Billy Kwong

The chef of Billy Kwong is Kylie Kwong one of my favourite television chefs so it seemed appropriate that this was the first restaurant that I elected to dine at. Joining me for dinner were my friends Brenda, Kim, Elaine and my best friend in the world Phil who just chose that night to visit from Melbourne. Most serendipitous.

Firstly you can't book to dine at Billy Kwongs. You just have to front up at the door and hope for the best. I tell a lie, if you have 6 people in your party there is one table that you can book but we were just 5. It is a pocket handkerchief of a restaurant located on Crown Street in East Sydney and there is a stream of clientele coming and going. You can also watch the activity in the kitchen as it is open as is the current trend in modern dining these days.

As a fat forty and fabulous woman the seating left a bit to be desired. We were effectively seated on plastic bathroom stools. Not terribly comfortable but by the end of the night I didn't care! The menu was fantastic and we couldn't make up our minds over anything so we opted for "the banquet". The banquet is not a hard and fast menu. You tell the staff what you dont want to eat and they will cater the banquet to you.

One of the original ideas of "the restaurant club" was that you had to love food, you weren't going to quibble over the price and you would try anything. That being said one of the restaurant gang didn't eat red meat and another didn't really eat molluscs. That was relayed to the wait staff and off they went.

The first item to be brought out was one of my two favourites of the evening. We had scallop dumplings with a garlic chili oil. Oh my! I was disappointed at first because there was only 1 each. They were warm, light, not too spicy and just the perfect. They melted in the mouth and there was a hint of a citrus of some kind. I am guessing lime. As an aside, one of the standouts about the service, which couldn't be faulted, was the fact that for every dish we got a clean bowl so as not to mix the very delicate flavours of all the dishes. The second dish was a cold mushroom, tofu and, I think, fennel salad. Again the dressing was a very delicate blend of an asian vinegar and oil.

The third dish was a chicken with ginger. The chicken was obviously organic and fantastic. Again there was a subtle blending of not too many ingredients where you could taste everything. The 4th dish was my least favourite. Not because I didn't like it but because it felt out of place. It was like a soft boiled egg that had then been fried and then broken served with shallots and capsicum and again another dressing. As a brunch this would be sensational. It was very rich. The richness of the runny egg yolk with the light accompaniments was lovely. It is just that everything else we had to eat was so delicate in it's flavours and unique that this was too bold and heavy for the rest of the menu that was served to us.

The next dish I would go back and just eat on it's own. It was duck in plum sauce and was my other favourite dish of the evening. The duck, again, was obviously organic as it was pink with a perfect layer of fat underneath the perfectly crisp skin. The plum sauce came with whole stewed plums and had a hint of ginger and other spices. The sauce was a beautiful pink colour and was not too sweet or too heavy. The duck was to die for.

We had another 3 dishes that unfortunately I can no longer remember as we dined in April. Ok so I'm not that current but I do remember that to accompany the dinner we were suggested to have an organic New Zealand white wine which was lovely and 4 bottles later was still very drinkable. As the end of the evening they serve a platter of perfect sliced fruit. This was a sensational ending to the evening because anything else would have just overpowered the delicate perfect flavours of the food.

There were unusual combinations of food that are what set a fantastic chef apart from others. Apart from the egg dish there was nothing overpowering and by the end of the dinner we were all completely full.

This restaurant is not the place for a romantic dinner. It is for those who love that brilliant fresh asian fusion taste that is coming more and more prolific in Sydney restaurants. This one does it perfectly. The service was unobtrusive but constant. The staff were knowledgable and well versed in the short but perfectly balanced wine list. This restaurant ranks up there as a "must try" for those in Sydney.

The cost was around $120 a head but that was also due to the addition of the 4 bottles of wine.