Three Blue Ducks, Byron Bay — Restaurant in Ewingsdale

Five stars boys. the easiest five stars i've ever dished out. Really cool sustainable focus with the farm to table concept - big fan of this. All produce is sourced from their own farm OR from local producers, presumably including the nice leather binding on the menus. I also like that the farm is all accessible, it'd make for an awesome family trip... if I had a family. The farm is so open in fact, that a stray chicken wandered through the dining area. Live music was really enjoyable. The artist (Mark) and I connected immediately and his lack of shoes made me wish it was socially acceptable for me to remove my own. A few of the dishes are recommended to share which is inconvenient since i (by choice or otherwise) dine as a party of one. I started with the scallops which were ALMOST lost with the seaweed, miso and wattleseed going on. Is the scallop heroed? Not really, but all the flavours blend well, like a seaweed wattleseed, miso and scallop smoothie. The sirloin main was hands down, without question, beyond a shadow of a doubt, easily one of the JUICIEST, most delicious steaks I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Beautifully rendered fat soaking up all the rich flavour of the supple, beefy flesh. It made me BRM that I've wasted twenty-something years of steak-eating to a lesser quality than this. The chocolate cake dessert was just the right amount of sweet things for a person (me) who isn't really into sweet things or large desserts. I avoid novelty "martinis" as oft do the veer from the original and true martini. This said, the lemon myrtle martini was truly within the martini category with its foundation still in the gin, a subtle but noticeable taste of myrtle, and a nice quality dry vermouth. Props to whomever came up with this one. The service was friendly and made me want to make friends with the staff. I'm never really sure where the line sits here? Like they're friendly and I want to be friends with friendly people but it's just a job for them? Are you genuine with your friendliness or am I just a sucker for your painted smiles???? Unless they're really really really really good actors, you can tell all the staff believe in the philosophies here and it makes a hell of a difference. Once again folks, five well-earned...

Despite enjoying the atmosphere and beautiful facilities, the menu for dinner was uninspiring with only a few choices of each course. We ate the fish and chicken main and although the meats were deliciously cooked, the supporting sides (e.g. the lentils and green sauce with the chicken) were a strange and either weird or tasteless addition to the meal. The portion was also very small and hardly filled us, even after desert and drinks.

The Pana Cotta desert was also disappointing. The sauce was ridiculously sour and totally ruined the taste of the desert, which is supposed to be sweet. Our daughter loves sour things and even she could not stand the overpowering sourness. The chocolate brownie and ice cream was served as crumbs rather than an actual brownie, which would have been okay if the brownie that the crumbs came from was fresh. The crumbs were stale and the whole thing was just strange.

Personally, I feel like in order to live up to the ambience and up-market clientele, the restaurant and chef team has tried too hard to impress and should perhaps go back to more simple food. I'm all for fancy dining and creative cooking but the ingredients need to complement each other in the meal, not completely overwhelm or on the contrary, add absolutely nothing to the meal at all.

The service was excellent, however. Hopefully with an update to the menu at some point, we will visit again. The Sunday roast sounds like a...

This restaurant is nicely set up in The Farm which is a very beautiful and a lovely setting in the byron bay area and a must visit place for first timers.

We were promptly assigned a table after waiting for just a minute even though we didn’t have any reservations by a very sweet lady manager and were quite excited to try the food and the drinks. We were assigned a waitress (i don’t remember her name but she has strands of blue dyed hair) to take the order which she wrote it down on a piece of paper but seemed to have forgotten to key the drinks order in the system. Eventually, upon enquiring with some other waitress, she did mention that the drink was not keyed in at all and did apologise and helped us get our drink ordered which arrived 30 mins later. Later on, the same waitress who took our order replied rather rudely when we asked her about the status of the food after almost an hour. I would have expected a polite response instead of responding rudely that its busy and it is what it is.

The food eventually arrived, the dishes were tasty although the portions slightly smaller for the larger portions we had ordered. The whole experience was very short of what we had expected due to the poor customer service offered by one person. I would rather advise to avoid this place during this peak season as it can lead to long waiting times and there is way better customer service offered in other restaurants in the...