Arras Restaurant

Well done to Adam and Lovaine Humphrey for creating this delicious 3-​course meal at #arrasrestaurant in #sydney last week. The Venison entrée had game. Hunted and woody, and with bright hints of sweet and sour flavors it had just the right amount of sauce or jus. The well thought out textures and tastes on each course are worthy of its Good Food Guide #1 Hat status (should be at least #2 Hats) Every mouthful was a quiet party Every element made sense and had a purpose. From sight, to taste and belly and everything in between, the experience was insanely satiable #GodsavetheQueen #indulgence #worklunch #finedining

Superb service & clean, well-​considered combination of flavours made with high quality fresh produce. Everything was cooked very well. Came on a very good dimmi deal being $ 42 for 2 course, including tea/​coffee & a beverage. The highlight of the night is the petit four platter — you can take as many or little as you can stomach and there’s about 30 different types of mini sweet parcels on offer, all made by a very talented pastry chef. Would definitely recommend to others.

Arras is run by a Husband and Wife Team, who cook fine-​dining style dishes with heavy influence from traditional English cuisine. It’s an interesting choice, most fine dining places source their dishes from France or Italy, and nowadays in Australia there’s some Asian Influence.
A good example is the appetiser we were served, a ‘curried’ cauliflower floret with spherified peas, both of which my English parents served to me in their bland original forms :) The dessert was a very fancy apple strudel style dish, full of modern techniques.
There’s an a la carte menu, or you can go with a 5 course chef’s choice menu, or the full 8-​course degustation, with wines if you like. Portion size was good, small intensely flavoured dishes being the priority for the 5 course option we went with. Wines were well selected and lovingly explained by our waitress.
The petit-​fours were a highlight; around 15 varieties were brought out all at once on a large tray, and you can choose as many as you wish! They ranged from Ouzo chocolates through sour cherry jellies to black sesame marshmallows on sticks.
Service is excellent, the décor is very modern and bright, you really gett the fine dining experience. Along with that comes the fine dining price though, the 5 course menu is $ 105 + $ 50 for wine. It’s definitely worth that though, especially if you have some english blood!

We stumbled in here almost by accident — had been on the radar but not in a real sense.
Friday night, needed a meal, thought this might be a good one to try.
Nice fresh interior from the old days of Becasse, very nice and contemporary. Solicitous staff, withut a booking we were fitted in no trouble (in fact as it turns out they weren’t that busy).
Menu was good, in fact quite impressive, with understated descriptions.
An amuse bouche was good, and our meals generally extremely well presented and colourfully arranged, all well balanced flavourwise and seasoned.
Hard to fault, but to be fair not especially memorable.

Wow, very happy with my experience at Arras. I didn’t go to the old Arras but I was keen to go to the new location because I have history with the new location, from back when Edna’s Table was there. First impressions were good, I liked the décor, the space and the staff behaved with a great mix of professionalism and personality.
After starting with a glass of sparkling from New Zealand we went for the $ 140 degustation, without matching wines. Highlights were the Milk Cooked Pork Belly, Nettle tartar with quail egg and Alaskan Crab served San Choy Bao style. The «Cinematic Soufflé» was a whimsical delight of popcorn soufflé, popcorn ice cream and fresh popcorn in Arras branded paper bags, drizzled with a rich caramel source. Every dish was visually beautiful, perfectly detailed and contained exciting combinations of flavours and textures.
We had a bottle of Greek white wine, recommended by the sommelier that matched some dishes very well, and others not so well. That wasn’t a problem and was to be expected when we chose to select a drink instead of taking the matching wines. W e finished with a Hungarian desert wine that went very well with the dessert courses.
As a nice final touch an enormous platter of chocolates and other sweets came around with an open offer to take what we wanted. Tempting, but by that stage we could only manage three small pieces of chocolate.
Arras was expensive, but good value for the experience and over fours hours of good food, wine and enjoyable conversation.

Arras is now open at the Clarence St location. Yay!