Bennelong

This restaurant is In the Sydney Opera House itself. Starter nibbles comprised small choux puffs with cheese sauce (14/20). I found this a rather difficult menu, with a tricky set of ingredients in many of the dishes. There is a wonderful view from the dining room over the harbour, with pleasant but very slow service. On the night we went the air conditioning was unable to cope and condensation was dripping down the windows.

For starter I had a reasonablly good quail ballotine. Plain French bread was decent enough (13/20). Mahi mahi had with a peppercorn and soumac crust, served on a bed of sliced carrots, was accompanied by puree of yet more carrots, in this case curried. This was very good, maybe at 15/20 level. For dessert, my wfie had a summer pudding served with a syllabub steeped in alcohol (13/20). I had a passion fruit Bavarian cream (= cake in this case) with passion fruit sauce, which was OK (13/20). Coffee was fair (13/20), served with dry meringues containing peanuts (not very appetising). Piper Brook Pinot Gris and Wilton Estate Semillon were the wines that we tried.