Agnes Restaurant — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Very disappointed with the Gourmet Traveler Team awarding this Restaurant of the Year, and disappointed with Agnes.

• Food Quality The sourdough was average, not even hot which was disappointing. The 6 cm mini chicken skewer was also average and the prawn my partner ordered to accompany my chicken skewer arrived some 30 minutes afterwards. The eggplant dish was nice but smothered in a whole packet of leafy greens. We shared the steak which was nice, nicely cooked and a nice cut. The potatoes were unfortunately also average, boiled potatoes hardly make an astounding accompaniment to the main and it was disappointing there were no steamed vegetables etc on the menu. The dessert – we pre-ordered the chocolate mousse along with a candle as my partners birthday, I even confirmed just prior to dessert being served – the strawberry Mille-feuille. The layered sheets of puff pastry were overcooked.

• Customer Service After being seated, we waited 20 minutes before calling the waiter over to ask for water and order wine. In fact several times during our meal we had to call the wait staff over to replenish our water and order more drinks, clearly they were too busy to observe these things. After having the prawn, the chicken and the eggplant, we pushed the dishes to the end of the table. 30 minutes later we ordered more drinks. The waiter was indifferent to the clearly-finished with dishes and walked off. We had to ask to have our table cleared. The whole dining experience took over 2.5 hours.

Ambience and Atmosphere Clearly the restaurant goes to great effort to create a dimly-lit, warm atmosphere with notes of smoky wood fired ovens permeating the olfactory senses. However at the end of our meal, while we were eating the strawberry desert we were served instead of what I had ordered, the staff began cleaning so the atmosphere was replaced by the extremely strong smell of bleach. I guess the staff wanted to get a head start on clean up in anticipation of going home and indifferent to the 5-6 tables still occupied. This was disgusting, the bleach smell permeated the restaurant, wrecking any semblance of an atmosphere and put us off the remnants of our food. Plan disgusting.

Wine List Legibility is the first thing that anyone notices about the wine list. The best wine lists are easy to read. Poor graphics are not only useless they detract from the experience. Considering the lighting is very dim, perhaps too dim, (we can see the flames in the kitchen without the blackness!)

All in all, a less than average experience regards food, service and cost, but the cleaning towards the end of our experience was appalling. Agnes reached out to me after the dinner to ask for feedback as places are apt to do, I submitted honest feedback but didn't even hear back - clearly not taking feedback seriously. Hence now posting publicly. We would have had a better experience...

Put it this way, I walked away with a salty taste in my mouth and it wasn't from the food!

Lets summarise my experience to explain why I only gave 1 star:

A condition/policy on their booking page states that 'Tables are only held for 15 minutes from the original booking time'. Yet, our booking was for 8:30pm and had to wait over 20 minutes for them to clear us a table. If they are so strict about holding tables, what makes them so arrogant they can even enforce such a rule if they regularly make customers wait for their own booking. I don't go to my dentist for them to threaten to cancel my appointment with them if I'm running behind.

We ordered a 'snack' which was a crab tartlette (very salty by the way). In one of the tartlettes - there was a big chunk of what we thought were crab shell/exoskeletons. This created a couple more problems - The ambience was too dark to figure out what it was. The second problem was that why was there such a hard shell in the crab tartlette from a 'fine dining institution'. Some may not even call it fine dining but when you charge the prices they do, that is what you'd expect. I hope that they do better in the preparation of future crab meat and don't give excuses that it comes pre-prepared from suppliers. The friend who had the tartlette in question responded that they would need a 'crown' from the dentist if they bit down hard on it - insinuating that the shell was 'very hard'. Would they have insurance to cover such scenarios?

At the end of the meal and on receiving the bill - they charged us for two 'extra drinks' totalling over $100 of which we did not order. Upon questioning it with the waitstaff, I saw three staff members(one manager) crowded around the receipt having a long discussion. I don't know why it took so long but it was over 5-10 minutes before it was resolved. Asking the manager 'what the problem was' , he responded that there wasn't a problem but he needed to transfer it to the right table. My question is that why couldn't they just delete/remove it off our bill and figure it out in their own time. Again, they only hold a booking for 15 minutes, yet can't remove items off the bill I didn't order so we could leave and catch our Uber.

On finally paying for the bill, another waitstaff putting through the transaction asked me how the meal was. I responded that 'it was okay'. Waitstaff then responded 'what... it was just okay? why?' - I told them the story above and the manager flies over across the 'dining hall ambience' to defend themselves and confront us over it. The 'manager' was defending themselves as if I'm the one that brought up the situation, yet it was their own staff that asked me why 'it was only okay'.

For the above reasons, this very expensive institution deserves 1 star.

Thank you for reading and I will go drink some water to alleviate the salt...

Restaurant name: Agnes Address: 22 Agnes St, Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 Parking: Street parking (early arrival recommended) Google review: 4.6 (550 reviews as of 19/Mar/23) Overall rating: Recommended . 🌟Environment [Five Rs]/5 Agnes was quite a sensation when it first opened a few years ago, and it became one of the most difficult restaurants to book in Brisbane. In addition to the gimmick of pure barbecue cooking, a large part of the reason is its dark industrial style decoration, which really makes people fall in love with it at first sight. . 🌟Taste [Four Rs]/5 The menus of this type of modern Western restaurant are generally simple, divided into snacks, appetizers, main courses and desserts. -🥨For snacks, I tried a buttermilk waffle, which tasted very ordinary. It is recommended not to order it randomly. -🥗For appetizers, we ordered grilled wagyu beef, raw beef and grilled eggplant with bay leaves. The grilled wagyu beef had a strong charcoal smell, and the beef was meaty and fatty. It was my favorite dish of the whole place. The raw beef tasted sour, and it was just right when paired with butter bread. The grilled eggplant felt a little off, not very cooked, but its side dishes were all delicious. -🍖For the main course, we ordered a duck with grilled cabbage. The duck was half the size, and the taste was sweet and had a strong smoky flavor. The plum sauce at the bottom was very greasy (it would be better if it was a little sour), but the duck still had a bit of raw fascia that was hard to bite, but this was already the best we had ever had in a Western restaurant.

. 🌟Service [Four R]/5 Agnes's service cannot be compared with those of traditional fine dining restaurants, it can only be said to be good in new high-end restaurants. . 🌟Price [Four R]/5 If we order dishes like we did, the average price per person is just over 100. Considering the environment, dishes and service, I personally feel that the price is reasonable. It is still a good choice for couples to date. If you want to bring your parents to try it, don't do it. I guess your mother will say "This is burnt and can't be eaten [sneaky smile R]". . Agnes is notoriously difficult to book. If you are lucky enough to book a table, you can try it. If you can't book a table, don't worry. You can go to The Arsonist, which I recommended before, which also has similar charcoal cooking...