There are no dragons native to Australia, and given the exceptionally long over-water flight required to reach Sydney from any non-Australian port of embarkation, I was surprised to look up Hickson Street last night and see my cousin Aloysius’ portrait staring down at me. Even more surprising was that his smiling snout adorned the side of a hotel clearly named after the grand nemesis of all English-speaking dragons, St. George. I knew humans believe that the antipodean ethos actually inverted things, but I thought we dragons were better than that. For a member of my species to become the smiling ambassador for a human who’s sole achievement was the eradication of dragons from the countryside of a smallish island, was astonishing. Clearly something extraordinary was afoot.

Saké is extraordinary. Hidden behind an unremarkable doorway in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Saké is a world class food experience. The restaurant was full of people enjoying Japanese-inspired dishes whose taste and presentation rank at the tippy-top of my dining list. The room is on the dark and very noisy side. The drum sounds were felt in the solar plexus as much as heard – they had to be to compete with the sounds of drinking (apparently something the Aussies are very good at) and merry-making (another Aussie specialty). Initially I could barely hear the waitress explain the best approach was to choose one or two starters, one or two robata, a small plate or two, and two or three mains. The house prides itself on its varied menu of its namesake libation as well – and the spirits menu is replete with descriptions of alcoholic beverages distilled from rice, sorghum, wheat and barley, and, in an homage to local culture, grapes. Recovering, as we were, from 27 hours of confinement aboard an aircraft, we avoided the temptation to rehydrate with anything more than the local tap water (not as good as NYC water, but much better than most big cities) and two glasses each of Australian shiraz. The shiraz was delicious – round, well-defined with a predominance of juicy black fruits. Sadly I misplaced the slip of paper on which I wrote down the rest of my tasting notes, including the name and vintage – but I won’t regret diligently searching through many wineglasses over the next month to rediscover it.

We followed our waitress’s suggestion, and with her help, we chose starters of spider maki and waygu beef tatakami. As our robata (the Japanese technique for charcoal grilling little skewers of mouth-watering delights) we chose lamb chops. The main courses were waygu beef teriaki and popcorn shrimp. The legitimate question you are asking is why we did not avail ourselves of the fresh and attractively prepared sushi and sashimi decorating other diners’ tables. The philistinean answer is, sadly, that we were starving and because everything is prepared only once it has been ordered, we might well have expired before the items arrived. (The fact our bodies thought it was 6AM after pulling two consecutive all-nighters without benefit of even a single Red Bull may have had something to do our desperation.)

The beef tatakami arrived in due time. The paper thin slices of bright red waygu gently moistened with vinegar, ginger and soy, then artistically positioned around a mound of shredded daikon radish and exotic greens was spectacular. Silky beef, salty with sharp acidic pinpoints of flavor spiked with a bit of heat from the ginger is a serious contender for one’s attention no matter how sleep deprived one might be. The combination wakes up the mouth and everything else follows along. The portion was generous – I recall there being about eight or nine pieces, each about a square inch, of incredible flavor arranged in a flower petal pattern on this tiny little plate.

Next to arrive were the lamb chops on a miniature charcoal grill, accompanied by a perfectly constituted chimichurri. Succulent little morsels on the bone, they practically melted on the tongue. The sauce was balanced, offering just enough pizzaz to serve notice that these little lambies weren’t going to cry all the way home, but they weren’t hiding a wolf underneath either. Australian lamb is particularly tasty, probably because it is all free range and grass fed, with no artificial anything. I would have happily devoured the entire lamb if offered the opportunity. One of the things that I miss about the old days when St. George was engaged in his dragon control project and we were allowed to consume entire sheep washed down with tuns of wine and the occasional errant knight are the lamb chops. These were no pale substitutes, but rather the real deal with all the flavor intact. Delicious. Slurp.

Popcorn shrimp are a treat – one bite shrimp which are coated in a light batter, flash fried so the batter is just crisped, and then covered in a orange ponzu sauce. They aren’t like popcorn – unless you consider the inability to eat only one piece of each is enough of a similarity to warrant the plagiarism. (In which case they probably should be called potato chip shrimp – though come to think of it that would probably bring the lawyers running with papers alleging trademark infringement so maybe popcorn shrimp is a better name after all.) By whatever name, they are amongst my favorite combinations of crustaceans and preparations and these were the very best I’ve ever chomped. Slurp, slurp.

The waygu teriyaki that followed was the best I have ever enjoyed. The chef takes a perfect little filet of beef, marinates it in a magical sauce, and cooks it to perfect 121º (rare to medium rare) and slices it in thicker, bite-sized pieces than the tatakami. The beef was so tender that it really did seem to melt when it touched my tongue, and my only regret is that I had to wait until now to taste it. Yum! At about this point in the meal we noticed the spider maki hadn’t made an appearance yet.

As our bio-clocks began to strike 8 we were nearly ready to abandon our maki vigil and turn into pumpkins, the spider maki arrived. Crispy fried segments of softshell crab wrapped in perfect sushi rice and laced with wasabi and soy. It is the perfect way to dine on softshells (unless you flash saute them and sauce them with ginger and garlic) and also turned out to be the perfect way to end our meal. The chocolate fondant which followed was anti-climactic. Properly tempered, the chocolate was delicious, but somehow not as impressive a display of the kitchen’s talents as the courses which proceeded it. I called for the check, handed it over to the human male and we departed for the Park Hyatt. The evening’s meal was another victory for the forces of fine dining over the evil attempts of mass-produced, calorie-laden and uninventive cooking to divert us from the pursuit of perfection.