Three Blue Ducks, Rosebery — Restaurant in Sydney

Duck, duck, duck… Miss

A location with so much potential. The warm, warehouse vibes, would easily make this an ideal spot for an event or a wedding.

But let me now talk about the food.

Starting with the entrées, the scallops special followed by the sourdough with chicken skin cultured butter. Both were promising dishes with the sauce on scallops being well balanced and the scallops just on the cusp of being overcooked.

Whilst the chicken skin, cultured butter gave nuggets of salty, umami that laid an excellent foundation for the bread.

Moving over next to, the pastrami salmon and varietal citrus fruits.

When envisioning pastrami, you think of the hearty, smoky, deli meats of New York.

For this meal, it was more looking for a needle in a haystack. With such small slivers of salmon being overwhelmed by citrus, leaving it incredibly unbalanced.

Thinking perhaps that seafood, just isn't their area of expertise. We were hoping that perhaps the mains would make up for the entrees.

Wrong again.

In hindsight watching the chefs call out service, as if it were rush hour at diner should have been our first red flag.

Our main arrived and were truly picturesque but one bite of them made that vision become a deflated balloon.

A positive to highlight, was that the pork belly was succulent and the lentils independently were delicious.

Only, it was dragged down by its need for seasoning and again lack of balance.

The enoki mushrooms one thing to point out where either fried in old oil or oil which had fish in it as they were extremely fishy.

Our other main, the roast chicken was incredibly dry and made you immediately reach out for your water. As it was a hard pill to swallow and was not salvageable by the bland but vibrant sauce.

Note that for the chicken, when asking the staff out of the spaghettini or chicken which one was the better.

Then they tell you the chicken.

You can’t help but somewhat shudder at what the spaghettini would have been like.

As our night was coming to a close and waiting for dessert.

We watched as the wait staff and chefs chummily spoke to one another as if it was a high school reunion.

Which was sweet to see as Covid has hit us all and changed our world forever.

Especially for hygiene, as the wait staff come and wipe your table every few minutes. Yet note a chef will wipe the sweat off their neck with their bare hands then continue to keep touching your plates…

…and low and behold those plates being our dessert.

Again the desserts like all the other meals were a beautiful sight but that’s where it ends.

The cheesecake was dry (thinking perhaps it may have been in the fridge for too long).

The Shaved pineapple, whipped vanilla tofu, yuzu sorbet, wild rice was again imbalanced with flavours, and wild rice could chip a tooth.

Lastly, the dark chocolate & banoffee spelt mille-feuille, again unfortunately lacked balanced.

A large amount of dark chocolate mousse overwhelmed all the other flavours.

Leaving it be more be dark chocolate mousse with a whisper of banana.

Overall given the prices and rockstar food places around this area our hopes were high.

Expecting something along the lines of Rachmaninoff’s, Piano Concerto No. 2; to be left on stage, a 4-year-old playing chopsticks.

We would strongly recommend trying out some of the incredible, neighbouring restaurants.

As three blue ducks will be making you want more... From...

The Three Blue Ducks concept began in Bronte and they’ve since expanded with stores now in Byron Bay, Rosebery and Brisbane. They also host weddings and functions and you often see them at other events off site. With a big team of staff, you will note one of them is an ex-Masterchef contestant.

Stores vary in look and menu, however their approach is the same. We went to the Rosebery store which could be described as an open kitchen, large dining space and rustic decor. The store also sells some homely products like chopping boards, keep Cups and cookbooks.

The restaurant group likes to use ethically sourced and organic produce and generally from local suppliers, ensuring the menu has fresh food, and as such the menu continues to evolve.

We were pleasantly greeted, taken to our table and perused the menu. Entrees, larger plates as well as the weekly sandwich special (this day was a smoked lamb) and even a bottomless brunch are on the menu. We were visiting mid week so unfortunately a bottomless brunch wasn’t on the cards for us, perhaps another time.

We ordered the oysters, which were beautiful. served with a shallot and red wine mignonette, the flavour was very refreshing. The lamb kofta was incredibly tasty, served on a spread of SmokeyRomesco , parsley and accompanied with a flatbread. This was a very good dish, but probably a little pricy at $19 for the size.

The other dining partners chose the poke bowl, with the addition of kingfish. A good serving, quite fishy with all the seafood and kingfish too, topped with a poached egg. Again, a lovely meal, but well above your typical price range for a poke bowl ($27).

We also had the wood roasted kingfish. Perfectly cooked, with a crispy skin and served with charred broccoli and a macadamia cream, pickled chilli and anchovy vinaigrette ($35). Flavours worked really well and the wood roasting enabled the natural fish flavour to be retained.

Other menu options include BBQ prawns, porchetta, sticky chicken, pumpkin salad and a buttermilk chicken burger (to name a few).

The bar has a range of boutique beers and ciders, cocktails and a wine list, as well as tea and coffee.

It is a lovely place to dine, staff are warm and welcoming and service was prompt. The food was extremely delicious, but it’s probably a little overpriced. We would recommend this for a special lunch. There’s a brunch menu too which we’d be keen to try...

My daughter and I attended for an event and it was interesting. Large venue with an industrial ambiance. Very pleasant wait staff. Rather slow to start so we were starving by the time the food came out and ended up receiving such a small amount that we ate again on the way home. We are very tall people and got placed just where there was a trestle so we had great difficulty positioning our legs and feet. Dishes were served in a share style for a group of [presumably] 6 and a few in our group got different dishes due to dietary restrictions but then ate the regular dishes on top of that so sadly, there was not enough food to go around. Flavours were strongly Asian influenced but somehow didn't seem to complement each other through the selection of dishes. Oysters were nice but the smallest I've ever seen. The dressing was lovely. Asparagus with crab tasted great and was one of the best items but we only managed a small morsel, when we could finally get the other guests to pass us the plate. The raw beef was just bland and the texture was not pleasant and was virtually untouched by all in the group. We love carpaccio and steak tartare but this was in no way a contender. Squid was spicy and a very small portion - I think I managed to get one piece and the rest left on the plate were huge cloves of garlic, which belonged nowhere in the dish. Barramundi tasted great - what we could get. The guy beside us received a 'special' lamb main as he supposedly couldn't eat seafood - in spite of demolishing the oysters and squid and asparagus with crab but then he hoed into the barramundi as well so my daughter and I were left with one portion between us. Crushed cucumber salad was a great accompaniment to the fish to break the richness but again a tiny portion amongst 6 diners. Finally, dessert was served as individual portions so we actually managed to get a decent serve. It was yuzu enhanced and tasted lovely but just a tiny smear of meringue left it wanting. Gin cocktails were just OK. The non alcoholic replacements were even less impressive. I know management is passionate about their business and I can see how they strive to get things right but it was a bit hit and miss with some stand out dishes and some not so much. I know that being sat with diners who just wolfed down everything they could tainted the experience but I'm not enthusiastic about...