Inconsistent and disappointing restaurants – a rant

[George Krashos]

There most likely is a solution - but in Adelaide we aren't prepared to pay for it. I check restaurant websites in VIC and NSW often, and have gone to a few of the better restaurants there over the years, and the prices are on average +25% or more of what you pay in Adelaide. I've heard from people in the 'business' that finding (and keeping!) a good chef is sometimes murder - no matter how much you pay them - and waiting staff ... well, that's even tougher again. I don't think that Adelaide diners want to pay the prices that will ensure a superior dining experience - but that's just my uninformed opinion. You might say that no matter the price point, that there should be some basic standards of service, and you are right if you think so. But our restaurant trade, with its low emphasis on tipping, hasn't got that incentive. If you go to Europe or the US where wait staff and chefs rely on tips to augment their fairly slim wage, the service differences are very noticeable. Our dining culture doesn't emphasize tipping and so we have no 'leverage' as customers to get the wait and food staff to do just that little bit extra and be on top of their game. In that, I guess we can only blame ourselves.

I've had lots of underwhelming restaurant experiences, more recently one at Urban Bistro which some people rave about. However, I've had just as many good ones and every once in a while, a great one. A bit like trying different bottles of wine, really! I'll keep dining out and returning to favourite restaurants - and avoiding those that don't come up to scratch in my opinion. That's like anything else we access in life as consumers, so I guess I shrug and get on with it.

-- George Krashos

[beef]

I don't know about the other capitals, but I tend to have very consistent restaurant experiences in Brisbane. The following have never (across any number of visits) let me down:

The Bali Grill
My Thai
E'cco
Sitar (in Newfarm)

The wait-staff aren't super-attentive or subservient, but that's not really what I want. When dining out, I look to have someone take my order, offer to open my wine, and then bring me my food. All whilst being friendly. I don't want, or need, anything more. And as far as food's concerned, all of the above restaurants are consistently flawless (at least according to my palate).

But that's me

[Red Bigot]

Having said that, even as an “unpublished” reviewer I’m treated better when I’m making notes or asking “intelligent” questions. At one well-known restaurant this led to extra courses in a degustation and extra glasses of wine – it could just be good service (as the entire experience was flawless) but I wonder if it would have happened if it weren’t for the notes?

Whenever I try a new restaurant in future I'm going to take a small notebook or a microcorder, plus a small digital camera.

We (and many of our friends) enjoy cooking so much that we don't eat out at restaurants all that often, but we tend to be fairly ruthless regarding a return visit if the service or food is "off".

Three examples:
We visit Sydney to do a restaurant binge long weekend about 3 time per year, we haven't been back to Rockpool since the time they stuck us uptairs in a corner away from all the action and provided fairly ordinary service. I'm sure the food was better than the experience left us remembering, but we now usually go to Marque instead as our headline restaurant for a gluttonous long weekend.

Our first visit to Atelier after reading many positive reviews will be our last, we struck a very busy night with some pretty patchy service and I thought the food we were served was not of the expected standard.

We are a big fan of the cooking of James Moussilon (Aubergine and Courgette) in Canberra and used to dine at Courgette approx every 2 months. About 18 months ago we had a wine dinner at Courgette with 11 people, provided our own wines and had arranged a reasonable per-bottle corkage. All went well with food and service until I opened a half-bottle of Tokay at the end of the meal, it had been sitting in plain sight all night on the small wine table thoughtfully provided. As I poured a couple of glasses the waiter mentioned there was a differnt corkage charge for fortified, $35/bottle. I expressed my surprise that this had not been mentioned earlier and put the bottle awy. The $35 appeared on the bill and no amount of negotiation would remove it or reduce it and I didn't want to make a scene by asking for the chef, so paid by credit card rather than the cash collected from the diners and left no tip. I faxed the restaurant asking for comment / explanation and received no reply. None of this party has been back since and the word was spread far and wide.


On the subject of paying, can anyone tell me why, at the end of a meal, when a couple or group of diners has obviously finished last coffees/teas, etc it is nearly impossible to catch the eye of the serving staff to organise the bill and then it takes an age to appear and complete payment? Are they trying to avoid the appearance of rushing people out or have the staff moved on to the cleaning-up phase of their night?

[KMP]

Below is a little review I wrote for one of my eBlogs after a visit to Edna's Table in Sydney at the end of November, 2003. We had been there a year before and the food and service had been excellent. This time things began to go downhill once the rooms were full. Understandable I guess as you can never really repeat any experience but we probably won't be going back. Worst experience in the Barossa last year (dec 2004) was Salter's. Bloody terrible service.

The evening is devoted to eating at Edna’s Table. We have been to this restaurant once before and are eager to again taste “flavors which are indigenous” to Australia. Ted has made a reservation for 6:30pm which makes us the first to be seated. The menu is extensive and features both the usual (fish, lamb, lobster, beef) and the unusual (wallaby, emu, crocodile) paired with native foods which add mouth watering flavors to the most ordinary of meats. My main course of Roasted Lamb Rump stuffed with Leaks, Oven Dried Tomatoes, River Mint Pesto and Parsnip Gallette is simply wonderful, especially the tomatoes. That’s the secret of Edna’s Table, the most intense flavors can come from the most innocent looking morsel on your plate. Miranda’s Chargrilled Fillet of Kangaroo, Potato and Candlenut Mash, Beetroot Jam, and Sangiovese Glaze is equally tasty, at least according to her. The small amount I taste is so rare that I keep thinking the rest of it will hop off her plate and make its escape down Clarence Street. Ted goes for a meal of sausages made from those Aussie stalwarts of emu, kangaroo and duck. Brand’s Coonawarra Cabernet goes well with everything. The only disappointment is the lack of staff which slows service to a crawl as the tables fill, and dessert takes too long to reach us and then looks like it was dropped on the way to our table. Oh well, life wasn’t meant to be perfect.

Mike

[Red Bigot]

Mike,

Looks like things went further downhill after that, I believe Edna's Table closed a while ago now.

Re Salters, we only had coffees there on our last visit in May and watched Wolf Blass and a bunch of other wine-industry heavies being fawned over by the attractive female serving staff.. Ric was so distracted he left his bag containing camera, recorder and wallet behind

[TORB]

Mike,

Re Salters, we only had coffees there on our last visit in May and watched Wolf Blass and a bunch of other wine-industry heavies being fawned over by the attractive female serving staff.. Ric was so distracted he left his bag containing camera, recorder and wallet behind

....but .... but ..... but... I dont find Wolfie at all attractive!