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After logging way too many hours at Paddy’s Markets’ new food hall for a review the other week, I needed to wipe the memory of that experience by visiting somewhere Sydney once got right. Somewhere that reminds you why people choose to live in one of the world’s least affordable cities – a city saturated with pokies and NIMBYs and 60 tobacco retailers for every McDonald’s. Where better than the city’s most prized bit of real estate?

Every time I see those big ol’ Opera House shells, I’m reminded how incredible it was that Jørn Utzon’s design for a performing arts space ever got off the ground. It speaks of post-war optimism and uncompromising vision (in spite of all the ministerial meddling) and it’s still a thrill to walk up those pink granite steps. Lunch at Bennelong has long been one of the best ways to know your life is working.

It’s almost 10 years to the day that Quay chefs Peter Gilmore and Rob Cockerill skimmed across the water and opened Bennelong’s current iteration with Fink hospitality group. Guillaume Brahimi helmed the Opera House’s flagship restaurant for a dozen years before that, and the place has also showcased the talent of Gay Bilson, Janni Kyritsis and Michael Moore. In 1977, a three-course meal under those concrete ribs cost $9.50 (including coffee) and regularly featured steak-and-kidney pie and peppermint mousse.

Today it costs $210 (including sourdough, seaweed-seasoned kipfler potatoes and one of the most impeccably dressed leaf salads in town) and stars top-drawer produce treated with accomplished technique and clever flourishes that are rarely too highfalutin.

The risotto is still a risotto, albeit made with high-end sushi rice cooked in a squid and chicken stock with creme fraiche and vinegared seaweed. Butter-poached squid is cut to replicate the shape of rice, while ice plant and palm heart further season and texture. Righteously savoury stuff, and perfect with a glass of something white, layered and lemon-balmy on a winter afternoon.

Meanwhile, few things warm you up like Cockerill and Gilmore’s way with a pork chop. An aged rack of kurobuta-breed pig is roasted, carved and covered in three types of pears (Corella, Red Angel and PiqaBoo, if you’re cooking along at home) that have been steamed and partially dehydrated to enhance their inherent peariness. It’s glossed with smoked trotter jus that’s deeper and stickier than Diddy’s legal strife; sommelier Isaac Pockney is at the ready with a Tapanappa Foggy Hill 2023 Pinot Noir from the Fleurieu Peninsula that’s all late autumn sun and poise.

Head sommelier Alex Jacques is the current shaper of Bennelong’s wine list, which at one point was all-Australian (champagne excepted) but now has a considerable wealth of Old World stalwarts and rare gems. Domestic bottles are still highly championed, and there’s a particularly beaut representation of NSW producers. Spirits are well chosen, martinis are textbook. The only dud note drinks-wise is the mochi garnish on a Tokyo-inspired cocktail (whisky, yoghurt-purified azuki bean, tequila and coconut spice), which tastes more like raw scone dough than anything approaching the squishy Japanese rice cake.

“The menu doesn’t change very much” is a common criticism. “That duck has been on for years!” Well, yeah, but that duck is a cracker: a roast breast of pasture-raised bird from Tathra Place near Goulburn, with extra-crisp, maltose-lacquered skin. A sauce built on duck consomme with sherry caramel and Kampot pepper boosts things further, while the leftover legs are used in party pie-sized pithivier on the bar menu.

Also, with that price tag, most of us are only visiting Bennelong once a year if we’re lucky. I’d be upset to take a first-timer and there wasn’t the duck, or the buckwheat pikelets with marron and cultured cream, or the opening-day Opera House pavlova with meringue shaped like Utzon’s sails. It’s now joined by a joyous almond kataifi (spindly string pastry) with nougat and vanilla parfait.

If you’re looking at the rumpled carpet and slightly scuffed chairs, you’re looking in the wrong direction. Look at the soaring Gotham City ceiling and bronze sheen of the Tom Dixon-designed lights. Look at the jagged skyline and the ferries and the way the sun bounces off an Old Fashioned. Top work, Bennelong team. Top work, NSW government of the 1950s for backing such ambition.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine