This is the no. 1 restaurant in the Blue Mountains on another famous travel site, and the rainy…read moreweeknight we visited, the place had a full house. I was wondering why as the food did not seem as sophisticated on photos as, say, Garage or Solitary. I got my answer alright.
Basically, and despite the website's claims to Italian-Japanese fusion, the cooking style is pre-nouvelle-cuisine French ("cuisine bourgeoise" as Houellebecq might call it) as "preserved" by the Japanese; that is, a style that is easy to find in Japan but almost inexistent in France these days, except in the homes of old (bourgeois) families where the tradition is passed down. Like mine - grandma is a Colonel's wife, and spent her life perfecting her skills in the matter, as she needed to feed 8 children.
Of course, this old style of cooking with elaborate sauces at the centre of rich dishes is very tasty and tends to be well received by just about anybody in the dining public, and here it is done well with excellent Australian ingredients, so no wonder this place rates so highly. It also happens to be easy to screw up, which is why few places outside Japan (which has insane quality standards and perfectionist chefs) still do it, so it's a testimony to how well Pins' kitchen is run that they can do this kind of thing so reliably.
My fillet was an inch thick and very wide, nicely scorched on both sides yet medium rare in the middle. The Diane sauce, made with brandy, tomatoes, peppercorns, mushrooms and cream (I'm guessing; could have been butter) was rich and wonderful, a true expression of a style of cooking I rarely get to enjoy these days, that you might have found in the auberges in the countryside before cheaper and simpler "put some leaves on top of a bit of meat" took over the Western world, ironically (as the Japanese are now custodians of cuisine classique) thanks to the influence Japanese kaiseki-ryori had on Bocuse, Troisgros etc. - in fact I don't think I've ever had a Diane sauce this good. The duck fat roasted potatoes tasted like exactly like their name suggested: dense, well cooked, ummami like there was no tomorrow.
The garlic prawn spaghetti were not, as might have been expected in Australia, spaghetti and prawns tossed in olive oil in which garlic was fried. Instead, again came a cream and tomato based sauce, this time with complexity added by lightly fried leeks (genius! I'm borrowing this one for home) and of course the large prawns and al dente (!) linguine (not spaghetti, but I think that's an improvement).
Dessert (pictured) was the Bombe Alaska. Ever since watching the final scene with Mr Wint and Mr Kidd in Diamonds are Forever I've wanted to order this, but nobody ever offers it on their menu. Well again, we find the cuisine bourgeoise impeccably executed; the macaroon had the perfect texture, easily breaking apart under the fork but retaining its chewiness under the tooth; the textures moving from hard (macaroon) to soft (meringue) as you move up, yet belonging to the same family of flavours (roasted sugars). It was rich, and we were already full, but we still managed to eat most of it.
The wine list was fairly simple, in that everything was $7.50 a glass. I only had a glass of desert wine, but it was predictably both excellent and a good match for the dessert and the style.
Service was, of course, excellent. The interior is a work of art, a balance between delicate artworks worthy of fine dining establishments and the level of comfort one expects of one's local. I am very inexperienced in my understanding of Japanese art, but I think I saw some artworks in the style of the Rinpa school; perfectly appropriate, philosophically, to the food presented, in tying it with a period characterized by a shift from the Spartan minimalism of the early Edo period towards hedonistic decadence and a tendency by the daimyo ruling class to start imitating the Japanese bourgeois merchant class... Quick mention of the garden which is well kept and with many Japanese elements (such as the gravel path and round bushes).
I have to confess to having had food poisoning on the day BEFORE coming to Pins; I thus arrived utterly not hungry, still going for it mostly not to waste our long drive and hotel night and give my wife a nice date night. Yet, the food was so well made and comforting that I couldn't help but finish all the dishes and still order dessert. This place absolutely deserves its reputation and we will probably return for our next trip. It's the kind of restaurant where one wants to try everything on the menu, because it is probably the product of long years of work iterating towards perfection and so everything will be a hit.
Do watch out for the 2% credit card charge - bring cash.
