Customs House - a business lunch

http://www.customshouse.com.au/index.html

Customs House from the River

Each year I am fortunate enough to be invited to the ATA Customer Index presentation &  launch, which is put together for leaders in my industry to get together and get the annual results of the Fifth Quadrant Customer Satisfaction Index.  It's an opportunity to hear the latest results and find out what customers are looking for from Service Delivery in Australia.

This year we went to Customs House.  While I don't normally eat at Customs House, I have usually had pretty good meals there in the past.  I do however get the opportunity to look at the beautifully majestic building on a daily basis from my balcony.  Unfortunately we were not dining in the restaurant but had a private room on the upper floor.  As a bonus, I had never been upstairs at Customs House, so it was a new experience.  The private room was lovely with a large heavy wooden  table and a lovely large chandelier over the table.

Being a private room a set menu was the order of the day.  There was only one entree option available , but quite a good selection available for main course, but no dessert!

Starting the meal was Salad of citrus cured kingfish, avocado, puffed grains, radish and chicory, which was a lovely presented dish.  I really liked the simple presentation of this dish, it reminded me of the fish course at the two Michelin starred Marcus Wearing at the Berkeley in the UK.  The kingfish was sweet and well cooked and the avocado and mango only added to the sweetness of the dish.  The radish should have helped cut through the sweetness somewhat, but did not quite do enough, I think there could have been some more acidity on the plate.  The puffed wheat (which looked like popcorn kernels) added some much needed texture to the plate.  It was a really enjoyable dish and I would definitely recommend this to anyone.

Citrus cured kingfish, avocado, puffed grais.  Lovely

There were 3 options on the pre-set menu; Barramundi, bok choy, wood ear mushrooms, sesame cucumber salad, rice wine caramel dressing; Eye fillet, white polenta, asparagus, broad beans, Swiss brown mushrooms, red wine jus & Veal scallopine, sand crab meat, asparagus, potato mash, dill hollandaise, light.  All of these sounded wonderful and I could easily have chosen any of them, but I went for the Eye fillet.

Eye fillet with white asparagus and mushrooms

When taking the order, the waiters noted that the chef preferred to cook the steak medium rare, which is just fine by me.  I always like to run with the way a chef prefers to cook, as opposed to setting restrictions on how the meat should be (mis)treated :).  Unfortunately the steak came medium, not a big difference but since there was a special mention of how it would be presented, I was a little disappointed.  Setting this aside, the fillet was pretty tasty  and worked well in combination with the mushrooms and asparagus and was pulled together nicely with the red wine jus.  I thought the balance of the dish was slightly off, with too many broad beans on the plate and by the end of all the other ingredients, there were still plenty of those broad beans left!

The service was great with traditional silver service on the day, our glasses were always full and those who had a wine on the day were topped up appropriately.

I would loved to have had dessert as well, but it was not to be.  I have been a fan of the Valrhona chocolate soufflé, creme Anglaise, marmalade ice cream and was really looking forward to sampling this again.  Oh well, it just means that I will need to go back again sometime!

@FoodMeUpScotty

Customs House from my Balcony.  Its worth noting
that Kevin Rudd is in this photo!