WATERFRONT
West Circular Quay
Sydney

The word “Eureka” has been in the news lately for obvious reasons. This year is the 150th anniversary of the rebellion at the Eureka Stockade and there has been a dubious musical called Eureka.

So I am safe to plunder the phrase from Archimedes: Eureka, I have found it!

And I have. To explain it I have to be indulgent with some family business. Recently my stepson, Jacki Weaver’s son, Dylan Walters, married a beautiful Japanese girl called Makiko. For the western and traditional Japanese wedding ceremony her mother and brother and two aunties came to Australia from Kobe in Japan. It was their first trip overseas.

For a wedding present I wanted to give them a special Aussie meal. And we found it at the Waterfront on Sydney’s restaurant row at Circular Quay. The “coathanger” – the Sydney Harbour Bridge – was the backdrop and the pearly tiles of the Opera House glistened to the right.

Yachts scudded across Sydney Harbour. Green and yellow ferries chugged to Mosman and Manly and the Spirit of Tasmania churned into town from the island state.

An impressive backdrop. So what do you serve Japanese visitors? The Waterfront has an impressive menu starting with herb breads with lemon herb oil and sun dried tomato bread with garlic oil.

The main courses range from oven roasted wild Barramundi with Thai dipping sauce to grilled snapper fillets with mango and coriander salsa.

It was a special occasion so I decided to go the special route. And it was visually spectacular and succulent. The “ hot and cold gourmet seafood platter”. At first glance it may seem expensive at $65 per person but remember that at upmarket Sydney restaurants you can pay $50 for a steak and then eight bucks for creamed spinach and another eight or nine dollars for rosemary-spiked roast potato chunks. So there’s more than sixty dollars straight up.

The Waterfront seafood platter is actually good value. You can (you must) skip the entrees where a dozen Sydney Rock oysters would have cost you $26.90 anyway.

The seafood platters – served on tiers – have generous-sized lobsters, Moreton Bay bugs, scampi, prawns ( battered and in the shell) grilled scallops on the shell, pieces of good fish, oysters in the shell and baby squid. It is a quintessential Aussie seafood banquet.

It also comes with beautiful diced mango. The Japanese visitors dived on that like Sydney harbour seagulls on a piece of hot fat. After all, in Japan a mango costs about the same as a Toyota.

December 10, 2004