Nook — Restaurant in Sydney

Firstly, come to Nook. A locally owned restaurant with owners from the Mountains. Atmosphere is fantastic. The service is wonderful Prices are fantastic for this type of restaurant.

Definitely would return and try dishes outside the degustation.

My feedback on the five course degustation:

Starter - Smoked tomato foccacia with milk ricotta - this foccacia was perfect crispy outside with soft inside. The ricotta had some great flavours, though needed to mix it to get that consistent flavour.

1. Blue fin tuna - my favourite. The flavours are stunning. Well done!

2. Pressed potato with caviar - my partner loved this dish. Very interesting way its created.

3. Koji chicken - this was a large serving. Alas it was our least favourite dish. The coriander and mint salad was overpowering. The mango saved it for me. The chicken was okay, it didn't have that kick of flavour although wondered if it was to balance the strong salad.

4. Wagyu with snowpea salad - the meat was too salty. I tried to balance with salad which was salted as well, plus one of the three sauces had salt. Less salt and it would've been perfect. All the sauces were fantastic particularly the horseradish sauce.

5. cheesecake with Rose fairy floss - very impressed by the flavour of the fairy floss. One critique would be that it was hard to get a small portion of fairy floss. Consider a small fork as well to separate the fairy floss strands? There were alot of elements for flavour in the dish overall.

Wine pairings - I felt the wines didn't quite go. Particularly the Rośe with the chicken dish and disappointed by the cabernet merlot with wagyu. The dessert wine was very very sweet (expected) with an already very very sweet dish.

Ending on a high note- this is a great restaurant, really appreciate the service and the food coming in a good timely fashion (not to short or long between). Hopefully some point to consider 😀.

Please come...

I've been for degustation twice (November and December 2020). I get what they're trying to do, but the young couple is aiming too high for their experience level. They do "degustation" (which they've got the general idea of but needs work) as well as a la carte, at all seatings, which is really aiming high for them. I feel like they should be focusing on one or the other. The presentation of the meals is good, but nothing special. The portions of the courses are actually too big in some cases. It's meant to be a tasting of each course. As well as this, when you get a neat dish that is half gristle, you're not getting what you paid for. They need to be more careful when they're cutting their meat, because this was unpleasant to have to chew for that price. Having said that, the meat (lamb) was actually cooked to a lovely texture, but needed a bit more flavor. The other thing is each time I've been, they've "run out" of one of the course (always the scallop or lovely seafood course) and we ended up with prawns or something quite unimpressive. I feel if you know there are a certain number of seatings in a night, you should be able to cater to everyone. The fact that I've missed the seafood course twice tells me that they're either not able to source the produce, or just don't know how to stock for the number of customers they're getting. The staff were lovely, but just so busy and hard to get their attention. The pallette cleansers were a touch too sweet to be cleansing. I'm not sure I'd go again. There are degustation in the city that are the same price and more worth the experience. This is disappointing because I was really excited about a degustation place near Penrith. Perhaps I'll go back in a year or so to see if...

This place is a disaster. No idea how they have a 4.6 Google rating. The reviews must be fake.

Firstly, when I called to make a booking, I couldn’t understand the person on the other end. Sounded like they were driving in their car. They didn’t even answer the phone as Nook. Just a standard “hello”. I had to ask if I called the right number. I asked for a 6:30 booking but they countered with 7pm… no worries there. Well, I get to the restaurant at 7pm and the place is dead except for 1 other group so not sure why they said they only had 7pm available.

The food was awful… almost inedible. The prawns actually were inedible, I couldn’t eat them, they were disgusting. The red wine jus was not red wine jus, it was more like a standard gravy. Any claims their website makes about fresh ingredients is a straight up lie.

The drinks weren’t much better. The cocktails tasted like they had no alcohol in them. The first one was tiny and the second one seemed watered down. The waiter tried hard and was friendly, but the service was pretty bad. Sat down for like 10-15mins before he realised he hadn’t even giving us menus yet. The tablecloth was also covered in stains.

After terrible service and a bad main we decided to skip dessert and went across the road to Maccas for a Mcflurry. Definitely won’t be back. Judging by their lack of customers, I don’t think they will be around too much...