For more than 20 years Rockpool has been equal to fine dining in Australia and over the years the restaurant has spun off to six additional restaurants in the Rockpool empire located in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Rockpool in The Rocks area is the original from 1989 and the best of Neil Perry’s restaurants.

Neil Perry has become one of the food rulers in Australia with Rockpool as the crown jewel. The Aussie chef has been a busy bee over the last couple of decades and in addition of being one of Australia’s most awarded chefs and restaurateurs, he is also an author, works for television, owns Rockpool Consulting that coordinates the meals for Qantas Flight Catering and has a food brand sold under his name, available at Woolworths Supermarkets. With all these commitments of course not all time nowadays is spent in the kitchen of Rockpool, but the Head Chef’s responsibility is today shared with Phil Wood and that works perfect.

The wine list is great so no worries on what to drink when you choose from a four or eight course dinner. The contemporary Australian cuisine with numerous European influences is a lot about seafood, but you can have a full tasting menu with just vegetarian, as well as the rangers’ valley beef short rib, braised and barbecued, with old skin stir fry, snake beans, soy milk skin and hakka nam yee sauce, and that is delicious. The John Dory and scampi with macadamia, bamboo pitch, scampi broth and tofu that is made at your table lacks identity in its flavours. We would have wished for more complexity and taste in that dish, but Chirashi zushi of kingfish, bonito, prawn and squid is perfect.

Rockpool is one of the best restaurants in Australia and hopefully Neil Perry will continue with the fine dining concept which the restaurant is now back to, we hope for many more years to come. Rockpool is the best Neil Perry offers and a must when you are in Sydney.

Images courtesy of Rockpool

Written by Andy