Surf and turf grows up at the restaurant with room for a Blackwattle view
The view extends 180 degrees across Blackwattle Bay taking in the complete span of the Anzac Bridge. Five kayaks arrive at the pontoon to secure their craft at the Sydney Uni rowing club on the level below. Pelicans, having had their fill at Sydney Fish market opposite, drop by to sunbake.
There's a good reason chef Colin Barker's restaurant is called The Boathouse.
The ever-changing and leisurely view turns dining here into a spectator sport at what is still a working part of the harbour.
Today as part of The Sun Herald's Month of Sundays it is 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' at The Boathouse.
It's a light-hearted menu to be enjoyed in the bar of a restaurant that otherwise takes its seafood 'very,very seriously'. An oyster Bloody Mary is served with the Pacific shellfish balanced on crushed ice with lemon and celery.
Then there's the delicate spanner crab bun with a meaty slice of blood sausage otherwise known as black pudding.
Turf and surf just came of age.
"We have got a great relationship with the market," Barker. "We have got a lot of wholesalers that work for us as well. I'm at the market most mornings of the week. I've asked the boss for a tinnie but he won't go there."
Most know of Sydney rock and Pacific oysters but here they take it to another level.
"We break it down to the different regions which gives people the opportunity to taste the nuances between oysters," he says. "Today we have got 21 different regions on the menu."
He is also no stranger to trying the unfamiliar.
"If a moonfish turns up on the market floor my buyers know to get a hold of it. A lot of the skippers on certain long-line vessels know when it comes over the side it's going to get dropped off at The Boathouse.
"I have been a mad fisherman since a young kid so a lot of the fish that we have access to I have seen before so I have got a bit of inside knowledge there."
As a chef he has had a good grounding. His biggest influence he says is John Slaughter, now at the Fairmont Resort in the Blue Mountains, who took him on at 14. He worked with Liam Tomlin at Banc who he says 'opened my eyes'. Warren Turnbull, of Chur Burger fame, gave him the opportunity at a young age to take on a senior role. Brett Graham at The Ledbury, a one-Michelin Star restaurant in London's Notting Hill, was 'inspirational'.
The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay
Oyster Bloody Mary with Blood Sausage & Spanner Crab Bun.
October 4; 12:00pm - 03:00pm - $35