Failed State

One word seems unavoidable as you stand in the foyer of Neil Perry’s $35 million gamble, Rockpool Bar & Grill: soaring. Matt Preston, writing for the Age, thought the “soaring art deco interior dominated by dramatic green marble columns” to be “ the grandest looking dining room in Australia”. His colleague Simon Thomsen from the Good Food Guide declared it Sydney’s most beautiful dining space, “dramatically gorgeous” mix of sleek modernism, clever lighting with (there’s that work again) soaring marble columns three storeys high. Opened in the depths of the Great Recession, Rockpool was, said Thomsen, a defiant stand against the new austerity. Gourmet Traveller was more succinct, at least at first. Yes, the magazine gasped, it’s breathtaking. Especially the atrium … the, ahem, soaring atrium.