Dinner at the Palisade Restaurant, courtesy of sneff - June 8, 2002.
I had contacted sneff via a /msg from overseas several days in advance, asking him to make a booking for a cozy dinner for lignocaine and I at the Palisade. He happily made all the arrangements for me.
As we got to the second floor of the Palisade Hotel where sneff's famous restaurant resides, we noticed him working in the kitchen and I managed to get a few words with him before dinner. He mentioned that the barramundi was excellent and that it was extremely fresh.
We ordered a glass of chardonnay each to accompany dinner and then proceeded to order - I got scallops with angel hair pasta for entrees while lignocaine got some form of souffle. Remembering sneff's advice, we ordered a barramundi each for our main course and left the decision about dessert for later.
Our first surprise was that a plate of big mussels appeared. This was, according to our waiter, courtesy of sneff. Allow me to say that those were, without a doubt, the best mussels I have had in a long, long, long time. They were done to perfection, soft and tasty, and the sauce they came in was just heavenly.
Next came the appetizers. The souffle was very good, light and tasty while the scallops were great too. No complaints whatsoever.
The best was yet to come. Finally, the barramundi arrived. It had been very popular that night and a slab of fish, skin still intact arrived. To put it simply, it was heavenly. The skin was crisp, yet the meat was tender and simply melted in your mouth. Lignocaine declared it the best fish she had *ever* eaten ...
I wish I could say that the dessert was similarly wonderful. It was certainly a good dessert, but we were, quite frankly, quite gastronomically satisfied by then and were only able to tell the difference between good and bad by then. Dessert definitely fit in the 'good' category.
After dinner, sneff came around to our table and told us that the mussels were actually his own creation, "Black mussels with spiced tomato, coriander and couscous", and that the barramundi was "so fresh, it must have been flown in from Queensland right after they caught it".
sneff is, in my humble opinion, one of the best chefs in all of Sydney. But don't take my word for it, come here (on a night when sneff is cooking) and try it out for yourself.