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Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant, Sydney, Australia. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant in Sydney

Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant in Sydney are two icons of the city’s gastronomic scene. The chef is one of the most passionate and inventive of Australia’s cooks, while the restaurant with its spectacular harbour views that sweep from the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the Opera House would be the place to eat even without such talent in the kitchen.

We spent much of our time in Australia last year writing about the fantastic food scene and formidable restaurants and talking to the finest local chefs, from Dan Hunter to Ben Shewry – as well as chatting to great foreign chefs, including Rene Redzepi and Massimo Bottura about what makes dining in Australia so special. One chef we got to spend time with was Chef Peter Gilmore of Quay restaurant in Sydney.

Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant in Sydney

For writers who review restaurants, there are a few commonly held beliefs of what makes – or doesn’t make – a great fine dining restaurant. One of these truisms is that big restaurants that seat, say, more than fifty diners per lunch or dinner service will generally not be great restaurants. Another is that restaurants with astonishingly good views generally don’t have astonishingly good food.

Quay restaurant offers extraordinary views of Sydney Harbour, the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge and can average close to 100 customers for lunch or dinner service. However, it belies those restaurant-reviewing truisms by being widely recognised as Australia’s best restaurant. For food lovers visiting Sydney, dining here easily ranks above climbing the Bridge or seeing an opera when visiting the sun-kissed city.

Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant, Sydney, Australia. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

From the first sip of Champagne – and this is a restaurant where you’ll want to pop some bubbles – to drinking in the views, a meal at Quay is something to savour.

The year 2012 was certainly one to savour for Quay, ranked as Australia’s top restaurant in San Pellegrino’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants (at number 29) and voted the Best Restaurant in Australasia. Local recognition was no less significant, being named 2013 Restaurant of the Year by Australia’s two leading restaurant awards, the Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant awards and The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide awards.

Despite all this acclaim, Quay’s chef of over ten years, Peter Gilmore, remains the quintessential chef’s chef. He doesn’t front a chain of restaurants. He doesn’t endorse stock cubes or have a line of pasta sauces in supermarkets. You will never tune into morning television to see him flirting with TV presenters while whipping up a dumbed down version of his carefully considered dishes.

One television appearance he did make on an exceptionally popular Australian cooking reality show teetered on making the chef a celebrity, much to his surprise.

Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant, Sydney, Australia. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

“Being recognised on the street was weird at first…,” Chef Gilmore confided to us in his deep, smooth voice as we strolled through the light-filled dining room towards his busy but calm hub of a kitchen.

However, it was clear that people did recognise him. As we passed through the buzzy restaurant, a young teenager dining with his dad fawned over the chef as if he was a bonafide rock star. In culinary terms, he is.

While the restaurant was already extraordinarily busy before Gilmore’s television appearance (there is customarily a six month waiting list for a Saturday night table), the exposure saw Quay’s waiting list grow even longer.

John Fink, third generation restaurateur and director of the family-owned Fink Group, which owns Quay, amusingly quipped that they had been so busy, “my mother can’t even get a booking”. (See John Fink’s Guide to Eating and Drinking in Sydney.)

Once we were in the kitchen, Gilmore added some last-minute touches to his intricate dishes while an endless flow of committed wait staff – undoubtedly Sydney’s best – effortlessly juggled dishes while memorising Gilmore’s little phrases, such as “please take a moment to enjoy the perfume of the dish”, to help diners get even more out of these beautifully balanced plates.

The aromatic dish in question on the day Lara and I dined at Quay was Berkshire pig jowl, maltose crackling, prunes, and cauliflower cream, perfumed with prune kernel oil. While the perfume of the dish was otherworldly, so was the look of the dish. Gilmore’s creations are often strikingly elegant, such as the starters from the degustation menu we sampled.

The first, a sashimi of blue mackerel, smoked eel flowers, sea scallops, pickled apple, nasturtiums, and Tasmanian wasabi, and the second, a salad of rhubarb, endive beetroot, purple carrot, rosa radish, kohlrabi, goat’s curd, pomegranate molasses, and violets were so pretty that we witnessed diners just staring at them for a few moments before even thinking of lifting a fork from the crisp white tablecloth.

The pig jowl dish, on the other hand, had diners perplexed about the surprising appearance of the ‘crackling’ before the aromas of the dish proved too much and they had to dive in, alternating each moreish mouthful with a sip of a notable red wine from Quay’s exceptional wine list.

While that dish sounds heavy on paper, in the mouth it’s a delight, with the tremendous mix of textures and balance of flavours that are the chef’s trademarks.

“I really spend a lot of time making sure the ingredients don’t only work texturally or visually, but also on the whole combination – the flavours, the texture, the visual approach, the sense of proportions, the sense of balance,” Gilmore told us. “Everything about the dish has to have some sort of sense of harmony.”

Chef Gilmore calls his cuisine ‘nature based’ and while that may come across as elementary, the chef’s roots are in, well, making seeds take root. The chef’s unfeigned connection to the land began when he started planting his own home garden over seven years ago.

“When everyone was into molecular food I turned my back on it and said, no, I want to look towards the garden, towards nature,” Gilmore explained.

Gilmore’s home experiments saw him planting ancient and heirloom varieties of vegetables that Quay later contracted Blue Mountains organic farmers Richard and Nina Kalina to grow in ample volume for the restaurant. His quest to reintroduce rare varieties of vegetables allowed him a contractual exclusive use of that ingredient from his farmers for the first two years of supply. He also utilises around eight or nine suppliers of specialty ingredients at any one time during the year.

While these methods of sourcing produce are building momentum with progressive chefs worldwide, Gilmore had his system in place while other chefs were still engrossed with replicating the foams and spherification techniques that were the legacies of influential Spanish chef Ferran Adrià.

Chef Peter Gilmore and Quay Restaurant, Sydney, Australia. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

As I watched the chef work in the kitchen, some diners in the restaurant had already finished their main courses and in the kitchen the chefs on dessert duty were not only cramped for space but for time. Of the 14 chefs the kitchen requires to cover a meal service (there are 28 chefs altogether), a few of them were busy preparing desserts – one of which is a tricky dish that they can’t take off the menu due to its popularity, the chef’s famous snow egg.

Many chefs leave the sweet stuff to a dedicated pastry chef, but Gilmore explained that, “It all comes from me. Because I believe the dining experience has to be seamless, from the beginning to the end, and have the same creative vision all the way through.” Gilmore’s insistence on writing his own dessert menu is essential to making Quay such a complete dining experience.

Later, as the last of the desserts left the pass, Gilmore met with a dairy supplier who had arrived and sampled his butter before instructing a chef on how he wanted an ingredient prepared for a new dish he was developing. While John Fink has insisted Gilmore block out one day a week for experimenting and refining new dishes, creativity doesn’t work to a timetable. The chef tries to strike a balance between reinventing his classic dishes and finding room for new ones to take their place, insisting that anything new on the menu has to earn its presence on the table.

On the day that Lara and I visited the restaurant to interview the chef, Gilmore presented us with a surreal, sculptural-looking ‘chocolate ethereal’ dessert he was about to add to the menu. Consisting of jersey ice cream, salted caramel, prunes, walnuts, and ethereal sheets of different types of milk chocolate, it was enchanting to look at and even more dreamy to taste.

The dining scene in Sydney – and indeed in Australia – is in the best shape it’s ever been with accomplished and adventurous chefs at the helm of great restaurants making the most of Australia’s brilliant produce.

Peter Gilmore and his team, along with their producers and suppliers, make Quay one of the most singular dining experiences in Australia, if not the world. It’s the best of bright, beautiful Sydney on a plate. And it has those killer views.

At the end of the month, the 2013 San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants will be announced. We won’t be surprised if Quay – and a few of our other favourite Australian restaurants – climb up the list.

Quay Restaurant

www.quay.com.au

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About Terence Carter

Terence Carter is an editorial food and travel photographer and infrequent travel writer with a love of photographing people, places and plates of food. After living in the Middle East for a dozen years, he settled in South-East Asia a dozen years ago with his wife, travel and food writer and sometime magazine editor Lara Dunston.

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Comments

  1. Lina says

    August 24, 2013 at 7:56 pm

    What an awesome interview! I totally remember the “please take a moment to enjoy the perfume” comment when my husband and I ate there in May 2012.

  2. Lara Dunston says

    August 26, 2013 at 12:54 pm

    Thanks, Lina!

    I know some diners don’t like being told how to eat, but I don’t mind waiters giving advice on how to enjoy a dish at all, especially when it’s something as simple as to inhale before opening our mouths. Because our sense of smell affects our taste, it’s so important to take in the aromas.

    I watch so many people eat (something I see as part of my job as a food-travel writer) and I notice a lot of people don’t stop to smell their food first, they just dig right in. I always wonder if they’ll enjoy it as much as they might had they taken the time to smell first.

    Thanks for dropping by!

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Lara and Terence are an Australian-born, Southeast Asia-based travel and food writers and photographers who have authored scores of guidebooks, produced countless travel and food stories, are currently developing cookbooks and guidebooks, and host culinary tours and writing and photography retreats in Southeast Asia.
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Still looking for Christmas cooking inspo? Check o Still looking for Christmas cooking inspo? Check out our seafood recipe collection, especially if you celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve with a fish focused meal in the Southern Italian tradition, transformed by Italian-Americans into the Feast of the Seven Fishes, or like Australians, who celebrate Christmas in the sweltering summer, feast on seafood for Christmas Day lunch, we’ve got lots of easy seafood recipes for you.

Our recipes include a classic prawn cocktail, blini with smoked salmon, a ceviche-style appetiser, and devilled eggs with caviar. We’ve also got recipes for fish soup, seafood pies and pastas, salmon tray bake, and crispy salmon with creamy mashed potatoes.

You’ll find the recipes here: https://grantourismotravels.com/seafood-recipes-for-christmas-eve-and-christmas-day-menus/
(Link in bio if you’re seeing this on IG)

Merry Christmas if you’re celebrating!! 

#christmas #christmasfood #seafood #fish #recipes #christmasrecipes #foodstagram #foodblogger #food #foodlover #igfood #picoftheday #igfood #igfoodie #cooking #foodblog #food #foodstagram #instafood #instafoodie #foodie #foodies #foodlover #foodpics #foodporn #foodphotography #foodwriter #foodblogger #grantourismo #grantourismotravels #xmas #merrychristmas #happychristmas
If you’re still looking for food inspo for Chris If you’re still looking for food inspo for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day meals, my smoked salmon ‘carpaccio’ recipe is one of dozens of recipes in this compilation of our best Christmas recipes (link below). 

The Christmas recipe compilation includes collections of our best Christmas breakfast recipes, best Christmas brunch recipes, best Christmas starter recipes, best Christmas cocktails, best Christmas dessert recipes, and homemade edible Christmas gifts and more.

My smoked salmon carpaccio recipe makes an easy elegant appetiser that’s made in minutes. If you’re having guests over, you can make the dish ahead by assembling the salmon, capers and pickled onions, and refrigerate it, then pour on the dressing just before serving. 

Provide toasted baguette slices and bowls of additional capers, pickles and dressing, so guests can customise their carpaccio. And open the bubbly!

You’ll find that recipe and many more Christmas recipes here: https://grantourismotravels.com/best-christmas-recipes/ (link in bio if you’re seeing this on IG)

Merry Christmas!! X

#christmas #christmasfood #recipes #christmasrecipes #foodstagram #salmon #smokedsalmon #foodblogger #food #foodlover #igfood #picoftheday #igfoodie #cooking #foodblog #food #foodstagram #instafood #instafoodie #foodie #foodies #foodlover #foodpics #foodporn #foodphotography #foodwriter #foodblogger #recipedeveloper #writingacookbook #grantourismo #grantourismotravels 
#xmas #merrychristmas #happychristmas
If you haven’t visited our site in a while, I sh If you haven’t visited our site in a while, I shared a collection of recipes for homemade edible Christmas gifts — for condiments, hot sauces, chilli oils, a whole array of pickles, spice blends, chilli salt, furakake seasoning, and spicy snacks, such as our Cambodian and Vietnamese roasted peanuts. 

I love giving homemade edibles as gifts as much as I love receiving them. Who wouldn’t appreciate jars filled with their favourite chilli oils, hot sauces, piquant pickles, and spicy peanuts that loved-ones have taken the time to make? 

Aside from the gesture and affordability of gifting homemade edibles, you’re minimising waste. You can use recycled jars or if buying new mason jars or clip-top Kilner jars, you know they’ll get repurposed.

No need for wrapping, just attach some Christmas baubles or tinsel to the lid. I used squares of Cambodian kramas (cotton scarves), which can be repurposed as napkins or drink coasters, and tied a ribbon or two around the lids, and attached last year’s Christmas tree decorations to some.

You’ll find the recipes here: https://grantourismotravels.com/homemade-edible-christmas-gifts/ (link in bio if you’re seeing this on IG)

Yes, that’s Pepper... every time there’s a camera around... 

#christmasgiftideas #ediblegifts ##christmasfoodgifts #foodgifts #giftideas #homemadegifts #christmasfood #ediblegiftideas #hotsauce #chillisauce #sriracha #pickles #homemadepickles #recipes #foodstagram #foodblogger #food #foodlover #igfood 
#blackcat #blackcatsofinstagram #picoftheday 
#christmas #christmastree #xmas #merrychristmas #happychristmas #cambodia #siemreap
This crab omelette is a decadent eggs dish that’ This crab omelette is a decadent eggs dish that’s perfect if you’re just back from the fish markets armed with luxurious fresh crab meat. It’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and very, very moreish.

Our crab omelette recipe was one of our 22 most popular egg recipes of 2022 on our website Grantourismo and it’s no surprise. It’s appeared more times than any other egg recipes on our annual round-ups of most popular recipes since Terence launched Weekend Eggs when we launched Grantourismo in 2010.

If you’re an eggs lover, do check out the recipe collection. It includes egg recipes from right around the world, from recipes for classic kopitiam eggs from Singapore and Malaysia and egg curries from India and Myanmar to all kinds of egg recipes from Thailand, Japan, Korea, China, Mexico, USA, Australia, UK, and Ireland.

And do browse our Weekend Eggs archives for further eggspiration (sorry). We have hundreds of egg recipes from the 13 year-old series of recipes for quintessential egg dishes from around the world, which we started on our 2010 year-long global grand tour focused on slow, local and experiential travel. 

We’re hoping 2023 will be the year we can finally publish the Weekend Eggs cookbook we’ve talked about for years based on that series. After we can find a publisher for the Cambodia cookbook of course... :( 

Recipe collection here (and proper link to Grantourismo in our bio):
https://grantourismotravels.com/22-most-popular-egg-recipes-of-2022-from-weekend-eggs/

If you cook the recipe and enjoy it please let us know — we love to hear from you — either in the comments at the end of the recipe or share a pic with us here.

#recipe #recipes #eggs #eggslover #breakfasteggs #WeekendEggs #egg #breakfast #brunch #igfood #igfoodie #cooking #foodblog #food #foodstagram #instafood  #instafoodie #foodie #foodies #foodlover #foodpics #foodporn #foodphotography #foodwriter #foodblogger #recipedeveloper #lookingforapublisher #writingacookbook  #grantourismo #grantourismotravels
I’m late to share this, but a few days ago Angko I’m late to share this, but a few days ago Angkor Archaeological Park, home to stupendous Angkor Wat, pictured, celebrated 30 years of its UNESCO World Heritage listing. 

That’s as good an excuse as any to put this magnificent, sprawling archaeological site on your travel list this year.

While riverside Siem Reap, your base for exploring Angkor is bustling once more, there are still nowhere near the visitors of the last busy high season months of December-January 2018-2019 when there were 290,000 visitors. 

Last month there were just 55,000 visitors and December feels a little quieter. A tour guide friend said there were about 150 people at Angkor Wat for sunrise a few days ago.

If you’re looking for tips to visiting Angkor, Siem Reap and Cambodia, just ask us a question in the comments below or check Grantourismo as we’ve got loads of info on our site. Click through to the link in the bio and explore our Cambodia guide or search for ‘Angkor’. 

And please do let us know if you’re coming to Siem Reap. We’d love to see you here x

#siemreap #cambodia #asia #travel #instatravel #traveldeeper #slowtravel #localtravel #experientialtravel #exploremore #neverstopexploring #goexplore #igtravel #angkorwat #angkor #temple #temples #angkorwithoutcrowds #unesco #unescoworldheritagesite #unescoworldheritage #archaeology #archaeologicalsite #traveladdict #beautifuldestinations #beautifulplaces #travelgram #wanderlust #picoftheday📷 #grantourismotravels.
Our soy ginger chicken recipe will make you sticky Our soy ginger chicken recipe will make you sticky, flavourful and succulent chicken thighs that are fantastic with steamed rice, Chinese greens or a salad, such as a Southeast Asian slaw. 

The chicken can be marinated for up to 24 hours before cooking, which ensures it’s packed with flavour, then it can be cooked on a barbecue or in a pan.

Terence’s soy ginger chicken recipe is one of our favourite recipes for a quick and easy meal. I love the sound of the sizzling thighs in the pan, and the warming aromas wafting through the apartment. 

It’s amazing how such flavourful juicy chicken thighs come from such a quick and easy recipe.

Recipe here (and proper link to Grantourismo in our bio): https://grantourismotravels.com/soy-ginger-chicken-recipe/

If you cook it and enjoy it please let us know — we love to hear from you — either here or in the comments at the end of the recipe on the site or share a pic with us x 

#recipe #recipes #chicken #soygingerchicken #asianfood #southeastasianfood #igfood #igfoodie #cooking #cookingtime #recipe #recipes #comfortfood #foodblog #food #foodstagram #healthyfood #instafood #healthy #instafoodie #foodie #foodies #foodlover #foodpics #foodporn #foodphotography #foodwriter #foodblogger #recipedeveloper #writingacookbook #grantourismo #grantourismotravels
Who can guess the ingredients and what we’re mak Who can guess the ingredients and what we’re making with my market haul from Psar Samaki in Siem Reap — all for a whopping 10,000 riel (US$2.50)?! 

Birds-eye chillies thrown in for free! They were on my list but the seller I spent most at (5,000 riel!) scooped up a handful and slipped them into my bag. She was my last stop and knew what I was making.

My Khmer is poor, even after all our years in Cambodia, as I don’t learn languages with the ease I did in my 20s, plus I’m mentally exhausted after researching and writing all day. I have a better vocabulary of Old and Middle Khmer than modern Khmer from studying the ancient inscriptions for the Cambodian culinary history component of our cookbook I’m writing.

So when one seller totalled my purchases I thought she said 5,000 riel but she handed back 4,500 riel! The sum total of two huge bunches of herbs and kaffir lime leaves was 500 riel.

Tip: if visiting Siem Reap, use Khmer riel for local shopping. We’ve mainly used riel since the pandemic started— rarely use US$ now as market sellers quote prices in riels, as do local shops and bakeries, and I tip tuk tuk drivers in riels. I find prices quoted in riels are lower.

Psar Samaki is cheaper than Psar Leu, which is cheaper than Psar Chas, as it’s a wholesale market, which means the produce is fresher. I see veggies arriving, piled high in the back of vehicles, with dirt still on them — as I did on this trip. 

The scent of a mountain of incredibly aromatic pineapples offloaded from the back of a dusty ute was so heady they smelt like they’d just been cut. More exotic European style veggies arrive by big trucks in boxes labelled in Vietnamese (from Dalat) and Mandarin (from China), such as beautiful snow-white cauliflower I spotted.

Note: the freshest produce is sold on the dirt road at the back of the market.

#cambodia #siemreap #foodwriter #foodblogger #foodphotography #igfood #foodstagram #instafood #instafoodie #foodie #instadaily #picoftheday #market #siemreapmarket #psarsamaki #marketfresh #vegetables #healthyfood #marketshopping #traveltips #foodtravel #culinarytravel #localtravel #cooking #cookingtime #curry #homemade #currypaste #grantourismotravels
My Vietnamese-ish meatballs and rice noodles recip My Vietnamese-ish meatballs and rice noodles recipe makes tender meatballs doused in a delightfully tangy-sweet sauce, sprinkled with crispy fried shallots, with carrot-daikon, crunchy cucumber and fragrant herbs. 

The dish is inspired by bún chả, a Hanoi specialty, but it’s not bún chả. No matter what Google or food bloggers tell you. Names are important, especially when cooking and writing about cuisines not our own.

This is an authentic bún chả recipe:  https://grantourismotravels.com/vietnamese-bun-cha-recipe/ You’ll need to get the outdoor BBQ/grill going to do proper smoky bún chả meat patties (not meatballs).

My meatball noodle bowl is perhaps more closely related to dishes such as a Central Vietnam cousin bún thịt nướng (pork skewers on rice noodles in a bowl) and a Southern relation bún bò Nam Bộ (beef atop rice noodles, sprinkled with fried shallots (Nam Bộ=Southern Vietnam) though neither include meatballs. 

Xíu mại= meatballs although they’re different in flavour to mine, which taste more like bún chả patties. Xíu mại remind me of Southern Italian meatballs in tomato sauce.

In Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, home to millions of Khmer, there’s bánh tằm xíu mại. Bánh tằm=silk worm noodles. They’re topped with meatballs, cucumber, daikon, carrot, fresh herbs, crispy fried onions. Difference: cold noodles doused in a sauce of coconut cream and fish sauce. 

Remove the meatballs, add chopped fried spring rolls and it’s Cambodia’s banh sung, which is a rice noodle salad similar to Vietnam’s bún chả giò :) 

Recipe here: (link in bio) https://grantourismotravels.com/vietnamese-meatballs-and-rice-noodles-recipe/

For more on these culinary connections you’ll have to wait for our Cambodian cookbook and culinary history. In a hurry to know? Come support the project on Patreon. (link in bio)

#recipe #recipes #vietnamesefood #cambodianfood #asianfood #southeastasianfood #ricenoodles #rice #noodlebowl #meatballs #igfood #igfoodie #foodblog #food #foodstagram #instafood  #instafoodie #foodie #foodies #foodlover #foodpics #foodporn #foodphotography #foodwriter #foodblogger #writingacookbook #writingacambodiancookbook #patreon #patreoncreator #grantourismo
It is pure coincidence that Pepper’s eye colour It is pure coincidence that Pepper’s eye colour matches the furnishings of our rented apartment. So, no, I did not colour-coordinate the interiors to match our cat’s eyes. 

I keep getting DMs from pet clothing brands wanting to “partner” with Pepper and send her free cat clothes and cat accessories. Although she did wear a kerchief for a few years in her more adventurous fashion-forward teenage years, I cannot see this cat in clothes now, can you? 

#pepper #blackcat #blackcats #blackcatsofinstagram #blackcatsrule #blackcatsmatter #cat #cats #catsofinstagram #catstagram #catlover #catlovers #catlove #catoftheday #catphoto #catpic #catpics #cambodiancat #cambodiancatsofinstagram #catlife #catloversclub #catoftheday #catgram #catstagram #cats_of_instagram #catphotography #catsofig #catsoftheworld #catsofinsta #cats🐱 #siemreap #cambodia

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