Party Of The Week

Sun Herald

Sunday March 2, 2008

Amy Cooper

Summit Restaurant 40th birthday party CBD

LOWDOWN

NEVER a year goes by in Sydney without an icon having a birthday, and as most of those icons are restaurants or bars, there's always a party of substance to celebrate. Summit deserved a particularly lavish one as it's a hard-working landmark, moving all the time, and the highest one too.

It's hard to believe the 47th-floor revolving centre of culinary excellence has been around (or rather, going around) for 40 years. Imagine if you'd been spinning for that long. It's the equivalent to four decades on the dance floor at altitude, and not even the hardest-partying among us can claim that sort of stamina.

The restaurant's friends and fans, many younger than Summit itself, were all too aware of the significance of the occasion and they arrived bearing photos and stories of their memories of the place. Some had been married there, others divorced and many both - several times over.

Summit's chef and owner Michael Moore had designed a menu to aid this nostalgia: four decades of food. He's a clever chap, Michael, he even made the 1970s taste good, and I can't say many could have pulled off duck and plum on fried bread, egg on schnitzel or steak Diane with such aplomb. There were cupcakes, each with a candle, and a birthday cake which Michael's good mate Kerri-Anne Kennerley helped cut.

"Kerri-Anne's my surrogate mum," Michael announced, and then, perhaps unwisely, handed her the knife. But she was a good sport about it and besides, Michael's real mum was also there, visiting from the UK.

I bumped into another nostalgic phenomenon: John Leslie, a former TV presenter from the UK who all Poms of a certain age remember from children's show, Blue Peter. He was also once engaged to Catherine Zeta-Jones. Being Scottish, he was comfortable with the weather, which we were observing at alarmingly close quarters.

As the champagne flowed and we ate our way through the years, the skies outside lit up with lightning. If we were struck, would Summit short circuit and spin crazily, like a theme park ride? It's unlikely we would have noticed. The wonderful thing about the place is that after a certain point you're never really sure whether it's spinning or if you are. The only clue is that every 105 minutes, you see the Opera House again. And so we kept toasting and turning round way into the night: happy, nostalgic and royally fed. Happy birthday, Summit - and vive la revolution.

© 2008 Sun Herald

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