ARIA
1 Macquarie St
East Circular Quay
Sydney
Ph: 02 9252 2555

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was commenting on a milestone in Australian restaurant dining: the $50 main dish. Of course it was in Sydney.

Well, I’ve just been back to try some of the Harbour City’s best-known eateries and I hit another milestone. The $50 entrée!  Well, almost. Try $45 for an entrée special, the fish soup.

I’m sure it tasted fine –if the eggcup of lobster bisque they gave us for starters was anything to go by.

I opted for the Peking Duck consommé with a couple of duck dumplings, shaved abalone and sliced mushrooms. That was $36 and it was delicious.  A guest had three Western Australian scampi in ‘Tunisian brick pastry’. Forty dollars thank you.

Mrs Nosebag had an intriguing sounding entrée simply called  Gorgonzola. It was described as ‘cauliflower and gorgonzola  pannacotta with apple gelee and Jambon Iberico’.  An asterisk said that it could be served as a vegetarian option for which they dropped the expensive Iberico ham. Still charged the full $38 though. And all it was, to be brutal, was a blob of cheese-flavoured mousse.

My main course at Aria was a song – if you’ll excuse the pun. A fifty dollar rendition. A generous fillet of Jewfish with the skin seasoned and crisped to perfection. And despite all that heat on the skin the flesh was succulent and moist. Scattered around it were garlic pippies in their shells and strips of  calamari. One of the best fish dishes I have had in yonks.

A friend had another fish dish – a whole yellow bellied flounder roasted on the bone and the skeleton lifted away easily for the second side to be attacked.. It had sautéed oyster mushrooms and a sweet taste – especially nearer the tail.

I mentioned fifty dollars barriers. Of course they don’t exist any more at places like Aria. Take a poached beef fillet with braised silverside and bone marrow. That’s $52. Add some mashed potato ($15) and steamed green beans ($15)  and voila! Your main course just cost you eighty dollars.

According to the menu you could get a signed copy of chef Matthew Moran’s book for much less than that to see how he does it. Only $55.

Our bill (and the wine drinkers didn’t go overboard on vintages) was $700 for four. If we’d dined there on Sunday instead of Saturday night there would have been another $70 tagged on for the 10% Sunday surcharge.

To be fair, if you go to places like Aria you either know from its reputation it’s going to be a wallet-buster or you have so much money

(or are so used to dining in Paris or Tokyo) that it doesn’t matter. And Aria has retained its appeal year after year.

It has one of the best locations in Sydney -- the last building on Circular Quay before the sails of the Opera House soar in front of you and there are postcard views of the harbour and the ferry lights and the bridge.

But there is a price to pay for all that. And at Aria you certainly pay it.