The great thing about being interstate is that its always an excuse to spoil yourselves with something fairly overpriced. I’ve always wanted to try Rockpool’s Bar and Grill in Sydney but never got the chance.

Its a great restaurant where you’d take someone special for a fancy meal with the exception of forking out more than your average piece of beef (approx $60). It’s a classy restaurant with style, elegance and good produce thanks to the master mind > Neil Perry.

When we first walked in, I noticed the restaurant was super dark *oh no* which meant my photos were gonna be crap. At times like this, its not about the photos but its about the food, company and the atmosphere which was portrayed exceptionally well.

Starters

I admit, when fine dining in a restaurant.. I always look forward to the warm bread, premium butter and pink salt

Mains

I warn you mains do not come with anything fancy on the side. So i recommend you order a couple of sides to eat with your meat, chicken or fish. Dishes range from $36-$110 (steak begins @ approximately $55)

Fillet minute style steak with cafe de paris butter
(B) being a carnivore couldn’t resist the temptation of beef. Beef was soft and tender and was god damn tasty. From memory it had tamarind which gave off such beautiful flavours. I’m in love with that cafe de paris butter!!!!!

Wood fire rotisseried free range chicken
(Mcky) ordered one of the awesome mains out of all of us. Chicken had a nice smoky taste hence why it takes 50 minutes to cook! Its really worth the wait.

Grain fed fillet steak
(M) & (Foo) If your going to eat at a meat orientated restaurant, this would be the best option for you as its bigger, heavier and god damn tender!

Seared Crisp Snapper with Sautéed Globe Artichoke, Braised Peas and Green Olive Butter
Idiot me ordered fish, come to think of it, why the hell did i order seafood at a meat restaurant??? iDIOT! Anyways snapper was friggen a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!!!

(Ll) didn’t like his dish which was a shame. I’ve never had wagyu corned-beef.

Sides

Pumpkin and Sweet Potato with Burnt Butter and Garlic Yoghurt
Pumpkin sex right here ya’ll

Steamed veggies
Can’t go wrong with the greens!

Baby kipfler potatoes
If only every roast had wagyu fat smeared on the veggies.. what an awesome dream!

Dessert

Desserts are fairly pricey. Majority of them range from $18-$20. So to all you blokes who want to impress your date, make sure you have spare cash to shout her something sweet

Raspberry & vanilla mille feuille
(M) chose the best dessert of the night!!! Thin fragile wafer pastry with delicious creme filling and fresh raspberries!

Chocolate & Caramel rice crackle cake
I didn’t get to try any of this but apparently it was pretty good!

Vanilla Macaron with Strawberry Ripple Ice Cream and Strawberry Salad
(B) loves his macarons that he couldn’t resist saying no to it. Macaron was made to perfection and the ice-cream was divine!

Passionfruit Pavlova
(Foo) being the Aussie one our of all of us had to order the good ole Aussie pavo!

Black Forest Trifle Inspired by the Fat Duck’s “BFG”
(Mcky) Blackforest trifle was a bit sour thanks to the cherries but overall took a while to get used to. (Mcky) didn’t fancy it but after a couple of spoonfuls (M) and I learned to like it.. its one of those desserts like blackforest which is hard to like or to love.

Creme brulee with prune and armagnac
Can’t go wrong with creme brulee!

Rockpool Bar & Grill, Melbourne
Crown Casino 8 Whiteman St
Southbank, 3006

Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney
66 Hunter St
Sydney, NSW 2000
P: (02) 8078 1900

Gunners Barracks? Where the hell is that??? After being some what scared of driving over the god damn bridge, I had no choice but to concur my fear and drive over the stoopid thing!! I can proudly say I didn’t miss an exit LOL but I admit I was shitting bricks thinking I did.

Gunners Barracks had been on our high tea list for a very very long time and it seemed to be one of the places hardly anyone had visited. After this date being in the diary for approximately 3 months.. the day everyone seemed to be free turned out to be a cloudy, cold, partially rainy / sunny day.

Don’t want a frozen ass? then bring a jumper!

Little did I know id be going for a mini bush walk down into the canopy. After being seated, the wind started to whirl our hair and what was once soft and neat, became infested with ocean breeze grease LOL.

Failing to get an indoor booking, our asses were frozen like Shinara’s food HAHHA (see chocolatesuze, the ninja review & penguin says feed me). Luckily, we were offered blankets and managed to scab enough to cover ourselves. Having said this, the chilly experience made it unusual for an afternoon-tea experience. Would have been more pleasurable if the venue had some sort of transparent / blind to shield the wind on such days like the one we had.

Hot bevy

Since it was freezing, I was in no mood to be adventurous when it came to my tea selection. I just wanted something that would make me feel comfort so I stuck to my usual high tea beverage of “darjeeling”. .

Nurbong darjeeling tea
There’s something about sugar cubes that make the girls go awwww sooo kyooote!

Finger sandwiches

Selection: egg ‘n mayonnaise, corned beef and salmon
Bread wasn’t as soft fluffy like it should be.. but i’m blaming the strong wind which made it a bit stale. My first thought was, “where’s the cucumber sangas??” I know they can be quite boring but I do like my cucumber and dill and creme fraiche.

Savoury pastries

Samosas: were delicious especially with the salt flakes sprinkled on top. Unfortunately after we ate our samosa’s we realised our plate didn’t get the yoghurt dipping sauce *BOO* it was really nice without them so it didn’t bother me.

Asparagus quiche was reallyyyy tasty and pastry was crunchy / flakey and butter SOOOO GOOD!. I wish they were bigger in size.. I could and would love to have a big one to myself

Scone lovin’

As mentioned in a previous post, Stamford scones had set the bottom benchmark for their scones.

These scones were absolutely AMAZING thanks to the light and fluffy center.  They were huge and twice the size of the Tea Room – QVB scones.

Usually afternoon tea comes with two different flavoured scones (plain and rasin). I figured they made the scones bigger to make up for the loss of the rasin scone. Didn’t matter to me because their texture was enough to make me happy.

Blueberry jam and cream
Jam at the tea room was much nicer, jam here seemed slighty watery. What I loved about the jam here was the actual balls of blueberry!

Saving the sweets till last…

I also noticed, tiers are shared between two people. In this case 2 tiers were used to share between 8 of us.  They must have ran out of tiers on the day?

Peach Cake & Cheesecake
Peach cake was delicious! Texture was moist and somewhat refreshing as this was the first sweet I ate for the day.If your a cheesecake lover this sure didn’t feel like you were eating cheesecake due to its soft, fluffy light texture which I really liked!

Jaffa Macaron & Coffee Gateau
Chocolate and orange is such an awesome combo. Totally loved the the taste of it as it felt like I was munching on a bag of jaffa chocolates. The coffee Gateau was my favourite cake of the day. It had many layers one consisting of hazelnut chocolate. ^_^

Mango Sago
My first saw the mango pudding, I was thinking to myself.. is this Yum Cha??? Felt quite odd seeing an asian dessert on a afternoon menu. Apart from that it was soft, silky and creamy which gave some of us Yum Cha cravings ^_^ *licks lips*

Harbour Views

Thank heavens the rain and the dark clouds blew over and cleared up in the afternoon. Basically if you sit outside, these are the views you’ll get to see.

Overall

Apart from the weather which played a pretty big part on our experience. Tea Room @ QVB and Gunners were both different in many ways especially in terms of portion sizes (I think its much bigger here?). Anyways if your looking for a place to go to high-tea this winter, i recommend Tea Room @ QVB for sheowwww!

The Tea Room @ Gunners Barracks
End Of Suakin Drv
Mosman NSW 2088
P: (02) 8962 5900