I was trying to remember whether I had heard of this place. I have eaten at a lot of great restaurants in Sydney, but somehow, I found it hard to recall any memory of Berowra Waters Inn. If I am totally honest, which I like to think is my default position, I don’t think I had heard of Berowra, or, as it turns out, its very pretty cousin, Berowra Waters. I feel I should have read of it, being so close to home, and housing a restaurant that gets glowing reviews all over the world in various travel and food publications. I do have a vague recollection of being passed a magazine article, whilst on holiday in the UK. Somewhere I was told I would enjoy. Of a restaurant in Sydney that you get to by seaplane.
Now, there can’t be many restaurants in Sydney, fitting this description, even though I do know that the seaplane, based out of Rose Bay, does serve several restaurants up in the Northern Beaches area. At over $600 a trip, it is somewhat of a luxury. As we were staying on the water for the weekend, our arrival was a little less dramatic, yet still highly memorable. At 1.30pm, a full hour after we were initially told to be ready (river time, apparently), we spotted Andy, our water taxi, in his little boat, coasting towards our mooring.
At least we guessed it was Andy. With each house having its own private mooring, if somebody was heading in your direction, there was only one place they could park. Outside our house.
A bit of a character, sporting a bedraggled pony tail, and a shaggy, somewhat out of control beard, Andy had the air of a man who has never had to don a suit for a work interview. Quite a romantic notion for me, who has spent all his adult working life in this manner, toiling at various large, faceless corporate organisations, to earn the funds that feed my insatiable travel appetite. A kind of modern troubadour, signing for my supper, to anybody kind enough to listen.
Transferring to the Berowra Waters Inn took us all of 5 minutes, quite an improvement on the 20 or so minutes it had been taking us to pass it when out, bobbing on the water, in our own little tinnie. For the uninitiated, as I was before this weekend, a tinnie is a small boat that you can drive without a boat licence. That turned out to be an adventure in itself. Today’s journey, in a much faster boat, consisted of Andy regaling us of tales of life on the river, and the various occupants, which include no other than Cate Blanchett and Paul Keating. In different houses. Obviously.
Other than the 3 private moorings the restaurant has, one of which was currently housing a boat that would set you back a cool $2m, and cost up to $20k to fill up with fuel, the Berowra Waters Inn is a very unprepossessing place. No signage giving any hint to what is behind the floor to ceiling windows that stretch the length of the restaurant. It is the smartly dressed guests sat at smartly laid tables, drinking flutes of champagne, that hint of the wonders inside.
We were greeted on the pontoon of the restaurant by the manager, and whisked through a very large brown wooden door, up the 12 or so stone steps, and into the restaurant. With today’s lunch service only doing 16 covers there felt a kind of serenity that you don’t usually associate with restaurants that have a very open plan kitchen, as the Inn has. The chefs appeared almost graceful, perfecting their works of art, before sending them out to hungry diners.
Our menu, as was everyone else’s, was a set 7 course degustation menu, and was presented like a little origami puzzle, so perfect that it felt wrong to open it. As we were perusing the food we were about to experience, and that is the right word, experience, we reflected on degustation menus. Different to the a la carte type of dining, the degustation menu forces you, if force is the right word when discussing world class food, it forces you to try things you probably wouldn’t ordinarily order. I know for a fact, one of our party of two, and it wasn’t me, wouldn’t have ordered oysters, even though it was an amuse bouche, and definitely would not have ordered the “hapuka, mussels & herbs”, not being much of a fan of mussels. What she wouldn’t have known beforehand, was that this would be her favourite course of the whole afternoon, and the “mussels” were dehydrated, if you can get your head around what that is.
Even before we had a morsel of food, we had our first drinks. And it might possibly have changed my life. The restaurant sells a selection of 3, custom made signature cocktails, in little inviting bottles that are hard to resist. It was even harder to resist, nay, it was futile, once I discovered that one of the 3 cocktails was made on a base of single malt whisky, aged in Pinot casks. Adding some lemon, and paperbark, (I still don’t know if this is an actual thing. I would appreciate your input), a drink was produced that I will remember for a very long time. The whisky was subtle, yet distinctive. And whether it was the lemon, or the paperbark, or the combination of the two, I need to know how to make this drink. My afternoon was made, and we hadn’t yet started on the food.
Over the course of the next few hours we had spanner crab, the afore mentioned hapuka and mussels, pork with apple and bacon, wagyu beef, goats cheese, and a frangipani sponge that took my breath away. A 2015 Walsh & Sons Cabernet Sauvignon from the Margaret River in Western Australia was an excellent accompaniment.
Whilst time had been passing blissfully, the sudden arrival of the seaplane, coasting down the river, to the restaurant’s pontoon, brought into sharp relief that it must now be past 4pm, and almost the end of lunch service. A lunch service that I was very lucky, and very grateful to have experienced. Sadly, it was time for us to leave
As Andy whisked us home we were left reflecting on an experience that will live long in the memory, and long on the waistline.
