love.fish @ Sydney

From oysters to crabs to octopus, Sydney has a wide choice of seafood dining that is turning our run of the mill beer battered fillet on its head. And love.fish has always been mentioned as one if Sydney’s best.

A deep respect for the sea is apparent in every detail of this restaurant. love.fish is a casual Australian seafood restaurant located on the waterfront in Barangaroo, Sydney. The seafood is sourced from sustainable provenance, local seafood that doesn’t cost the earth.

Australian Seafood Platter

dozen freshly shucked oysters + salmon tartare + king prawn cocktail + tuna crudo + scallop carpaccio + salt & pepper calamari + salmon fish cakes + chargrilled octopus + chargrilled focaccia + fries

I always enjoyed the chilled seafood tower. While the fresh seafood was great, it was the ceviche, crude and other seafood cocktails that wowed me.

Clearwater Scallops Grilled

chargrilled new season asparagus sauce vierge + labne

My fellow diner ordered this and commented how small the scallops were. Nothing to shout about this dish.

Whole Rainbow Trout Chargrilled

warm golden tomato + caramelised eschalot saffron + caper salad

The first time I had a trout was in an abandoned cult campsite in WA that had a wonderful restaurant that was next to a trout farm. And it tasted like a very delicate salmon. The whole rainbow trout came with a mess of cherry tomatoes, capers and whole stalks of spring onions poured on top of the chargrilled fish. I wished they hadn’t done that as the wet mess made the fish soggy.

Otherwise, it was a really well prepared trout. The juicy, wet and smoky flesh simply lifted off the bones, signs of a really fresh fish. It still tasted like a very delicate salmon.

Watermelon + Shaved Fennel Salad

persian fetta + pomegranate molasses

Sweet watermelon with pomegranate molasses mixed with salty Persian feta and balanced with the peppery fennel ribbons. A chilled and funky side to go with the mains.

Puy Lentils + Wild Mushrooms

roasted tomato + preserved lemon

This dish got high reviews on the internet. But we found this to be quite weird for Asian palate. Firstly, the lentils were not cooked through – we don’t eat lentils that were not mushy. The whole salad was dressed with lemon, which again quite strange with lentils. They made this like cous cous, but I guessed it did not work.

Flash Fried Brussel Sprouts

caramelised carrot + black bean

Brussel sprouts were flash-fried then treated with oyster sauce, soy sauce and black pepper, cleverly counterbalanced by carrot puree. This was one of the best Brussel sprouts I have eaten.

Affogato with Cream Liqueur

An affogato, more traditionally known as “affogato al caffe“, is an Italian coffee-based dessert. It usually takes the form of a scoop of plain milk-flavoured or vanilla gelato or ice cream topped or “drowned” with a shot of hot espresso. And to spike the dessert up a notch, we add a shot of liquor, usually a sweet dessert liquor like Amaretto, Frangelico or Kahlua.

There’s not right or wrong sequence to add the components together. But the combo of a shot of espresso + vanilla ice cream + Bailey’s will never go wrong.

Desserts

They have only four items on their menu that night, so we had to have all four! Among the four, I enjoyed the banoffee pie the most, the banana and caramel with cream was delicious. My fellow diners liked the mango semifreddo for its use of fresh mango with crushed walnut and almond on top.

Gorgonzola Dolce is the ‘sweeter’ gorgonzola – milder and much softer than its Natuale or Piccante counterparts. It is made using pasteurised cow’s milk and is aged for 3 months. It is voluptuous, rich and very creamy.

The one we least enjoyed was the unconventional take on the Eton mess. Eton mess is a traditional English dessert consisting of a mixture of strawberries or other berries, meringue, and whipped cream. This version used chocolate, caramel and hazelnut ice cream, and this combination did not work well.

Afterthoughts

The food was impeccable, although there were some misses with items that were too complex like the lentils. the service attentive and the environment was wonderful.

love.fish
7/23 Barangaroo Ave, Barangaroo NSW 2000, Australia
Tel : +61 (02) 8077 3700

Visited Mar 2023

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