Foodie heaven

It has taken my body about 3 weeks to recover from this feast, which is one reason why I have been off the blogging for a while.

A couple of lovely friends invited us along to a 10 course degustation meal at Watermark, which is one of Sydney's fancier restaurants. I have not been there for years, as last time I went, I thought the wank factor was just totally over the top, which put me right off.

However, some years have passed, management might have changed etc so it was definitely time to have another go.

I only got one photo of the night as the camera battery died on me after I snapped this photo. Well, I lie a bit - I did get one other photo, but it was later in the night and I'd had about 20 glasses of wine and it is so blurry, I can't tell you what is in the photo.

My memory of the night is a bit hazy, but I remember a few salient points. There is a Hunter Valley winery called Piggs Peak. The winemaker used to live with the somelier from Watermark. Somehow they made a bet that a selection of Piggs Peak wines would beat a selection of fine wines from around the world - albeit those on the winelist at Watermark I presume. The night was billed as "Piggs Peak vs The World".

Piggs Peak also have some sort of club or members list, and it sounds like they put on a great members party each year. Our two friends are members, so we scored an invitation. I think it was limited to 80 seats, so we did ok.

The restaurant was setup in tables of 10, so we introduced ourselves to the other 6 people at the table and sat their looking at the array of 6 wine glasses in front of each setting and a complicated grid of letters. The deal was that each course would be accompanied by two wines - a Piggs wine and a "world" wine. Each would have a letter (course 1 had letters A and B). We had to choose our favourite wine and throw the winning letter in a bucket. The letters were all toted up and the winner announced at the end of the night.

The food was quite outstanding. The service was excellent - so excellent, I didn't even notice it. Then again, after 6 courses and 12 glasses of plonk, the kitchen could have caught fire and I wouldn't have noticed. They served up 3 courses together with a suite of 6 wines, and I quickly worked out that in most batches of 6, I really only like 1 glass of wine. Thankfully, most of the other table guests were the same, so we swapped the ones we didn't like with our neighbours and got a decent glass full of the good stuff (they only put about 1/3 of a glass in each one). I might have ended up with 3 glasses of my favourite tipple instead of 1/3 by horse trading around the table.

When the scores were announced and we were shown the wine list, I went through my left over letters and worked out that my favourite wines were all French. I had voted against the Piggs on almost every round. At least that is how it looked to me after 20 glasses of wine. I might have been confused. I might have been voting for sparkling water or olive oil for all I know.

The other nice thing is that we had a table full of alergic to this and alergic to that, so I ended up with about a 23 course meal. If a total stranger doesn't want their scallop, I am not going to knock them back. This is why I have to cycle.

I know I brought home a copy of the wine list, but I am blowed it I can find it on my desk. I wanted to mention some of the frog wines. I also want to see if I can buy some of them in Sydney without breaking the bank. The problem with having a good local wine industry is that we so rarely get to try something from across the puddle. I was amazed that I preferred frog from one end to the other, but hey, that's life when you are blind tasting.

Still, I want to visit Piggs Peak to give them another go. One thing I do remember is that they make HUGE wines - I seem to recall one red being something over the top like 17% alcohol. I thought it was like drinking turps, which is probably why I went for the more mellow and sedate frog drop. All that I know is that if we visit Piggs, we had better be staying the night close by.

Oh yes - Watermark gets a huge rave. I think the only down point about the night is that our driver didn't like us singing in the car on the way home. And I don't blame him for that.