Latest news with #TailorRoom
Sydney Morning Herald
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Have we hit peak luxury grill? It seems so, at the new restaurant by the Rockpool team
Part of The Collective – unceremoniously billed as 'Sydney's newest hospitality precinct' – The Dining Room has sister venues in The Garden, a courtyard offering breakfast (steak and eggs!) and a breezy lunch-dinner menu, and the Tailor Room, which stirs down some of The Rocks' cleanest, clearest cocktails. In The Dining Room, a sympathetic refit of The Argyle nightclub means comfortable booths and spotlit tables spaced among heritage pylons. If you can stop the sickly-sweet flashbacks to your early 20s and instead concentrate on the food and drink, there are wins from the get-go. A riff on a negroni subtly builds in layers of strawberry. Native citrus mayonnaise gives all kinds of edges to a one-bite abalone schnitzel. A fluted tartlet filled with parmesan cream, podded sugar snaps and a soft-set quail egg has lovely, lingering tang. But what The Dining Room somehow manages is to mask truly complex and assured cooking behind decisions that strip it of the magic. Why pick a name so generic that it says nothing at all, one that's shared by the restaurant at the Park Hyatt down the road? Why pipe disco-pop through the speakers, then follow it with a live act that leaps into a half-hearted Michael Jackson cover backed by a drum machine? Part of the thrill of eating at restaurants is that it happens in a room full of strangers, but the tables here are so generously spaced, the room so cavernous, that it struggles for energy. Sit near an exit, and a cool draught might blow in all night. Scan the menu, and 'Morton Bay' might raise an eyebrow, or the misspelling of 'Myer' lemon, or the absence of a vegetarian main other than a spin on mushroom risotto, which just feels lazy.
The Age
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Have we hit peak luxury grill? It seems so, at the new restaurant by the Rockpool team
Part of The Collective – unceremoniously billed as 'Sydney's newest hospitality precinct' – The Dining Room has sister venues in The Garden, a courtyard offering breakfast (steak and eggs!) and a breezy lunch-dinner menu, and the Tailor Room, which stirs down some of The Rocks' cleanest, clearest cocktails. In The Dining Room, a sympathetic refit of The Argyle nightclub means comfortable booths and spotlit tables spaced among heritage pylons. If you can stop the sickly-sweet flashbacks to your early 20s and instead concentrate on the food and drink, there are wins from the get-go. A riff on a negroni subtly builds in layers of strawberry. Native citrus mayonnaise gives all kinds of edges to a one-bite abalone schnitzel. A fluted tartlet filled with parmesan cream, podded sugar snaps and a soft-set quail egg has lovely, lingering tang. But what The Dining Room somehow manages is to mask truly complex and assured cooking behind decisions that strip it of the magic. Why pick a name so generic that it says nothing at all, one that's shared by the restaurant at the Park Hyatt down the road? Why pipe disco-pop through the speakers, then follow it with a live act that leaps into a half-hearted Michael Jackson cover backed by a drum machine? Part of the thrill of eating at restaurants is that it happens in a room full of strangers, but the tables here are so generously spaced, the room so cavernous, that it struggles for energy. Sit near an exit, and a cool draught might blow in all night. Scan the menu, and 'Morton Bay' might raise an eyebrow, or the misspelling of 'Myer' lemon, or the absence of a vegetarian main other than a spin on mushroom risotto, which just feels lazy.
