Audrey’s Sorrento restaurant review: Scott Pickett’s seafood eatery at The Continental is a classy affair

Melbourne chef and restaurateur Scott Pickett has opened his biggest project to date — a seafood fine diner inside the swanky revamp of Continental Sorrento. But is it any good?

Let’s play a game of word association.

You know the drill, say the first word you think of after reading the following: table … tennis, beach … house.

Great, you’ve got it. Let’s try this through a Melbourne lens.

Queen Vic … Market, Richmond … Tigers, Sorrento … is in desperate need of a five-star hotel and Melbourne-style restaurants?

Ask anyone what the posh peninsula pocket needs and they’ll talk your ear off.

Thankfully someone listened.

A trio of snacks. Picture: Kristoffer Paulsen.

Conglomerate Victor Smorgon Group, Kanat Group and Trenerry Property has spent stupid money turning Sorrento’s top pub — the Continental Hotel — into a whiz-bang, mega venue – recruiting publican Craig Shearer (North Fitzroy’s Terminus Hotel) and celebrity chef/restaurateur Scott Pickett (Estelle, Smith St Bistrot) to headline the food and drink offering.

By next summer it’ll have a bougie hotel with pumping pool deck and rooftop bar, but for now, its staggered opening includes a bistro, beer garden and Pickett’s jewel-in-the-crown restaurant, Audrey’s.

The seafood fine diner will be his seventh venue – and fifth since 2020 – and is undoubtedly his biggest project yet.

Named after his grandmother, who taught him to cook, Audrey’s is a classy affair. An impressive marble bar stocked with caviar and champagne, the click-clack of heels against the pale timber floor, pillowy Tiffany blue banquettes and rockstar bay views will make you feel a million bucks — and when you lay eyes on the price, so will the set menu.

The $150 four-course offering is a little surprising to some, but I’m assured a three-course choice menu will follow later in the year once the kitchen finds its groove.

Audrey’s at The Continental Hotel in Sorrento. Picture: Greg Elms

It’s more expensive than Doot Doot Doot, or even Estelle, and being lobbed in the same price bracket as Cutler and Co — you’d expect serious cooking to back it up.

Former Estelle head chef Nick Delagiannis is put to task, executing Pickett’s love for seafood.

But when we’re hit with housemade Pain d’epi (French wheat bread) straight out of the gate, I get nervous. Surely we’re not carb-loading before the main event?

Lucky it’s delicious, served delightfully warm with decent chew and comes with two perfect quenelles of cultured and umami-packed kelp butter for slathering.

A flurry of snacks land in quick succession to varied success: flame-kissed, skewered abalone tickled with sweet glaze (yum), zingy finger lime adorning plump New South Wales oysters (delicious), a two-bite lobster pastry topped with beluga caviar (meh), malt-smoked eel resting on a toasted sourdough finger (more please) and crumbed mussel with tarragon lemon mayo (snore).

Next up is fluffy Mooloolaba spanner crab, heirloom tomato and an underwhelming tomato consomme with smoked kelp oil served in impractical glass crockery, which looks to have been nicked from Mrs Pickett’s cupboards. While the broth is a little hard of hearing, the meat is sweet, well-seasoned and those tomatoes sing a bright chorus.

But our long-awaited aha moment hits with the squid and shiitake XO.

Hot damn. The party has begun.

Squid with XO sauce. Picture: Kristoffer Paulsen

Ultra-tender squid is cut into noodly tresses, alongside meaty shiitake mushroom cubes tumbled in a fiery XO sauce. Packed with punchy spice and fragrant lemon, it’s wonderful, clever cooking that has me giddy for what’s next.

This tempo continues with the main event, a five-day aged John Dory fillet crowned with celeriac discs and pickled karkalla surrounded by a lick-the-plate-clean bordelaise made with tuna instead of veal marrow. Superb.

Take a $30 detour via the Great Ocean Road for duck and fermented golden plum, or slip into the sweet stuff with an ode to nanna Auds herself.

Pretty in pink vacherin (French meringue and ice cream) sees feather-light meringue, topped with Granny Smith apple compote, white chocolate and tangy rhubarb puree that’s just enough until the kettle goes on and the petit fours roll out.

Sorrento may seem like a world away from the big smoke but surely our latte snobbery deserves more than capsule coffee post-meal, or at least the choice of espresso.

Maybe you’ll gravitate to sommelier Andrew Murch’s (from Eau di Vie group) contemporary cocktail or wine list, with French and Aussie pours from the Peninsula and beyond.

Impressive in scale, style and food, Audrey’s will undoubtedly become a destination for both day-tripping city slickers and coastal-living champagne sippers.

It’s early days, but the space will sparkle a little brighter once that “choice menu” rolls in and Delagiannis belts out a few bangers early on in the set menu.

Audrey’s has hit the ground running and shows real promise with some knockout plates of food.

Your turn to play. Audrey’s …

Audrey’s

1-24 Ocean Beach Rd, Sorrento

thecontinentalsorrento.com.au/audreys

Open: Lunch Fri-Sun, dinner Wed-Sat

Go to dish: Squid, XO sauce

Try this if you like: Stokehouse

Cost: $150pp for four-courses, snacks

RATING: 7.5/10