Saturne

Wednesday night was the night for a good dining restaurant experience. We excluded from our select list Michelin star establishments both on account of excessive cost premiums as well as jacket dress codes for men in many.
Saturne is a modern establishment with hard surfaces, no tablecloths, and emphasis on creative treatment of fresh ingredients and matched wines. The menu is called "carte blanche", meaning that it contains only a food price (€60) for 6 courses, and the same price for matched wines. The waiter tells you about each course and wine as it is served. Of course there is an initial conversation about allergies etc. We declined matched wines, concerned that there could be 6 glasses each of 100 mls, more than we could cope with. Nor did we wish to ponder the enormous wine book, so we asked the sommelier for advice, and after conversation about our preferences, he recommended a bottle from 2005 Languedoc which he decanted. It was excellent to begin and got better as the evening continued.
We thought our table was a little too large for us (we were too far away from each other and too close to other diners, especially in the hard ambience amplifying conversation noise).
Each course was subtle and very good to outstanding. Smoked oyster purée with shredded daikon and a parsley cream in the first, then sashimi style white fish, a wonderful lobster course, veal and baked vegetables, and two beautiful deserts. The first was berry fruits, with ice cream and popcorn and the second looked like ash but was in fact white and dark chocolate with slices of poached pear.
Most of the vegetable garnish through the meal was sorrel which when bitten in to was very sour and complemented the flavours of the various dishes and added to the sense of fresh flavours throughout the meal.
In France this kind of dining seems to be quite unusual but in Australia is closer to the norm.