I'm back! After a much needed holiday in Sydney, I've returned for some more blogging action! Whilst in Sydney, we were lucky enough to stay in Cremorne, which is on the very posh Lower North Shore, just down the road from little Johnny Howard in Kirribilli. We did lots of eating out in Sydney and ate some really good, interesting food while we were there. I'd always heard that Sydney was a really expensive place to eat out, but most places we ate out at were quite reasonably priced. Sure you have your places like Aria, who's prices are some of the most expensive I've seen, but there are some good local food places, which are very reasonably priced. 
Near where we were saying was Military Road, which runs through Cremorne, Mosman and Neutral Bay. Along this strip there are plenty of restaurants worth checking out. We used www.eatability.com.au to find some recommended places to eat. Sydney-siders seem to use this site a lot more than us Melbournians do. It came in very handy indeed.
We also paid a visit to the Sydney Fish Markets. I've always wanted to check out this place, I've heard so many good things about it, like how big it is, how much good seafood there is there, but it really wasn't anything special. It definately wasn't cheap, that's for sure. Queen Victoria Market has just as much variety and is probably cheaper. It was worth a look though. It was also pretty cool to eat lunch there, down by the water, with the fresh ingredients used from the stalls.
I visited a few nice little restaurants and a couple of not so good restaurants. I've taken lots of photos too, so I'll put up some reviews on these places, so if you're visiting Sydney, you can have a couple ideas on where to go.
1 comment:
We thought trying something new however was not impressed with their customer service overall....a dozen of us went to Waqu on a friday evening for dinner. We arrived there a little early and waited until their opening time but their big restaurant door was still locked. We waited for another 5 minutes and had to ring the restaurant to remind them to open for business for the night. Anyway We booked their private room with 6 course autumn menu and some of us also had the matching wines option.
Staff there generally did not seem having a good mood as the ones in other Japanese 'fine dinning' restaurants who always offer services with friendly and helpful attitude with a SMILE all the time. Instead they looked a bit stressed.
Degustation plates and matching wine was creative and pretty but cant really tell if it is really fused with Japanese essence. Most dishes does not have Japanese fusions to me. They tasted just all right. Not particularly memorable, just eatable.
We ended up going to another crows nest restaurant after this due to the relative compacted version of their 'fine' dishes. By the way since most of our group ordered same course dish most of the times and we realised the food portion for each plate were always uneven so does the quality of the dishes themselves. The orders were also mixed up a couple of times.
As we only had our meal in the private room, we had to judge the ambience on its private room only. Actually it is more like a section of the restaurant with gyprocks separating the dinning area into two. The private room was also next to the kitchen and bathrooms, one of the walls in between of the public and private dinning area did not have the top part enclosed! so no acoustics. It is half open, no door for the room which was disappointing. I personally think it is a mismatch with their 'fine dinning' concept as normally most high end Japanese restaurant would at least have a door.
The menu was too inflexible as its set menu and does not have a la carte options at all. Cocktail and dessert list had too few kinds to offer.
Lastly but not the least, the manager was also rather rude to us and told us off after we had a few drinks and started talking with each other with a bit raised voice and had a couple of laughs. We have a very big group and this situation was unfortunately unavoidable. In reality, Who would just eat their food and without having a few cracked jokes at the table? especially after the alcohol? The public dinning section was even noisier and we could literally hear anything out there including the noise from the kitchen. The manager kept on saying they are a 'fine dinning restaurant' not a public pub while we could not even complain how noisy their public section was!
I understand that they might be proud/snobby of their restaurant but humiliating their customers? Is this how a manager if a 'fine dinning' restaurant treat his customers?? I also saw a online review saying Waqu restaurant manager taught the good-mannered customers a lesson how to discipline their young kids and did not want them being in the restaurant. That was actually pathetic.
Just sharing our bad experience to everyone for your information. I would say this had been the weirdest restaurant we have ever been. We were all very disappointed with this restaurant and will NEVER go back again.
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