Rock 'n' Grill
May 29th, 2009. Posted by luane
With its Art Deco glory and soaring atrium, Rockpool Bar & Grill is probably the grandest restaurant Sydney has ever seen. It’s a steakhouse, writes Pat Nourse, but not as we know it.
Yes, it’s breathtaking. Combining Citizen Kane-like scope with detail-work befitting Mad Men, it’s probably safe to say the new Rockpool Bar & Grill is the grandest restaurant in Sydney – and by extension the nation – has ever seen. An edifice of polished granite and Hawkesbury sandstone, all terrazzo of floor and scagliola of column, Balmain architect Emil Sodersten’s 12-storey Deco dazzler was the tallest building the city had seen when it was completed in 1936. It started life as the headquarters of the City Mutual Life Assurance Society. The soaring atrium, with Rayner Hoff’s relief of Benzoni’s Flight from Pompeii set into the ceiling, was known as the Chamber of Assurance, and the name still fits.
Rockpool Bar & Grill does not aspire to challenge or provoke, but to please and assure: it’s a steakhouse. But what a steakhouse. The retro-corporate luxe look of the place, admirably executed by Bates Smart, doesn’t really place it high in the date-restaurant stakes, but it’s already a magnet for the great and good of the moneyed world. Chef and co-owner Neil Perry is one of the trail-blazers of today’s Australian dining, but just to be clear, this isn’t a restaurant dedicated to advancing the cause of gastronomy. Here they take the simple concept of grilling a piece of protein over a fire and burnish it with care and skill until it shines anew. At the original Rockpool back on George Street they’re confiting suckling pigs and creating clouds of mandarin and poaching swordfish sous-vide with anchovy and jamon. At the Bar & Grill, they’re shucking oysters, creaming silverbeet and charring meat. They’re making drinks and grilling stuff which, at a bar and grill, seems fair enough.
To read the rest of this fabulous review please follow the link to the Gourmet Traveller website.
Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney's soaring atrium
Tags: Gourmet Traveller, Neil Perry, pat nourse, review, Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney, Rockpool Sydney
