Quay restaurant shut temporarily for renovations

Swish Sydney restaurant Quay is shutting down temporarily for three months for a complete renovation.

The plan is to create a more personal dining experience. When it re-opens early next year, it will have a new menu. It will be a tasting-menu-only experience for the first time, creating a more interactive journey with the diner. It also means the restaurant will be saying farewell to some of its defining dishes.

Also, it will have a dining hall and the service will be changed.

Three-hatted Quay, which is owned by the Fink Group which also owns Bennelong, Otto Ristorante and Firedoor, has been the leading Australian restaurant for fine dining for nearly two decades. But after sixteen years, it’s time for a change.

“I’ve been in this restaurant for half my life. We all feel it’s time to reinvent how we do fine dining,” John Fink, creative director of the Fink Group told Broadsheet.

 “Peter Gilmore [Quay’s executive chef] is at the height of his creative output. We want to explore what it means to have one of Australia’s best chefs cooking for us.”

Quay will also have a more intimate feel with the restaurant going from 100 seats to 80.

Fink says the intimacy is critical.

“We realised if we want to keep that quality we have to make it smaller. The room has served us well but we have to think of the next 15 years,” he told Broadsheet.

TZG Architects have been brought in to rework the layout of the restaurant. Their brief is to make the most of its harbourside location.

Fink says the plan is to give guests an uninterrupted view of the water.

“Personally, I would like to see a more sensory experience – what you are smelling, hearing, seeing is important. There are other senses besides taste that matter in dining,” he told Broadsheet.

by Leon Getter, November 10^th 2017