Bar Alto — Restaurant in Brisbane City

With relatives in tow, we headed to Bar Alto for dinner. Oddly, there aren’t many Brisbane restaurants on the river, so this was a no-brainer for out-of-town guests. I started with the prosciutto di parma, which came with a couple of different types of bread. This was delicious, melt in your mouth stuff; fabulous bread and luscious meat. I ate every bit of it, and even the bread which I don’t often do when eating out. Hubby had the ciabatta to start, and ate every slice himself. He is a huge carb fan, and he loved this chewy, flavoursome bread. The rellies are always watching their weight, so went straight to a main meal. Cuz and I both chose the spanner crab gnocchi, while hubby and the auntie went for the crespelle with ricotta, pumpkin and burnt sage butter. I am not a pasta fan in general, but this gnocchi was really wonderful. The gnocchi was light and pillowy, the sauce tasted of fresh, delicious crab, and the broth/sauce was so tasty and not overpowering, leaving the taste of crab floating delicately on your tongue. We both loved this dish! Hubby and auntie were fans of their crespelle, a vegetarian option, full of flavour, coming in a light broth. We all shared the dessert of white chocolate granita, raspberry sorbet and chocolate ice cream. The granita was like eating chocolate-flavoured snow; I felt like a kid again. (Yes I am from a colder climate originally.) This dessert was so pretty, and so sweetly delicious; we were all fans. Cuz and I drank prosecco, while it was soft drink for the driver and the aunt. We had wonderful service, with a brilliant and friendly waitress. The view was lovely, looking out to the river and the new pontoon full of jet skis which took off into the night with their lights glowing on the water. A really delicious dinner, enjoyed...

I give one star only for the view. The food is just a joke. 1.We ordered main course size rivoli and surprisingly only SEVEN rivoli in the large plate. We double checked the chef, he confirmed it should have AT LEAST eleven rivoli ($34 for 11 rivoli is still...). We mentioned this to the waitress while paying the bill, she did not even consider change the price to entry size. The lamb rump should not be cooked in this way. It's really raw and dry, I could barely cut it into two pieces with my knife. I thought nobody can fail cooking lamb in Australia. Well, they proved that they can make it. As a bar in Australia, they don't even have schooner (425 mL) or pint (478~563 mL) glass; instead, they have an odd 350 mL glass charging 7 dollars for a tap beer. What else I can say? I got diarrhea after the beer and food in about 2 hours, my colleague too! Might be the raw lamb or something else. The diarrhea was gone till the third day. The attitude of one waitress was really really bad...Can you at least smile? I know it is a Italian bar and you speak Italian, but when you speak Italian, especially the ingredient/name of the food, can you be less arrogant? Gordon Ramsay deserves a good visit here to upgrade the kitchen. I hope my suggestions can really help to improve this restaurant. After all, the view is fantastic, just...

A pretty dismal experience. Enormous queues which is surprising as we were there to see Urzilla Carlson and a supposed 'hard close' of the entry doors at 6:30 pm, but the queue to get a drink was around 30 people. Why don't they put more people on to handle the pre-show rush? Why not a pop-up bar for those wanting to take a drink in to the show? DIned at Bar alto afterwards, was told the kitchen closed at 9:00 that saturday which is ridiculously early, especially for the people attending the 8:30 show who might have wanted a meal after. Out of luck! The menu at Bar Alto was remarkably limited. We purchased the GNOCCO FRITTO sour dough appetisers as there really wasn't much on the menu worth having, and they were dismal - the sour dough was stake and flowery, pretty much the entire dish had no flavour and a poor texture. Other dishes we had were also poor. Goes to show that a supposed good Italian restaurant, the best menu item we had were the chips, not a good reflection. Caprese salad was also dismal, especially as it's probably difficult not to make this this dish well! A very poor experience, perhaps the Powerhouse need to rethink the choice of restaurant, the opening hours, how best to cater for the crowds and...