BlackFire Restaurant Canberra — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

My partner's favourite saying, "if everything was perfect then there would be no great life stories" is easily exemplified by our experience with this venue.

Let's start with the positives, the place was easy to find and the door could open and the place was air conditioned. Water and drinks were offered and provided quickly. Considering you can't stuff up a beer and a G&T, these were great.

I haven't been checked in on Dimmi, hence the Google review so I can hopefully at least get my rewards points to at least obtain some form of minimal value out of my $133 meal.

Then we got to ordering food. Whilst I can't blame the venue for the wait staff apparently being unaware of what a blue steak is, I can blame the venue for 1) not being able to simply request that a steak be cooked to the chef's recommendation; 2) when someone orders a 9 marble steak, starting that with "how about medium" is not a cracking start; and 3) not informing the wait staff of what menu items aren't available (no oysters).

Breads came out. No bread plates. No butter knives. No oil plates to dip. Used our entree cutlery as bread knives which were placed on the plate to take away and simply given back to use for the entree. On the plus side the bread, butter and oils were nice.

Entrees arrived which were great. My only suggestion is that with the octopus, a warning that the dish contains onions as this can be an acquired taste (personally, I don't like onion whatsoever). There was no check in on the entrees from wait staff at any time.

More drinks requested where I ordered a glass of red. Wait staff did not know which it was and didn't even bother to ask if we wanted a drinks menu to confirm. Finally got there though. I think. The wine did taste like a Yarra Valley Pinot.

Mains arrived. Notwithstanding the issues ordering the steak, I stuck with the 9 marble Wagyu which was really my mistake. When we finally got to a Rare request, I hoped the chefs would make up for the inept wait staff. Nope. Just solidified. Overcooked, inconsistent, awful. The sauce was okay. The carrot and pumpkin sides were not cooked in the fire pit, needed some actual flavour and did not add anything to the meal.

My partner ordered the rotolo. The pasta was clearly store bought and was not cooked through. The filling was cold. The sauce was okay.

Once again, no one checked in on our meals. Probably a good thing from their perspective.

Our truly underwhelming experience was combined with a non-offering of a dessert menu whatsoever, so I requested the bill. It was provided with incredible haste. A key element of non-traditional payment systems would be informing your guests of such - the only EFTPOS machine is attached to a computer which means going to the bar to pay.

Off to the bar we went. Provided the staff with our bill and card. Not sure what she was actually doing there however, apparently taking payments was not her job. Just standing at the cash register to find someone else who could operate the buttons of the EFTPOS machine. That staff member arrived who did not offer me to tip (although that was probably a good thing), or let me hold the EFTPOS machine to enter my pin number.

Always end with a positive, the door continued to work which meant that my partner and I could leave this place to never...

Busy Saturday night on a long weekend so we were grateful for the spot at the bar. The waiter explains 2 of the key mains were sold out but suggests a degustation of 4 tapas and 3 meats for mains )beef pork and chicken). We had to ask for more details as it wasn't on the menu. We gleaned some kind of croquetta, something chorizo and weren't sure of what else. Having this printed on the menu would have been helpful if we knew exactly what we were getting we might have thought twice. It seemed like good value so we went ahead. The jug of sangria we ordered was pretty weak in flavour and strength. The first tapas to arrive was some kind of gluggy crumbed ball. I couldn't tell if it was fish or meat it was bland. The aioli served with it was also pretty insipid and it needed all the help it could get - yet the wait staff kept wanting to take the plate before we'd mopped up all the sauce. The chorizo was a single slice on some toasted bread with some limp capsicum. Another tapas seemed to be some kind of tuna mush piped onto a crisp bread that was endured rather than savoured. The 4th tapas came with toasted bread that was burnt. There were some interesting looking tapas on the main menu but it felt like they'd chosen the cheapest ones for the 'degustation' menu. We then waited over an hour for our mains to come. We had to ask twice where they were and then it still took another 15min... When the mains arrived there was no chicken - 2 beef and 1 pork. Most of the meat wasn't hot and the beef rib was poorly cooked, charred in places and raw in others - i appreciated rare meat but this was pushing it. The roasted potatoes were also unevenly cooked. By the time the mains had arrived we'd lost our appetites and couldn't finish the meal. We'd heard good things about this place but were sorely...

Worst "fine dining" restaurant in Canberra. We came here for Valentine's night and paid $69 pp ($79 including a glass of wine) for what is objectively the worst meal I've ever paid $69 for. We arrived at 8.20pm and the first entree - of five - arrived at our table 1.5hrs later. Yes, despite knowing our exact order (it was a preset menu), we still had to wait 1.5hrs for two slivers of bread topped with two slivers of sausage. And we weren't the only ones - the couple next to us waited for 2 hours before their first entree was served. We were actually 5 minutes away from walking out before our first meal and I honestly regret we didn't follow through.

Regardless, we committed to the meal because we were so hungry/hangry at this point and safe to say it wasn't worth it. The entrees were good but not worth waiting for. The main meals themselves - slow cooked pork and lamb, served with roast potatoes - were incredibly dry, which they tried and failed to cover up with gravy. How on earth you can screw up roast potatoes is a mystery to me, yet somehow Black Fire's chefs managed it. We were in Black Fire for 3 hours and ended up getting our (sad) dessert as takeaway because we didn't want to be in there a second longer.

Overall, appalling service and incredibly average food. They had clearly overbooked themselves for the night and both diners and staff clearly suffered for it. I do not know why this restaurant has the rating it has - I've only heard negative things from friends but decided to give it a shot anyway based on reviews - but rest-assured I will not be returning and will warn everyone I know of the same. It's now clear to me why Black Fire was the only restaurant in Canberra that wasn't fully booked out on the biggest fine dining night...