Little Sister Restaurant & Cocktail Bar — Restaurant in Cairns City

Was excited to come here after seeing all the glowing reviews and looking at the menu but left sorely disappointed, borderline angry. Hands down worst meal of our 5 day trip to Cairns (made a dinner reservation our last night thinking we’d save the best to last, oh how wrong we were).

I’m no stranger to vibey restaurants serving modern Asian cusine. In fact, they’re some of my favourite restaurants. You know it’ll be a bit pricy for the smallish portions but you expect fresh, high quality ingredients with big, bold flavours. None of that here. Just overpriced rubbish. The prawn toast, a trusty staple I thought you couldn’t go wrong ordering, was by far the worst tasting prawn toast I’ve ever eaten! Overcooked and borderline burnt. Our mains took close to an hour to come out (fine, it’s a Saturday night) but they were just awful. The BBQ ribs were more liked boiled ribs with a sad excuse for a sauce (very watery), and the fried fish was mushy and not at all cooked well. Must of been a misunderstanding, because we asked for rice and one portion the size of a large shot glass came out at the very end. There were 5 of us. Would have been nice if we could’ve had that rice with our Korean Fried Chicken (the four teeny tiny bite size pieces that we got) that came out earlier. The only dish that was passable was the XO stir fried prawn noodles.

Everyone of our party left still hungry and so annoyed. Had to get takeaway pizza down the road.

So confused by the other reviews. Maybe we were just super unlucky. Probably a good thing the staffer fixing up our bill knew not to ask how our meal was and just asked me whether I had a good weekend. It was…...

Little Sister's open air concept would be uncomfortably hot and humid on most days but it was rainy an relatively cool when I dined. I ordered mushroom fried rice without carrots (not a fan) or onions, embellished with duck meat. "Oh, the duck is very small," the waitress warned, but I insisted. How small could the pieces be? Ground. Ground duck; not anything like I had envisioned. Still, it's fried rice, so what could go wrong?

Turns out, their 'fried' rice has a sweet sauce. WHY? I was not expecting sweet, just as I was not expecting ground duck. The duck should have been in chunks, or shredded. There should have been no sauce at all, let alone a sweet sauce?

Not a horrible experience, just very basic. Average. In no way worth the money.

Okay, so poor communication skills among the wait staff led to part of the misunderstanding.

They served a short glass cup, little larger than a double shot glass for, water. It's tropical Cairns. It's warm. Where do you get off serving such a tiny glass of water for thirsty patrons? Then, it takes ten minutes (at a guess) for a refill. Sure, I also ordered an apple juice (dietary restrictions), but that too was small.

I was anything but impressed. Get water glasses, instead of water thimbles. Serve chunks of duck. Get rid of that ill-matched sauce in the fried rice - or call it Sweet Fried Rice.

And make sure wait staff has the language skills needed to advise patrons. That problem should resolve with time and exposure to English speaking patrons. Should.

Not...

I find it extremely difficult to accept what happened today. We spent 220 dollars. When it came time to pay, the male waiter brought the POS machine to our table. Because he himself did not understand how to operate the POS, my CBA and ANZ cards were both declined. What made me most upset was that the waiter pulled a long face and even said he would call the police. Do you know how speechless I was? Later, he let me use their main front desk card machine, and then the payment went through successfully.

I do not understand why he said such a rude thing, as if I did not have 220 dollars. I even showed him that my account had 50,000 dollars. He had no solution and instead said he would call the police. Is this the way to treat a customer? It was clearly your own payment system issue, yet you suspected I was trying to dine and dash. On what grounds do you show such prejudice—was it just because I am Asian?

I never received any apology. I feel that my mental well-being was harmed. I cannot accept such a rude “joke.”

I am really, really disappointed. I am just an Asian tourist who wanted to experience the natural scenery and cultural atmosphere of Cairns. I don’t understand why that male waiter said such a thing. Please put yourself in my shoes—being in a foreign country, if someone slandered you or showed malice toward you, how would you feel? Especially when you came here with great expectations...