Kent Street Kitchen’s quail dish featured in 2015 film Burnt

Some dishes are famous. Then there is this dish, which was a co-star in a Bradley Cooper movie.

Game Farm quail, heirloom carrots, summer savory and corn bread.

Some dishes are famous. Then there is this dish, which was a co-star in a movie, alongside Bradley Cooper, who played the ambitious, troubled chef.

The dish: Game Farm quail, heirloom carrots, summer savory, corn bread, by Marcus Wareing

Where: Kent Street Kitchen, The Langham, The Rocks, Sydney

Backstory: A recipe from a British chef on a Sydney menu? Ah, but you remem­ber last year’s (excellent) foodie movie Burnt, don’t you? It was set in The Langham, London, and Marcus Wareing was the two-Michelin-starred chef who supplied the recipes and pep-talked the stars. Anyway, when the film was released Langham Sydney saw the publicity opp and invited new chef Thomas Heinrich to re-create a couple of the movie’s dishes for the hotel restaurant’s degustation menu. The quail was such a hit it hasn’t left the building since.

Produce: Heinrich, a Sydney boy who landed back here via big hotel work in New York, Chicago and Vancouver, sources fat quail from NSW’s Game Farm and baby heirloom carrots and summer savory from a farm in Blackheath owned by Epicurean Harvest, in which the hotel has a stake.

Method: Oh, just your average nine-part preparation: only classically trained chefs need apply. The “heirloom carrots” component entails a carrot puree, a carrot vinaigrette made from a reduction of carrot jus, and shaved baby carrots — so you get, as Heinrich puts it, “carrot on carrot on carrot” flavour in the finished dish. And the corn-on-corn-on-corn flavour in the polenta “chip”? Chef adds corn puree to the polenta to make a batter, bakes it and sears it in butter. The quail itself is deboned, the carcass steamed with the breasts and the breasts given a quick sear. There’s also quail vinaigrette and quail jus in there, somewhere ... in the eating, however, the dish doesn’t taste at all complicated, the flavours are all clear as a bell. Call it chefs’ sorcery.

The twist: “Marcus didn’t include the legs in the original dish, but we didn’t have any other use for them, so why would you leave them out?” says Heinrich, exercising inar­guable nose-to-tail logic. So the quail legs are deboned, cooked sous-vide and fried in polenta. You would miss them if they weren’t there.

Presentation: Dots, smears and carrot curls, all on a big white plate: there’s no mistaking this is the product of an ­upscale hotel restaurant.

Price: The quail is included on the seven-course degustation menu, $149 (food only).

And also: The other Marcus Wareing dish on the Kent Street Kitchen menu is a “mascarpone, blood orange, streusel” cheesecake, served with burnt vanilla ice cream, from pastry chef Miguel Jocson. And if you’re a fan of Australia’s branded seafoods, you’ve come to the right place: Heinrich loves cooking fish sourced from the fish markets down the road. Think Mt Cook ­alpine salmon, Pacific Reef cobia, hiramasa kingfish and more.

Other great quail dishes: General Tso’s fried quail, steamed lettuce filled with chicken mince, water chestnuts and jasmine rice, hoi-sin sauce (Matteo’s, Melbourne); Slow-cooked quail, macadamia rubble, Davidson plum jam (Bennelong, Sydney).