garden court, sofitel

January means a lot of things to people. In Australia, it might mean music festivals, days spent in cossies and thongs, barbecues and beer. In the Northern Hemisphere, it means pretty much the opposite. And in mine and Caliban's little world, it means the Sydney Festival is here.

This is our third Sydney Festival together, and while we're not seeing as many shows this year, we're definitely putting our money where our mouths are with the Fast Festival Feasts. In short: fancy restaurants offer $30 main meals between 12-1pm and 6-7pm during the festival. Your $30 also scores you a glass of Stoneleigh wine or a Little Creatures beer, and a Ferrero at the end of the meal.

On Monday, we visited the Garden Court at the Sofitel Hotel to try their FFF. We took friends Jake and Jess along - and I have to say that it was amazing.

The meal on offer was pan-fried ocea trout with pommes puree, zucchini flower and asparagus, but before this showed up, we were treated like actual guests of the hotel and served bread, oil and butter. You might think bread is a fairly cheap commodity (along with butter and to a lesser extent, oil) and therefore one that should be served no matter where you are, but a lot of FFF restaurants simply serve you the meal, without affording you the niceties they would to a patron who's paying upwards of $40 for their main. My problem with this is that FFFs attract people who wouldn't normally go to these restaurants. With that in mind, the restaurants should be doing everything they can to make the meal special and memorable - both so the customers love it, and so they come back. Simple, no?

So we ate the bread (we even got a choice - sourdough, multigrain, olive or rye). And then we ate the complimentary amuse bouche of watercress soup, which was amazing and nothing like what I'd imagine supermodels must eat all day (rumour has it Liz Hurley scoffs watercress soup when she needs to squeeze into safety pin dresses). It was creamy, rich and peppered with a little olive oil. Amazing.

Next, of course, came the main meal. The trout was gorgeous. Bright pink flesh that fell apart with the touch of a fork was soft in texture but big on flavour. So yummy. The crispy skin was a great touch, and I loved the pommes puree. We'd ordered chunky fries as a side, and these were almost the highlight. More huge than chunky, more chips than fries, they weren't oily at all, and had a generous smattering of salt and rosemary. Yum.

Garden Court
Sofitel Wentworth
5/61-101 Phillip St
Sydney NSW 2000
(02) 9228 9157