Woodcut — Restaurant in Sydney

Woodcut restaurant in Barrangaroo, Crown Sydney is an expansive restaurant on the waterfront. As you enter the Crown Complex, Woodcut can be found on the ground floor. Staff will direct you to your tables where you’re met by your waitstaff for the night. The dining room features separate open kitchens, catered to different cooking methods; steam, fire, smoke and ice (for the raw selection). This is a great concept and as you walk by you get a glimpse of the chefs at work, and also inspiration for what to order.

The restaurant comes to us by Sunny and Ross Lusted (ex bridge room) and they’ve put together a great concept and food menu. It showcases Australian produce, cooked with wood, charcoal and steam. This is how the menu is organised; and it is extensive, which is a good thing for you can return to try more. There’s also plenty of ways to experience this with regular dining, chef’s table experiences, private rooms or just a drink at the bar. The space is also very stylish, tones of wood, green leather chairs, and large stunning art pieces.

Staff provide genuine and friendly hospitality and we liked that Ross Lusted was making his way around the restaurant to chat to diners. Although he didn’t make it to our table, since almost every table was waving him over and he certainly had a busy night of meet and greets. Our waitstaff were all competent with their knowledge and service skills, and gave recommendations where asked.

Whilst there aren’t many written reviews around as yet on the food, certainly word on the street was to order some of the black garlic bread. Woodcut’s grilled Tasmanian black garlic bread was a decent serving of crusty bread lathered with with a black garlic paste / butter that made this a very tasty dish and the aroma coming from it was phenomenal. It wasn’t the only bread for they also have slow ferment sourdough, cultured butter wood oven sesame bread, and one of the best Miche boule loaves, served with cultured butter and Woodcut smoked salt. Bread is a must order to start with, take your pic, for it is all excellent.

Our dining party of four opt to share multiple dishes so we could get a good experience of a number of dishes. The “brick chicken”, named so, for it is normally cooked below a brick (here a steel plate) to give the crispy top layer. Served on a cast iron pan with lime, currants and little barberries to provide a good acidity to the protein.

From the ash grill, we sampled a few things - a Wagyu beef skewer flavoured with lime chilli, green onion as well as the pressed bean curd skewer, enoki and cucumber. It was hard to decide between the octopus and squid, but we opted for the line caught squid, citrus ash with squid ink oil. The squid was nice and soft, grilled perfectly.

There’s certainly a great selection of meats, some of it fetching a price tag of $195 (1kg 270 day aged T-Bone). Much of the meat is from New England, Glen Innes and South Gippsland. We opted for the grass-fed, dry-aged, bone-in O'Connor sirloin from South Gippsland ($55) cooked at our request medium rare. If you’re not after beef, there’s also seafood, duck and eggplant done in the wood oven.

There’s quite a lot of sides to accompany your meal and the salt baked potato with potato cream and green onion oil is a winner. Soft potato with a flavour packed exterior, it was a great accompaniment to our mains. In addition we loved the wood roasted pumpkin, which was essentially almost half a pumpkin, beautifully charred, topped with pumpkin seeds and grains. We were too full by desserts, but they didn’t necessarily catch our eye, with plenty of fresh fruit on ice featuring on the menu. These dishes are literally pieces of fruit resting on a bowl of ice, so we couldn’t warrant that expenditure. Though there are also a few pastry options and the cherry and meringue dish looked great. In addition, cheeses are also an option.

Note - wear your mosquito repellent. As the restaurant is open to the air and nearby the water, these bugs are in full force and distracted from our...

Crown Sydney is the first 6 star hotel in Sydney and no money has been spared to make it the new destination in the relatively new suburb of Barangaroo. The building itself is the tallest in Sydney and a beautiful sculpture on the edge of Darling Harbour. Designed by Rod Faucheux of Loop Creative fame, the kitchen is run by duo Ross and Sunny Lusted who know a thing or two about hospitality, as their previous venture The Bridge Room in the CBD ran successfully for 8 years. They both had creative input in the design of the magnificent decor, and like their menu, a fusion of Japanese and Modern Australian cuisine. You can choose to sit at a table with water views at Woodcut, at one of the seats surrounding any of the four open kitchens watching the action, at the long, bustling bar or at one of the many tables inside or outside the restaurant area. An elegant group table sits right in the hub of the restaurant with a huge white feather-style chandelier – super modern, fun and inviting. The staff are unusually and pleasantly passionate about their work here. My lunch companion and I wandered around looking at the open kitchens, and a waiter came over and offered us intimate explanations and a mini-tour of the steam kitchen, explaining what and how food is prepared there, how it is cooked and so on. Just watching any one of the four kitchens in action is pure theatre, and thrilling for any foodie. In Sydney terms, this is the stuff the 1980’s hey days were made of. Spacious, glamorous restaurants with mind blowing interiors, spectacular food and global staff who are passionate. Our waiter showed a level of attentiveness, warmth and intimacy I haven’t before experienced from wait staff within Australia. He introduced himself by name, and told us how long he had worked there, where he grew up, where he had last worked – and shared his passions and tastes for food. We couldn’t help but select his recommendations, even though some were dishes we wouldn’t ordinarily have gravitated to as he made us feel like we could trust him with anything. He had the bar staff mix us cocktails not on the menu (a fabulous list of mocktails is also on offer), which was a celebratory way to start a magnificent day out The diverse, highly creative and enticing menu at Woodcut has been created by chef superstar Ross Lusted whose global CV reads like the ultimate international travel guide.

It showcases an impressive selection of seafood including a raw bar as well as steamed options, meat with 7 steaks, wood-roasted cuts including brick chicken, four bread types including black garlic bread (and black butter), and more uniquely divided into wood, coal and steam options. There are many vegetarian choices too. Plus there is a special menu, so a lot for choice here.

The wine list is cutely written in chapters, but is overwhelming for the untrained palette with so many choices. An experienced eye is needed to assist, and the wines by the glass are a delight as there are so many I had never seen served by the glass...

Woodcut vs Nobu We were gifted a Crown voucher as a work incentive and decided to book a meal at Woodcut. We had recently been to Nobu and enjoyed the food a lot. The Barangaroo area is very nice and the Crown complex is very new and polished. Our booking was in front of the cooking station, which is actually pretty cool. We used to eat a lot at Toko in Surry Hills and this type of seating has always been a favourite. The food prep is good to watch, everything coming out looks amazing and you get a preview of the menu passing by. We were offered sparkling or still water to start. I always choose sparkling, my wife chooses still. Inevitably, wherever we go, we almost always get two glasses of the same water regardless of our order. This time it was 2 x still. It’s a little thing, and it doesn’t really bother me BUT I’d rather not get charged for sparkling water that never arrived. Which I did. That was kinda the theme of our night. I ordered a cocktail, my wife ordered a glass of sparkling rose’. The wine arrived, in a lipstick smudged glass and was very flat. They were good about this, quickly explaining that this was the last of a bottle that had been open all day. Seems like a problem that could have been anticipated and easily avoided. The glass was promptly replaced. My cocktail was delicious (if very small). We ordered what seemed like a lot of food and the Sommelier came by. He asked my wife if she’d like to try something else. She felt like a glass of Rose’ and asked for options. They had both a French and Australian option. She asked for a recommendation, he huffily restated, well one is French and one is Australian. We shrugged and ordered one, he asked me for an order and I asked for a tap beer. A few minutes later our food began to arrive and another waitress offered drinks. We explained that we had ordered but she was just there to make sure. It became clear the sommelier had not placed any order. Again, we shrugged and moved on. More food arrived and the Australian rose’ proved very nice. After a while I flagged down a waiter and asked if I could get that beer, he looked flustered and said it was definitely coming but the bar was very busy. I glanced over to see a single person at the bar that was definitely NOT busy but left it alone. We finished our food, all very nice but super small portions. We skipped dessert.

The meal cost as much as our meal as our Nobu meal. At Nobu we had 2 drinks each, a cocktail and one glass of wine and one beer. We had so much more food AND we had dessert.

It was never about cost for us, but we left Woodcut feeling unsatisfied and poorly served. Which is such a shame, because so many ingredients of a great fine dining experience are there, but terrible service took it all away. We’re not loud or obnoxious complainers, and we get that sometimes mistakes happen but this felt like a real lack of care.

I don’t write reviews generally, but I’m hoping if Woodcut is YOUR restaurant, you take a read. All this stuff is so easily fixed. So fix...