You saw it on Masterchef a couple of weeks ago: Peter Gilmore’s lamington at Bennelong. Then you looked at the recipe online, and realised that it is probably the most complicated recipe in the whole world, with ingredients you wouldn’t even know where to find (coconut milk ‘powder’, WTF!?). There are also 49 steps in the recipe. FORTY-NINE.
So it makes sense that you aren’t going to actually make the thing. But would you spend $28 to try it at the restaurant? We would (we did), and have been hanging to go back ever since we saw it on MC. It was our favourite dessert in the restaurant when we reviewed it last year (and it’s the one that this critic orders every time she goes back).
But for one night only, Bennelong are offering the dessert at their Cured and Cultured counter and in their bar for half price – only $14. It’s happening this Thursday July 21, from 5.30pm to 11pm at Bennelong, to celebrate National Lamington Day.
This is how we described the lamington when we first tasted it: “The cherry jam lamington is like something out of a Salvador Dalí painting. It arrives at the table literally smoking – liquid nitrogen has been used to turn coconut ice cream into the bits that encase the star attraction. The cubic shape within is actually sour cherry ice cream with a little sponge and a generous pour of chocolate ganache. It’s nubbly and sour from the cherries, smooth from the ice cream and rich from the chocolate – and those deceptive little shards actually melt on your tongue like snowflakes.”
You can book, or walk-in, but we’d suggest the former if the popularity of Quay’s Snow Egg is anything to go by – when it was on Masterchef some years ago, Bennelong’s sister restaurant was inundated with calls from customers wanting to come in and just eat that, in lieu of the full degustation. The answer then was no. The answer now, when it comes to Bennelong’s lamington, is a most profound ‘yes’. You’d be mad not to get involved.
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