Bondi grill'e Coolangatta — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

BURNT RIBS, TASTELESS PERI PERI AND BAD SERVICE. I had very high hopes for this place, we were in the area for a few days and I wanted to have a nice meal for my birthday. I did some research and we found this place. I was really looking forward to the ribs as they are a favourite of mine. I went with the full rack because well it was my birthday so why not. The $59 seemed reasonable. I went with pork and beef. I will start with the pros, lots of sauce, a decent portion and nice chips. Well the cons, way over charred on the grill so basically quite burnt which gave it a bitter taste. The beef were not as burnt as the pork but enough for it to be noticeable while eating. I'm not a fan of sending food back as an ex chef and just ate them. The experience wouldn't have been so bad however, the service was crap, the waiter spent most of his time at the table next to us. We had to ask for water a couple of times until eventually we got some. Ordering drinks was just as painful. My partner and friend ordered the Portuguese chicken which was ment to be peri peri and spicy. One of them asked for extra spicy and the waiter said that it is already very spicy. They must have given them the wrong chicken as it had no spice at all. It was sweet and and definitely not peri peri. When we tried to tell the waiter, he said to my friend, it must be cos you are Mexican that you can't taste the spice, my partner is Australian and also could not taste the spice, I am English and I could not taste the spice. So where do we need to come from to be able to taste it? My friend also explained to the waiter that my ribs were burnt but he didn't seem to care. At this point, an apology would have gone a long way. Well obviously they didn't feel the same way as we didn't get one.

Did I mention that it wasn't even busy? It was a Tuesday evening. I assume the chef had the day off and they let the dishy cook instead. We originally planned on staying there for more drinks but thought we would get better service at the pub.

The best thing about this place was playing with the table lamp. I might order one...

After being recommended to Bondi Grill'e, we walked up to make a booking for the following night. The young man seemed more interested in talking to a woman on a bike than taking our booking and told us to book online because he didn't have access to the booking system. Disappointed and questioning whether we should bother given the disinterest, the next morning we decided to give online booking a go and attended that night, however after making the booking an email advised we could only stay for two hours. No sooner had we been seated, we were asked what drinks we would like, but I explained we hadn't had a chance to look at the menu. The waiter returned not long after and took our drinks order and asked for our dinner order, we explained we had not yet decided (this was within five minutes of sitting down, we felt pushed and hurried along). We ordered the surf and turf along with a plate of shared greens and aioli sauce. The meals arrived on a chopping board with juices dripping off it across the table. Half way through the meal I was asked how my meal was and I asked after the sauces that we had ordered and the greens. The lady returned with salt and pepper! A little later we were finally presented with our seasonal greens and an apology that it took so long - by this time we were more than half way through our steaks so we turned the greens away - still no idea where the aioli sauces were. We finished our meals and waited, and waited and waited. The table was not cleared, we were not offered dessert or another drink... so we ended up leaving. The meal was nice enough (the parts of it that we received), but the hurried and disorganised service was abysmal and doesn't justify the exceedingly high price we paid for a slab of meat, chips and...

Would you pay this much of rib and chips for $50?! It is a shame, we used to like their food. Today I called to order a full rack of beef ribs when their menu has “Full rack- half and half” for $65. The guy on the phone said “you can pick two types of ribs”. I told him I would like to have 2 half of beef ribs (because I don’t like their pork or lamb ribs). He then said I can have 2 half ribs of beef or choose two different meats. I said I want 2 half ribs of beef. When I went to pick up the food, the guy charged me $100 instead of $65. I asked how come? He then explained that the $65 is the discount only for trying two different flavours (although I don’t understand why you cannot have the same flavours). He said that he didn’t know how to explain it clearly on the phone. He was nice enough to go back to the chef and asked if they can give me the discount this time. However, he came back to tell me that the $50 half rib is bigger then the half rib you will get in the $65 full rack price. Isn’t this false advertisement??!! Anyway, I didn’t argue at all and thought if the size is bigger, oh well. However, when I got home and opened the pack, the half rack of beef really didn’t look that big. At least, I was still hungry after eating it…. And the chips were not that good either 😞 I do like their beef ribs but with this price and experience, I don’t think I will...