Our company was nominated as one of 10 finalists for the Dell Small Business Excellence Awards. As such we were invited to the finalist lunch held at Quay Restaurant. I was uber excited because Quay was recently announced the winner of the 2009 Best Restaurant of the Year – SMH Good Food Guide, and 2010 Restaurant of the Year – Australian Gourmet Traveller. It also has an amazing view of the Harbour Bridge AND the Opera House.

Time for the food.

For entree I went with: Seared sea scallops, baby leeks, fennel, confit tomatoes, lime crème frianche, basil and lime dressing. Spectacular!

For my main meal I chose the: Victorian Pyrenees lamb rump, eggplant, eschallots, Ligurian olives, roasted tomatoes. Had this lunch been a year ago I wouldn’t have dreamt of choosing lamb, but now I love the stuff.

These potatoes were a big hit on our table and there was much discussion as to how they got them to be that shape. Pushed through a machine? Smashed, then shaped? Hand-carved? We’ll never know.

Dessert was highly anticipated: Seven texture valrhona chocolate cake.

It took us a while, but we eventually found the seven textures (I think). Here’s the breakdown (top to bottom):

1. A thin sheet of dark chocolate
2. Light chocolate mousse – not quite white chocolate, but not milk chocolate either.
3. A thin sheet of milk chocolate
4. Dark chocolate mousse
5. Some kind of nutty chocolate mixture – tastes like crunchy Nutella
6. Chocolate biscuit base – yum!
7. Chocolate sauce along the base.

Just a word of warning, you seriously cannot eat the full thing to yourself. I could only really get half way through it. Dan finished her’s but then felt sick the rest of the day.

The other option for dessert was Crème caramel, sauterne jelly, caramel cream, caramel ice-cream. It looks amazing, but it’s seriously death by caramel.

With a belly full of free food I can definitely see why it won Best Restaurant of the Year. If I were paying, I might have seen things differently. Free food always tastes better.