Got a hankering for fish milk? Mark Best’s new menu at the former tourist-trap fine-diner does (plus grilled sea foam, oysters and very good chips).
Contemporary$$$
In case you missed the news in August, Mark Best is cooking in Sydney again. Yes, that Mark Best, the chef who operated three-hatted Marque in Surry Hills until it closed in 2016, and topped oysters with grilled “sea foam” and plated pigeon with its cross-sectioned head. The chef who paired frozen foie gras with steamed crab custard and drew on myriad Australian influences to create his transparent, idealistic cuisine. “The Best,” as a sign at the foot of Sydney Tower in Westfield will tell you, “is back.”
Best has partnered with Trippas White Group (it also looks after the food at Taronga Zoo and the Botanic Gardens) to run the revolving restaurant at the top of what will always be “Centrepoint” to me. I initially thought this made as much sense as Aphex Twin playing Carols in the Domain. “Coming to cinemas this summer, Lars von Trier directs Forrest Gump 2.” Marque was Australia’s most precise and divisive fine-diner; revolving restaurants are for tourists and where my cousin from Woy Woy proposed. I’ve been to Infinity three times and seen men dining in shorts on two of those occasions (nice shorts, to be fair).
But then I remembered that Best took on the Four Seasons lobby restaurant with Pei Modern for a couple of years in the 2010s, not to mention a gig with Asia-based Dream Cruises. The bloke can write an approachable menu while maintaining his point of view. I can’t imagine many bridge-and-tunnel diners will see the words “fish milk” and think, “Oh, yeah, sign me up”, but there are familiar things, too, such as sirloin, grilled Snowy River trout and excellent tallow-fried chips seasoned with salt-and-vinegar powder.
There’s roast dry-aged duck of juicy, full-flavoured flesh and crisp bronze skin that’s served with a jammy, smoked ooray (also known as Davidson’s) plum sauce, perilla leaves and gently charred baby corn. Springy-but-tender squid laid over a deeply green stinging-nettle risotto is one of the biggest entrees I’ve ever seen. Jen Kwok Lee is second-in-charge of the kitchen and his dedication to honing technique was a big part of why he was named our Good Food Guide Young Chef of the Year in October (an award Best won himself three decades ago).
The dining room – recently refurbished with a restrained use of charcoal, warm timbers, polished brass and Tom Dixon hightops for the bar – takes about 80 minutes to complete a rotation and it’s a hoot to always have something new to look at: jacarandas popping like fireworks against Darlinghurst terraces; the Kings Cross Coke sign; Russell Crowe’s apartment; Hyde Park “sovereign citizen” cooker rallies; the Brett Whiteley streaks of white boats on the harbour and its treacly water at night.
Restaurant wonks can also have a fun time spotting some of Best’s greatest hits. Raw bluefin tuna draped over brioche and creamy “faux gras” (made from the fatty livers of chickens rather than gavaged geese), and showered with powdered pork crackling is a luxurious old Marque dish. That fish milk you’re wondering about is made by roasting and blending bones with cod roe, and it’s teamed here with deftly steamed hapuka and sorrel and fermented potatoes. Sweet-sour poached kumquats pair deliciously with rich chocolate ganache; frozen orange curd and sherbert tastes how the jacarandas look.
Dense little salt-cod croquettes (previously seen at Pei Modern but can be traced back to Best’s love of brandade at Macleay Street Bistro in the 1990s) are prime martini fodder and the bar is now open for cocktails and other snacks such as Marque’s grilled sea foam (read: vinegared oyster liquor thickened with xanthan gum so it can stand up to a blowtorch) crowning an edible oat flour and squid ink “oyster shell”.
Meanwhile, sommelier Polly Mackarel pours from an all-Aussie wine list of legendary vineyards and emerging producers. The music is exclusively Australian, too, and Ganggajang-free, championing contemporary artists instead. Manager Sandro Sposato is one of the most affable hosts around and, while some of the younger floor staff seem to be fresh to the business, everyone’s well-meaning and invested. The large poster in the lift spruiking Infinity and the Sky Feast buffet above (also run by Trippas White) feels like a sweaty sell at this price-point, though.
At time of publication, if you call to book, a recorded message informs you that “Infinity is a brand new culinary concept with executive chef Guillaume Gritteret at the helm”. Trippas White might want to update that: Gritteret was the former executive chef. “Infinity feels like a wholly Australian restaurant without jingoism and nostalgia” would be more accurate.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Welcoming, with its own sense of Australian style
Go-to dishes: Dry-aged duck with smoked plum sauce ($64); sea-urchin crumpets (two for $28); loligo squid and stinging nettle risotto ($38);
chocolate ganache with kumquats ($26)
Drinks: All Australian, including the fizz and spirits, with a lot of fun gear by the glass across a broad range of price points
Cost: Weekday lunch, about $120 per person excluding drinks; weekend lunch and Monday-Thursday dinner (three-course a la carte), $160 per person; Friday-Sunday dinner, $190 per person
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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