishes, which also correlate with the most expensive — mere coincidence, I’m sure.
The coral trout, for instance, stir-fried with a few greens is $128; the 9+ wagyu with black truffle and garlic that our waiter hoped to add to our order a cool $168.
And though you’d expect to pay a premium for such exotic fare as double-boiled sea cucumber with dendrobium (an orchid, apparently, $168), even the dumplings come with a five-star price tag.
The xiao long bao here are indeed very good, the pleated pouches are made from pastry more delicate than you’ll find at Hu Tong (though not as fine as a Din Tai Fung dumpling) filled with good pork mince and mildly flavoured soup. Red vinegar with finely sliced ginger is served alongside the basket of six for $18.
Sure, you’re paying for plentiful staff who are sweet and obliging and keen to please and double-clothed tables and hand towels to refresh and a bowl of peanuts tossed through seaweed and a cool jasmine and ginger drink to begin, but at these prices you’d expect a faultless experience.
Chilli wonton dumplings served the cool side of lukewarm were simply unpleasant ($18) while, after a bit of back and forth with the kitchen, our waiter ascertained that the type of fish used in the sizzling chilli fish was “frozen”.
No matter, for the fish isn’t really the point of this cauldron from the depths of hell, where fat fillets of white fish come swimming in a soup of a thousand Sichuan and red peppercorns and a field of dried chillies that have been first wok-fried in oil.
Though it looks terrifyingly intimidating it is a marvellous, devil-may-care dance, the layers of heat — from the chilli base notes through the lingering antiseptic tingle of the Sichuan pepper — deliver such a deftly delicious high you’ll say, to hell with tomorrow, let’s live for today and go back into Satan’s kitchen for seconds. No pain, no gain ($58).
For $68 you’ll get eight fat prawns, fried crunchy and served in a lurid orange coconut and ginger sauce in which the respective sweet and heat riff off the meat, while a bowl of beef hor fun — wok-tossed beef, beanshoot and noodles — is simple, tasty stuff ($35).
You could come back a dozen times and still not make a dent on the menu; likewise on the wine list that’s as big as the mark-ups.
Filled to bursting with big name local heroes — Giaconda chardonnay; Penfolds 707 — and four- and five-figured Burgundies, it’s a cellar built for Black Amexes in the market for big, showy gestures.
For mere mortals, the lake is show enough and the view from the upstairs dining room remains ever-beautiful and with spacious tables, plush armchairs and carpet in grey-and-black oyster shell swirls, there’s a sense of luxury and occasion.
But be warned: unless you request upstairs (and only then if it’s in use) you’ll be seated in the downstairs room with its lazy Susans and bustling yum cha vibe altogether at odds with the bill you’ll be presented.
This lunch for two, with an $11 Tsing Tao beer each to begin and a glass of the cheapest red to follow (St Huberts pinot, $16) came in at $339, to which a $4 credit card surcharge was added.
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Order carefully — and less greedily — and you’ll get away with less, but for a restaurant with such ambitions Sun Kitchen is eclipsed by others at this highest of levels.
It’s good, occasionally great, but ultimately feels like a boom time restaurant that’s yet to fully shine.
Sun Kitchen
9 Aquatic Drive, Albert Park
Ph: 9682 5566
Open: Lunch Sat-Sun; dinner nightly
Go-to dish: Sizzling chilli fish
Score: 14/20
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