Automata, Sydney: A Tasting Menu Overflowing with Umami

Salut! It's Yoko, a food blogger who eats her way around the world.

Have you heard of the cuisine style called innovative fusion?

It's food that is literally "innovative" and "fuses" cooking techniques from different countries, and it's my favorite genre!

On my first night in Sydney, we had a classic steak at CHOP HOUSE,
so for the second night I picked Automata, a restaurant serving innovative food.

Automata served the wildest food of the whole trip, lol

Automata Holds Two Hats in Australia

Automata ranked 19th in The Top 100 restaurants in Australia for 2019,

and it has Two hats in The Good Food Guide 2019, which is treated like the Michelin Guide of Australia.
(One hat, Two hats, and Three hats are roughly equivalent to one, two, and three stars.)

One review said, "Automata has Two hats, but it has a relaxed vibe that makes it easy to go to,"

and indeed it was on a street lined with restaurants that reminded me of Ebisu in Tokyo.

A stylish place with an open terrace nearby.

Actually, more than stylish, it's a shop themed around Kyoto (Japan).

The exterior of Automata.

Walk in and you see a counter between bare concrete pillars and a big open kitchen.

It's rugged and has no wasted space, and I love it...

The menus were already at our seats.

This is the drinks menu.

And here is the menu for the seven-course tasting we had reserved.

Suspicious words like Dark Chocolate and Wakame are lined up, lol

We skipped the pairing and ordered by the glass.

A pear and sage Bellini. Yum!!
Sage is hard to find in Japan, but it goes amazingly well with pear.

Akasha beer. Not too heavy, not too light, a well-balanced flavor that suits just about anyone.

First, the amuse-bouche. I've put a ★ next to the ones I loved.

bush tomato cream, black pastry tube, herbs
spiced pumpkin vol-au-vent
A pastry filled with a curry-spiced, tangy pumpkin cream sauce, plus a bush tomato cream.

The bush tomato is a small fruit that grows wild in Australia's dry regions, and it's also an Aboriginal food.
It tastes like a sour-sweet dried tomato.

★poached cuttlefish, fennel & ink, preserved lemon & herbs
This was delicious!
Very tender cuttlefish with the savory depth of squid ink sauce, and a soft aroma of lemon and herbs.

Steamed red sugarloaf cabbage, dory roe, hibiscus & shiso
Steamed cabbage with a dory roe cream. The shiso (Japanese perilla) adds an accent and it was delicious. I wanted to put it on bread.

And just as I was thinking that, the bread arrived. At fine dining I always want to keep eating bread endlessly, but I held back this time too.

champagne lobster, cumquat sabayon, rosemary & egg white dashi
Champagne-flavored lobster on a sauce of white dashi and egg, topped with a kumquat sabayon.
Unfortunately this one wasn't for me. The dashi, champagne, and kumquat felt like they were fighting each other.

★fermented mushroom pasta, toasted buckwheat & shiitake
Pasta with a cheese cream. Delicious. The cheese sauce and fermented shiitake were fantastic, and the toasted buckwheat groats were crunchy and fragrant.

Black Angus hanger, grilled eggplant, fermented chili & arame
Grilled Angus beef hanger steak with a sauce like Tabasco with more chili and less sourness, which I found a bit strong.
The paste of arame (a type of kelp) and grilled eggplant was delicious.

★yoghurt, burnt meringue, bergamot, blueberry & lemon myrtle
Yogurt ice cream with burnt meringue, bergamot, blueberry, and lemon myrtle.
So good.

Lemon myrtle is a plant native to Australia whose dried leaves give off such a fresh scent that it's said to be "more lemon than lemon."
Like the bush tomato in the amuse-bouche, it's apparently used by Aboriginal people as a medicinal herb.

dark chocolate, roasted kelp oil, candled white kombu & wakame
Dark chocolate, kelp oil, white itakombu (probably), and wakame.
Here it comes. They really pushed the kombu right at the very end, lol

The chocolate is fragrant and really tasty, and the kombu is tasty too. Eating them together is good as well,
but somehow the pairing never quite clicked... I couldn't find a new kind of deliciousness in it.

Crispy, sweetened kombu and dark chocolate cream, below

This is truly a dish I think I'll never forget...

And then, the bill.

With two drinks each plus the tasting menu, it came to AUD 334! (about ¥26,720)

The flavors were strong overall, and a few were maybe too strong,

but I loved getting to enjoy Australian ingredients like bush tomato, lemon myrtle, and Angus beef.

The innovative fusion cooking, which combines Japanese ingredients like kombu, dashi, and fermentation with an eye on umami, was full of surprises.

It's unpretentious, and they give you the menu and explain each dish, so if you're looking for a creative restaurant in Sydney, check it out.

See you next time! Au revoir!

Automata Restaurant

Automata
5 Kensington St, Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia
Tuesday 18:00-0:00
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 12:00-15:00, 18:00-0:00
Sunday and Monday: Closed
+61 2 8277 8555