Brasserie 1930 — Restaurant in Sydney

Inside the new Capella Hotel by Circular Quay is Brasserie 1930 by the Bentley Group. Today was opening day and I popped in for my anniversary dinner.

The premise here is a French brasserie through an Australian lens that heroes small independent farmers and growers. The fitout here is very swanky and service is overall great.

The food here is simply beautiful and extremely easy on the eyes.

Our full order was:

$7 per - Sydney Rock Oysters $6 per - Sourdough, Cultured Butter $28 - Burrata, Black Garlic, Bush Tomato Oil $38 - Flinders Island Scallop, Brown Butter, Finger Lime $52 - Spanner Crab, Alla Chitarra, Tarragon, Sea Urchin Sauce $18 - Green Beans, Almonds $68 - Coral Trout, Potato Yoghurt Purée, Leek, Black Olive $110 - Coppertree Farms Ribeye, Borderlaise Sauce 600g $18 - Dark Chocolate Mille Feuille, Vanilla Cremeux, Passionfruit Sorbet $18 - Brown Sugar Tart, Black Fig, Creme Fraiche

The starters here were divine: the burrata, the scallops, and the spanner crab are all must orders. Couldn’t fault any of them. The spanner crab was my dish of the night. Very rich but not overboard, but definitely pricey for the portion.

Unfortunately, while the cultured butter was nice, the sourdough was awful…might as well have been a bread roll from Coles/Woolies. Don’t order the bread.

Onto the mains, while the borderlaise sauce and the ribeye was cooked a perfect medium rare, the ribeye was let down by the Coppertree Farms product itself. It must have been a Marble Score 4 or below because it was just far too tough and not great to keep chewing to break down to swallow. For $110 I wouldn’t order this again.

I appreciated the flavor of the Coral Trout as well but it was a touch overcooked and a touch too salty. Nothing that can’t be fixed so not a big deal. I’d probably opt for the Murray Cod next time.

The Green Beans were great: buttery and very flavorful I’d order this side again.

As for the desserts, the tart would be my pick. As much as I enjoyed the Mille Feuille the passionfruit sorbet was simply far too tart to be edible, again easily fixable.

All in all I’d absolutely come back for the starters and when I do I’d pick some of the other mains. Very keen to try...

Overrated, disappointing.

6 of us went there on a Friday night, we had bottle of Ruinard Blanc de Blanc ($325 correctly priced for this type of establishment) in the lobby bar while waiting of our table at 8H30. Staff was friendly and efficient. The food was disappointing overall. The spanner crab (2) plenty of added sugar, over cooked pasta, making hard to appreciate the taste of the carb or any uni butter at $ 52 a serving this is a bad joke, (Raggazi does something much better.) The Prawns were nice but 1 large prawn cut in 2 halves, for $ 32 not fair value. The pork Belly was good. Bone in Sirloin was requested very blue, because the meat was aged, it was definitely not very blue, overcooked with a strong fat taste, bad product and not properly explained by untrained staff. The Murray cod were well served and properly cooked. The whole duck was disaster, overcooked serving only the breast, with the neck sausage been a mix of pork & duck overwhelmed with cinnamon. Definitely well behind the others at $ 190, The centennial makes one at $ 150 which is much better, The Charles makes one a $ 170 which is close to the Centennial, the best is at Cafe Paci where is duck an orange on Special at $90 for full duck is the best in Sydney right now. The desserts were good.

Overall, this is not just about the price but the quality of the food and this is disappointing, they are supposed to represent the best in Sydney as a trendy location but the restaurant is noisy, the staff nice but definitely no class and poor experience, the food quality is not at all related to the pricing. I cannot recommend this to anyone who...

I’m writing this review after my 2nd lunch visit over a 4 week period.

The best description is good food let down by poor service.

On my first visit the bellboy couldn’t even point me in the direction of the restaurant. Our waiter on more than one occasion forgot our drink order and it felt very much understaffed.

On the 2nd visit it was small mistake after small mistake. We wanted to have the express lunch menu & the waiter smartly asked us how much time we had. We said be great to leave by 2pm (1230 booking). That was as good as his service got. Took us 15 mins to give us water, took 20 mins to take our order which was a bit comical. As he returned soon after taking it said unfortunately they had only one serve remaining of duck entree (2 of us ordered it). In the 2 mins we took to reorder the other serve of the duck entree was taken by another table . So back to drawing board again.

The meal itself was nice but $15 supplement for chicken or $10 for a steak is pretty excessive IMO with minimal main meat options without a supplement.

Finally finished our mains at 205pm and once settling the bill I realised post paying I was also charged for $12 bottle of sparkling water we never received. We cancelled it earlier after waiting a good 20mins for it .

None of these comments individually are major but let down the experience and you expect more from a venue of this calibre.

Positives are very much the decor of venue, 5 star vibe of the location and it’s a nice and relaxing place to chat and have relatively private business conversation. Just let down by service and I would say...