A wet night out in Sydney

It was one of the wettest nights I have known in Sydney, the rain teeming down with a wind that made it almost impossible to use an umbrella. It was the sort of weather that suggested dining in at my hotel, but I had made plans to meet an old friend at the Ice Cube Seafood Grill on Darling Harbour, so I risked a soaking, grabbed a cab (how lucky was that!!) and arrived just a few minutes late.

I mention all this because on such a dismal evening, you would not have expected a restaurant on rain-and-wind-swept Darling Harbour to be particularly busy, especially one that prides itself on an outdoor dining area overlooking the harbour -- but how wrong you can be.

The restaurant is indoor/outdoor and it would have been fantastic to have been outdoors on a more pleasant evening. But on that night the inside restaurant was doing well.

An 180-seat restaurant with a great location on the ground floor of the Imax Theatre Complex, the Ice Cube Seafood Grill has buzz about it, and the waiting staff (an international roll-call) hovered discreetly in a manner you have almost forgotten to expect in restaurants.

The menu was as expected -- mostly seafood but with a good selection of meat dishes, including pan fried kangaroo rump.

We were almost tempted to share a seafood platter for two at AUD 135, having watched one being served to a couple at a nearby table: I wondered if the person who plated it in the kitchen had some sort of design degree, as it looked like a work of art.

Instead, for starters we both went for half-a-dozen Coffin Bay oysters, fresh that day from South Australia, and while my guest chose the New Zealand flounder for a main course, I decided on the fish pie, which was excellent and served with a rather large portion of garlic mashed potatoes.

For wine, we chose a Tasmanian Pinot Gris (or pinot grigio, as it is known in Italy) which did not disappoint, and to end the evening we worked our way through an Australian cheese plate with a ‘sticky’ – as dessert wines are known among Australians.

The Ice Cube Seafood Grill is reasonably priced – having to compete with Jordon’s and Nicks, two other popular nearby seafood restaurants. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner (noon to midnight with last orders at 22.00, or 23.00 on Fridays and Saturdays).