The kitchen at Esquire hits its marks with a pleasing menu that covers classics and more adventurous dishes alike, but a flawed floor team lets the side down.
Esquire Drink & Dine certainly looks the part. It’s a plushly decked-out space in one of Sydney’s most beautiful piles, the Queen Victoria Building, framed by arched windows, high ceilings and a parquetry and mosaic floor. With an impressive drinks list and the theatre of an open kitchen, it’s a setting befitting of a lavish lunch.
The food, while not ground-breaking, largely fits the bill. Chef Damien Worthington has crafted an interesting menu that traverses classics and has a few things for the more adventurous, too, which for the most part translates to an enjoyable eating experience.
Take the crumbed sweetbreads, for instance. Soft and giving beneath the crumbed exterior, they’re elevated by lemon, cauliflower, hazelnuts and a deeply satisfying burnt butter. And while I’d prefer the beef to be raw in the ‘seared steak tartare’, combined with glistening orange yolk and beetroot and scooped up with gaufrette potato crisps it makes for a solid start to a meal.
A lovely fennel cream underpins a fillet of blue-eye cod with crisp skin and pearlescent flesh, while a herb salad peppered with radish makes a perfect partner to the gelatinous joy of a pork jowl schnitzel. And although half the menu may be quite rich for some, its foundations in simplicity keep each dish pleasing, as typified in the Valrhona Dulcey mousse where acidic yoghurt plays off sweet caramel with a hint of Sichuan. Simple, and does the job.
The dining experience, however, is lacklustre to say the least. The staff are well-meaning enough – when you come across them. But there’s no cohesion, no one running the show, and joining a wave of diners with their arms in the air can leave a bad taste in your mouth even before your first course arrives.
It’s a shame because the food deserves better. Perhaps with time the team will band together and match the kitchen on the floor. I really hope so.
Comments
Join the conversation
Log in Register