Sydney: Quay (August 2012)

My spouse and I dined at Quay in late August 2012. Several weeks prior to our trip, via e-mail, we booked a reservation for dinner at Quay. The restaurant is located in the Overseas Passenger Terminal near The Rocks. Quay serves lunch Tuesday to Friday (3 courses for $130, 4 courses for $150, or 8 courses for $225) and dinner daily (4 courses $170, 8 courses $225). For the 3-course and 4-courses options, you choose your courses from the menu. For the 8-course option, you make no choices because the chef chooses for you and provides the tasting/degustation selections. Quay has been on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for several years.

We chose the 8-course dinner menu option, and our total bill was about $575 with two rounds of drinks. Service was lengthy and drawn out for many hours; we waited a long time between courses. There seemed to be no “food love” from the servers; they were simply doing a job, without much care for the food or the service industry.

The food was good, but not particularly outstanding or memorable. The snow egg dessert was a novel idea, and the 8-textured chocolate cake was unique. As a couple who generally feel that fine dining tasting menus fall down in the dessert category, we thought that the desserts at Quay were our favorite courses.

The view was fantastic (You can gaze through the large windows toward the Opera House, the city skyline, the North Shore suburbs, and the Harbour Bridge), and we were given the most excellent table location in the round turreted area of the restaurant, but we did not feel that our meal was worth the money that we spent. Our meal at Quay just did not meet the high expectations that we had.