Celebrating 51 Weeks

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary exactly on the 51st week, a week in advance as I would be in Singapore by the next weekend. The first year has been a whirlwind of changes, changes and more changes. It has been a period of adjustment and learning how to handle and negotiate with each other, understand and complement each other.

And so we celebrate that milestone with a Japanese-fusion degustation dinner at Waqu. It did not disappoint. The understated Japanese ambience played with light and dark, the serving staff were generally good (apart from the 1 girl who served us a couple of times, she was a bit DUH) and I love how they all look so Japanese-designerish cool in their dark uniforms and hip, sleek hair.

The food was delicate, delicious and beautifully presented, as you would expect from a Japanese fine dining restaurant (or even non-fine dining, the Japanese are a tough act to follow in the area of presentation). I loved every single course we had.

The starter was a quartet and so unusual - there was a soft shell crab taco, a potato soup with sago pearls in a shooter glass, a bicoloured cake of some green and orange veggie which I have since forgotten and a little skewer of a duck sliver on half a cherry tomato. It was fabulous, I love every single item here and the colours were just so pretty.

The entree was cold soba noodles with crab meat and feta cheese. You had to mix it all up before you eat. It was definitely fusion-y and was quite good, kinda like an Eastern pasta I guess.

Being the meat-eater I am, I picked the beef with miso (in the cube form). The beef was excellent although the miso didn't do anything for me. G picked the fish entree which was also yummy and it came with some appetising pickles and a deep-fried tempura zucchini flower.

For the main course, once again, I went for the meat- a slow-cooked lamb which was so tender, for a while I forgot it was lamb and thought it was beef. The foam was a nice aesthetic touch but didn't have much flavour. G had the seafood main which was a fish fillet which was really tasty, a couple of clams in white wine sauce (yummy) and a baby octopus which was too small for him to give me a taste.

Dessert was heavenly. It was a trio garnished with Orchid petals which G polished off, I ate 1 only and it was crunchy. I remembered the concubine in the "Empire of the Sun" eating Orchids as they were edible so I pronounced them to be so and G promptly ate them. The panna cotta with a jelly top was to die for, the vanilla ice-cream on a bed of crushed nuts and a dollop of honey on it was of high quality (even though I was a little disappointed when the waitress told us at the beginning that the green tea gelato was unavailable and they were substituting with the vanilla ice-cream) and the last item was a foamy dollop of something yummy and brown which I have now forgotten what it actually was!

But all in, it was a lovely meal and we were glad we finally paid them a visit before we leave Sydney. More good years, more good meals.