Australia's most expensive toastie?

It doesn’t look like much, but at $22 this has to be Sydney’s most expensive cheese toastie.

Made from two slices of brioche bread, stuffed with five different kinds of cheese and shoved full of Aussie black truffles, it’s may not be big in size — but it’s huge in flavour.

The toastie is the creation of Sydney uber-chef Peter Gilmore at his newly opened Bennelong restaurant at the Opera House, and has had a warm reception since its launch last week, becoming one of the most ordered dishes on the restaurant’s bar menu.

“It has been received incredibly well,” Bennelong chef de cuisine Rob Cockerill said yesterday.

“It’s an extravagant sandwich but you’re dining in a pretty special spot, so we wanted to bling it up.”

The toastie is built on a combination of five all-Australian cheeses: Shaw River buffalo mozzarella, Mountain Man L’Artisan washed rind, both from Victoria, Heidi gruyere and C2 raw cheddar, both from Tasmania, and Paesanella ricotta from humble Marrickville.

The truffle, shaved generously over the cheeses, is from WA’s Manjimup, while the brioche is smeared with butter before being toasted.

“It’s a bit pricey but it’s got truffle in it, it’s got five cheeses and it’s a bit decadent,” said Bennelong backer John Fink, who, coincidentally, has been making a short film on the toasted cheese sandwich, which has taken him from London to New York to Paris to research the topic.

Another contender in the luxury stakes is restaurant’s sausage roll, which at $24 is a step up from the usual $2 bakery item.

Taking up to 24 hours to cook, the luxe sausage roll is filled with suckling pig braised for eight to 10 hours at 85C in a salted butter brine, before being combined with slow-cooked vegetables, wrapped in buttery puff pastry and served with black garlic sauce.

Source: The Daily Telegraph   Elizabeth Merryment   August 31st 2015