Chef's Table by Farzan

To some it’s magical. To others it’s all style but precious little substance Gels, spheres and foams. Oh yes, molecular gastronomy is an exacting science. Call bull on it if you will, but do so after trying it, not by sneering at 20 paces. One of the more unique ways to experience the land of gastronomic smoke and mirrors is to hire Farzan Contractor – a chef who has passed through the kitchens of London’s Maze and Nobu – to create a unique “dining experience” either in the private dining room at the restaurant (when we dined he was operating out of Darling Harbour’s The Meat and Wine Co, but is currently looking for new digs) or in the comfort of your own home.

We choose to eat in the restaurant, with full reign given to Farzan to use his imagination and push some culinary boundaries while ‘Push It’ by Salt ‘n’ Pepa lilts from the restaurant proper downstairs. Farzan accompanies you every step of the way. From the minder-style waitress who stands in the corner while you eat, to personally pouring searing hot sesame and cottonseed oil onto fat briny Pacific oysters shot through with scarlet slices of wagyu rich with fat and ocean fresh sashimi salmon. As soon as that oil hits, each element of the dish releases a different fragrance – a beautiful touch.

For $145 a head you want fireworks in a glass. So while there are some nicely executed dishes, the molecular element in each leaves us a little at sea. We want Farzan to do well. We want him to push the boat, wow us and take it to the next level. Sadly, he falls short. Take the mushroom consommé – a clean, full flavoured demi tasse of beautifully clarified stock paired with a king brown mushroom ‘spaghetti’. Though interesting texturally, it’s basically a length of some sort of set, flavourless substance.

We’re similarly unsure of some of the wine matches. The quail with harissa spiced chicken livers and prune relish is matched with a mulled Shiraz (yes, mulled). This is confusing as the sweet, spiced wine blankets the quail rather than cuts the richness. The shot of Pisco (a Peruvian brandy), however, is wonderfully refreshing and a really interesting way to pick up the tempo. But then there’s the scampi tail and lobster sausage. We love surprises – especially with molecular food – but serving a sausage skin stuffed with lobster risotto isn’t surprising, it’s just disappointing. And the marmalade on the side doesn’t work for us, either.

Pear Textures is three versions of the fruit. The first is very gently poached whole and fi lled with white chocolate. It works well, as does the strawberry-stewed pear cooked down to a kind of paste. Where this stage of the dish falls down is the floss and ‘caviar’ (those tiny spheres you see on menus, like the essence of something captured in a skin of itself) which has no flavour. Pear crisp tastes very much like a fruit roll up, only sweeter.

You can eat at any of this city’s star studded restaurants for this money. Sydney diners are no fools – they expect more than tea brought to the table in a test tube. Especially when it’s served in a bog-standard cafeteria teapot, complete with tea bag. There’s some good in this menu. But bang for buck? It’s got a long way to go. Farzan quotes George Bernard Shaw on the back of his menu: ‘You see things that are and say, “Why?” But I dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?”. We’re more inclined to simply ask: ‘why?’