Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney wins three awards at the
Australian Gourmet Traveller 2010 Restaurant Awards 

25 August 2009: At last night’s announcement of the Australian Gourmet Traveller 2010 Restaurant Awards, Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney scooped three major awards including ‘New Restaurant of the Year’, ‘Wine List of the Year’ and ‘Maitre d’ of the Year’, won by Restaurant Manager, Tom Sykes. 

Neil Perry and his business partners, Trish Richards and David Doyle were thrilled with these awards and commended the restaurant’s dedicated team for creating such an award-winning restaurant and wine list in the five months since it opened its doors. 

Perry says that Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney is a culmination of everything we have experienced and learned in our years of running restaurants and it is such an honour to receive these awards from Australian Gourmet Traveller. 

“David Doyle, with his extraordinary knowledge of wine and extensive collection, has assembled one of the best wine lists in the world with selections for all price ranges and tastes. 

“Tom Sykes, a long time employee of the Rockpool Group, has been a hard working and dedicated manager for the past 13 years and it is wonderful to see him achieve the recognition he deserves.  He has embraced our philosophy of care, making sure that the staff are in a position to look after the guests, and that the guests themselves are relaxed and ready for a great dining experience. 

“We are incredibly proud to have three of our restaurants rated in the Top 20 in Australia and four within the Top 100, and we could not have achieved these accolades without the unwavering dedication of our entire Rockpool family,” says Perry. 

Rockpool Sydney was also commended receiving the highest rating of ‘3 Stars’ (and number 6 in the Top 100 ranking), while Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney and Rockpool Bar & Grill Melbourne received ‘2 Stars’, and Spice Temple received ‘1 Star’. 

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For further information and media inquiries:
Contact Michelle Campbell, Minc Communications, T 0410 614 433, E michelle@minccom.com.au

ROCKPOOL BAR & GRILL SYDNEY had a fantastic night at the Fine Wine Partners & Australian Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Wine List of the Year Awards in 2009.

It was an extremely proud moment for us taking out Australia’s Wine List of the Year in 2009 plus Best Restaurant List and Best New List – The Tony Hitchin Award.  To read more about these awards and Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney click here.

And that wasn’t the end of it…

Our very own Sophie Otton took out the National Judy Hirst Award which focuses on sommeliers whose unique talent and knowledge elevates the public’s appreciation of the role within the industry.  To read more on this award click here.

Sophie Otton in the wine room at Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney

Now that the nominations are online for all to see we could not be more proud to let you know Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney has been nominated in three, yes three, categories for the upcoming 2010 Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards.  

Extra congratulations to Tom Sykes for his nomination in the Maitre D’ of the year category, his style and smile graced Rockpool for many, many years and now he is wowing the crowds at Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney.  Well done Tommo!

NEW RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney, NSW:  The grandest restaurant Sydney (if not the nation) has ever seen, the northerly iteration of Neil Perry’s lavish steakhouse concept sees a no-expense-spared approach tempered by superb Deco architecture and an unfussy approach to high-end dining.

WINE LIST OF THE YEAR
Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney, NSW:  This time, you can believe the hype. This list is awe-inspiring: over 3000 bottles, covering most of the great names from most of the great vintages of the last century (and, indeed, the century before if you’re partial to 180-year-old Madeira). The clincher, though, is the prices: many of the bottles here are cheaper, if anything, than they are on the Melbourne Rockpool Bar & Grill list.

MAITRE D’ OF THE YEAR
Tom Sykes, Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney, NSW:  The unflappable nature and good grace of Tom Sykes had long been one of the original Rockpool’s grounding elements. Now, at the new Bar & Grill, he is both front-of-house and field marshal, attending to the personal peccadilloes of instant regulars just as he coordinates coverage of one of the city’s most formidable dining rooms.

With its Art Deco glory and soaring atrium, Rockpool Bar & Grill is probably the grandest restaurant Sydney has ever seen.  It’s a steakhouse, writes Pat Nourse, but not as we know it.

Yes, it’s breathtaking.  Combining Citizen Kane-like scope with detail-work befitting Mad Men, it’s probably safe to say the new Rockpool Bar & Grill is the grandest restaurant in Sydney – and by extension the nation – has ever seen.  An edifice of polished granite and Hawkesbury sandstone, all terrazzo of floor and scagliola of column, Balmain architect Emil Sodersten’s 12-storey Deco dazzler was the tallest building the city had seen when it was completed in 1936.  It started life as the headquarters of the City Mutual Life Assurance Society.  The soaring atrium, with Rayner Hoff’s relief of Benzoni’s Flight from Pompeii set into the ceiling, was known as the Chamber of Assurance, and the name still fits.

Rockpool Bar & Grill does not aspire to challenge or provoke, but to please and assure: it’s a steakhouse.  But what a steakhouse.  The retro-corporate luxe look of the place, admirably executed by Bates Smart, doesn’t really place it high in the date-restaurant stakes, but it’s already a magnet for the great and good of the moneyed world.  Chef and co-owner Neil Perry is one of the trail-blazers of today’s Australian dining, but just to be clear, this isn’t a restaurant dedicated to advancing the cause of gastronomy.  Here they take the simple concept of grilling a piece of protein over a fire and burnish it with care and skill until it shines anew.  At the original Rockpool back on George Street they’re confiting suckling pigs and creating clouds of mandarin and poaching swordfish sous-vide with anchovy and jamon.  At the Bar & Grill, they’re shucking oysters, creaming silverbeet and charring meat.  They’re making drinks and grilling stuff which, at a bar and grill, seems fair enough.

To read the rest of this fabulous review please follow the link to the Gourmet Traveller website.

Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney's soaring atrium