Estelle Bistro - Réserver une table

This was a 7 course degustation with starters and desert.Its difficult to describe the experiential event that was “dining”at Estelle last Friday.Had we entered the realm of Dada, an art movement of world war one protesting with absurdity. ( A change in the norm for its day?) Or was this food art? ( Fart.) Or was the hype carrying the masses along and the King really wasn’t wearing any clothes? Where do you start? Charging what appears to be bottle prices for a glass of wine! Nice if you can get it. There were a lot of diners partaking of the matched wines at $140 per head. Hope they took a taxi home, Is that responsible alcohol service? The starters, to be eaten with fingers, in hind sight the hand towel to clean your hands came a few courses later. That’s just un hygienic. The starters:Two quail eggs perched in a grass nest. Not sure if the grass was irradiated to make that one sanitary but it made me feel sad. I felt for the quail. It did cut a nice picture though. The grass nest, was that Dada? Smoked Wallaby, when the smoke lifted under the glass cloche the flavour and odour went with it. This wasn’t reality TV we actually get to savour the show, Poof the smoke had gone. Technique was lacking, smoked food takes more time. The black rice crisp under the wallaby lacked contrast so visually it appeared homogeneous, lacking visual contrast, the eyes didn’t get to “taste it.” No direction on the edibility or not of the surrounding leaves!Wagyu! Two lonely mini wraps, were talking around 20mm by 10mm wraps lying abandoned on a plate, no nest or crisp to frame them. They made me feel lonely and sad. Was I starting to feel it yet? Hey made me emotional.King prawn lemon pith! White on white on a pile of off white gravel. Again, not sure about the hygiene, visual, gravel edible? Did I miss out? My wife was looking distinctly nervous by this stage. Me, the absurdity kept me going. The towels came out hot. The wait staff advised me to leave them for later? Go figure, I just ate with my fingers. Direction ignored! That wasn’t good, my reasoning was telling me that the staff and I appeared to be in disconnected parallel universes, out of time sync possibly. I needed to clean my hands!The degustation:Veal sweet breads, pine mushroom and thyme, A visual and sensory delight beautiful balance of flavours and a memorable technique of garnishing with thyme leaves. Subtle yet punchy, framing a memorable dish. Unfortunately, the pass let the experience down. My question to my wife did the dish in, “What do you think of the thyme garnish? She replied with a bemused look on her face. “What thyme?”Baby farm corn. Confronting ears of pale juvenile corn with a sash of “edible cob cover atop a pile of charred leaves. To be eaten with a dab into a pool of fermented truffle dammed by a ring of mayo. Unfortunately, I spent a couple of minutes in a coughing fit triggered by the astringent ash on the dish. The corn texture, not dissimilar to the baby corn in a can, these were four times the size. The dipping sauce was bland and lifeless. Visually confronting, a source of anxiety perhaps. A sad picture.At around this time my wife whispered, I now understand your term “Food Art.” Coming from my ever forgiving and tolerant wife, that was a cause for anxiety. I held my breath for the next dish.Jersey Royal Potato, Salmon Roe. Introduced as “baby potato.” My eyes immediately focused on the 8mm potatoes. They were very close to the size of the salmon roe. The flavours were good, a couple of roe refused to break with firm tooth pressure, I found that bemusing to say the least. Not sure what process does that to roe? The baby potato turned out to be portions of potato cut with a device perhaps not dissimilar to a melon baller but tiny. I was let down by the introduction of “baby potato” it created an expectation that was not fulfilled. Am I a purist? Or if this is Food Art I should concede that the artist is an impressionist?Hay smoked rockling, Smoking food is not a strong suit at Estelle, the smoking of the rockling well it had evaporated by the time it was on the plate. The fish however had responded to the pre-treatment well. The gorgeous pearl essence on the fish suggested a brine pre-treatment. The pre-treatment or the quality and freshness made the fish a delight to eat, each morsel savoured for its flavour and firmness. The sauce nocturne, didn’t appear to be relevant to the dish. Duck, Beetroot and sunflower seeds, presented at the table as Duck and granola? Uh, ha, what did we have here. Nice looking piece of duck near a pile of muesli looking material. Bad visual, stirred up a bit of prodding, tasting and recoil reaction. I made a judgement call to let that side go back to the kitchen. Maybe it could be recycled for someone’s breakfast. There are not enough words to describe the duck however. The slices taken were minuscule to draw out the experience. The skin not over crisp but tasty, the taste of the duck was sublime. Kohlrabi, Fennel, Marjoram; Introduced as a buttermilk sorbet left us feeling that we had missed a dish and that this was a palate cleanser.Desert:Strawberry, Violet, Basil, introduced as “strawberries done 3 ways”. You were left to ponder the 3 ways. Sadness describes the experience. Some vivid happy strawberries cooked, how sad.Absinthe, lime Kiwiberries, The staff were shocked to hear we had some berries in the fridge! The gooseberries, some cooked some raw, ( bit of a theme here with berries.) The absinthe jelly was sparse and when found bland, the berries, well nice but not exceptional. A bit flat on delivery in all sensory areas.Apple marshmallow, we both has great visions of this dish as we waited in anticipation. Visually the dish was confusing. Was this the art of deception? It turned out to be a pleasant apple done several ways dish. The bendy sheets were apple juice dehydrated to make an apple wrap that tasted of caramel. The sheets were stuck together with a gluey apple marshmallow. Entertaining dish.The punctuating high points, after paying $320 for the set menu we left having to return minutes later for our brolly. The Attentive staff who took it on entry failed to notice that we were leaving without it.We then discussed finding a pizza place for a meal. After realising we had been in Estelle for over 3 hours it was too late to search for an open one, let alone one with a kitchen still open. It was a large cheese, tomato on rye toast at home instead.The experience of “dining at Estelle.”Take a food pack for after the experience. You may be hungry.This is Dada food, Food Art, you should not expect the other material on the plate or garnish to compliment or support the main ingredient. If you want to be able to have an experiential talking point about a restaurant that attempts to deliver a dining experience that is at the forefront of dining then; if you don’t care about your companions or good food Estelle is for you. If you enjoy great produce delivered with harmony and respect to the highest culinary levels in a well-managed restaurant Estelle is not for you.The king is not wearing any clothes!!Dada movement: “Dada artists claimed, their movement was a noisy alarm that woke modern art from its slumber”

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Once again Australia surprised me with their overpriced and disappointing standards.In a menu of 14 courses just one was surprising, the rest was just nice presented dishes without absolutely anything special, lack of flavor and creativity, just small and beautiful looking dishes. The desserts were the best, the fish was dry, the salmon dish tasted just like butter and the rest was so boring than even if I was there 3 days ago I don't even remember.The staff was unprepared to manage a restaurant of the level that they want to offer, the chef wasn't there and the dinner took us 3'5 hours for small cold dishes easy to cook, I had longer dinners and lunches in Michelin starred restaurants in Europe but at least every single dish presented was a 'wow' but this time we just wanted to finish and go to bed. We had to ask multiple times for more bread while we were waiting for the food but apparently they were out of, we were starving.Overpriced restaurant that tried but failed to be something special, in Europe a one or two starred restaurant would have been from 90 to 250 euros per person for an amazing experience difficult to forget, here was 230 dollars per person for a 'I just want to go to bed' experience.

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The food is good. Very good. Food that on the face of it you wouldn't think would work, works very well. The veal sweet breads with celeriac and the rhubarb and custard were for me the stand outs. And in my opinion it's good value for money... albeit special occasion prices so you wouldn't eat there every week. Service is good... not great. But what lets this place down is how long it takes to get through the meal. There's a no choice degustation which I have no issue with but that shouldn't take 3 and a half hours to produce. They need to shave an hour off that. The 'waiting for the next course' detracts from the whole experience. I'm no expert when it comes to ratio of staff to guests but there were only 4 chefs in the kitchen which to the albeit untrained eye didn't seem enough. Would I go back? Maybe. Just it sure...

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We had the degustation menus and it was great. We had 3 different dietary requirements and the catered for all of us. I believe they have 8 different menus for various dietary needs so just ask them. All flavours were amazing in our 10 course meal. It's expensive but well worth the treat!

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We had a lovely evening here with old friends. Good service and great food. Lots of interesting tastes, presented with finesse.We didn't do the wine pairing but chose our own instead, and there was plenty to choose from and have fun with.It was a special night.

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