Awful service ruined our beautiful dinner. Following our dining experience on the 9th December: We were early for our booking but had already walked past the restaurant and noticed other guests were being served drinks, this was just before 5:30pm and the advertised opening time was 5:30pm. We arrived at 5:31pm for our 6pm booking. The venue manager checked our booking and made an interesting comment, ‘oh is it 6 o’clock already?’ to which I replied, ‘oh sorry we are a little early, is that okay?’ The response that followed was again, sarcastic and patronising, ‘yes Molly, that is fine’.

We were seated by a lovely gentleman who then took our order, he was very softly spoken and helpful.

Another waitress set our table and provided us with a dirty platter stand that had some sort of sticky dark sauce on it, which is not what you would expect to receive in a restaurant like this. I requested a clean one.

Our platter came out with only one aioli and one sweet chilli sauce, I had to request the tartare sauce, this was the SA platter. We made a couple of alterations and one was missed, we had double of what we didn’t want and were missing the extra squid we ordered. I brought this up with the waitress and then the venue manager came over to speak to us. Once I explained the very simple situation the venue manager said ‘ okay well I will do this for you’ implying that she was doing us a special favour and not simply fixing their error. The error was fixed by the venue manager, with no genuine apology and shortly after we ordered another round of drinks via one of the waiters. Then before our drinks could be brought over the waitress came back and said ‘are you happy now? Is everything sorted out? Have you got everything you need?’ Which we found to be extremely rude and overcompensating. There was no need for her to come over in that moment.

Later we requested the bill but the waitress attended to another table instead and eventually the venue manager came over to us and I advised we had already requested the bill. She then brought the bill over and the platter we ordered was $190 in the menu given to us at the restaurant but the bill said $195. After some back and forth of me trying to clarify that the platter was in fact $190 not $195 the venue manager eventually said, in a frustrated tone, ‘ I am happy to take $5 off darling’ No apology, just a reluctant response advising they would charge the price that they advertised… That is a given and her response and attitude just added to the whole negative experience.

Our experience was ruined by two of the staff members being rude and by the waitress coming over to us at least 10 times during our time in the restaurant when she was not called over. Every encounter with the venue manager was unpleasant as she was always condescending, passive aggressive and sarcastic. The female staff member needs to reign in her attitude and provide better service.

We noticed two other tables get frustrated with this waitress and the venue manager.

The gentleman who took our order, wearing a suit, was lovely and I wish he had served us the entire time. The other waiters were pleasant also.

Only a couple of the staff members were wearing masks and therefore not compliant with the current regulations in SA

Sammy’s need to reconsider their chosen venue manager. The food was great but the service ruined our expensive dining experience.

I wasn’t able to post this at the time however did respond to a review request email from Sammy’s and had NO reply to the above.