Redsalt Restaurant — Restaurant in Lovedale

Honestly this was the worst experience I've ever had - and we have a lot of overpriced and disappointing restaurants in sydney.

We were running 15 mins late for a 630 booking. I called at 620 to ask if this was okay. I was told "yes that's fine, but if your food is late, that's the reason why." Extremely rude from the lady answering the phone.

When I got there, i waited at the registrar for them to find my booking. A nice man in a grey suit tried to help me, he was promptly told by the head waitress/head of house (?) That he is not to be anywhere near the register. This lady seated us. Fine. We then waited 20 mins before a server came around to take our orders. I had made a note on my online enquiry for the degustation menu. Apparently they didnt note it and we weren't booked for the degustation.

I was told "you should go speak to the "head waitress/front of house" lady." They did not ask her to speak to me. I had to go up and speak to her about the menu. I told I had booked the degustation menu on the enquiry form.

She pointed at her computer and said "look at the screen, it's not there."

I understand if there's been a mix up. You can just let me know politely if you cant accommodate me and we would have eaten a la carte. To literally just point me at your computer screen and ask me to read it to try prove that I'm wrong is honestly just horrendous customer service. And insanely rude.

I asked if it would be any trouble if we were given a degustation menu. She said "no, it's not a problem at all" but in a way as if everything we were doing was so wrong because she had to move us to a different section. She talked as if we weren't even worth her time and she had much more important things to do.

This waitress needs a serious check in her attitude. You will have no customers if that is how you train your staff - especially if that's who is your front of house manager.

The wait

For a 5 course degustation menu, we were there about 3.5 hours. I would have left but my gf wanted to finish the menu as we had already started. I understand that degustation menus are meant to last a while but 3.5 hours for only 5 courses is ridiculous. Other couples, families and bookings sitting around us were also complaining about the ridiculous amount of time it would take for food to come out. From the time we were moved to a new section, it took close to 30 minutes for a waitress to come over and take po ur order.

The family next to us were complaining that they didnt even receive the drinks they ordered after an hour wait. They had already finished their meal by the time their drinks arrived - half of the meal they left unfinished. Other couples around were also complaining about the wait for food. All I saw most of the night were people sitting there with nothing on the tables.

The food (heroes of the hunter menu)

The food was extremely disappointing. The kingfish was dry. The fig salad did not make sense. It was extremely confusing and did not taste particularly good. Why was it called fig salad if the figs arent even the main component of the salad - they just added the figs on the side. Essentially something I could have made at home. Pork belly was bland and the charred belly was chewy and stuck to my teeth (never had pork belly like that ever). The beef tenderloin was cooked almost blue despite my asking for medium rare. And some of the mushrooms were raw. Finally, the creme brulee was very ordinary and was cold like it had been sitting in the kitchen for a couple of hours. It did not taste fresh at all.

I really would not recommend this restaurant. The service is absolutely horrendous and the food is less than a mediocre standard. You could get better service and food worth paying for from an average cafe.

I dont fault the servers, they understood how horrible our experience was. They were quite nice. The only nice part of...

Vegans beware. They no longer have vegan menu or anything vegan on the menu at lovedale bar downstairs.

Redsalt has apparently vegan options. 3. But not listed as vg, on the menu it said vg is vegan but on the menu it's ve..... go figure. How does a big resort screw up a menu. No drinks have allergies listed. Which is stupid because some have milk ect.

So, rang up to clarify ve was vg, they said they believe so. I booked in for Sunday night 8pm. I left a message on the booking forms about 1x vegan with milk allergies. Clearly no one is reading the message section, so why have one?

Gave 3 4 h notice of booking coming in for our wedding anniversary. No one rang in that time. We arrived, dressed up,really excited to be forgotten about and left without drinks menu or water, waitress never came back. A different waitress comes to take our order but we're still waiting on menus. She gets them and come back in 5. We ask about the 3 couse locals bottle of wine that i just read online when booking the table, to be told they don't do that anymore. I order the only 3 vegan (apparently) options on the menu and get told they have run out of all vegan or vegetarian options.

They knew we were coming hours before, no one rang to say they ran out. But waited until we arrived, to tell us. Completely horrible experience, now it's too late to go anywhere else. So we end up downstairs at the bra,to find out it's removed all it's vegan options. We come here weekly almost because of the vegan options and now have nothing.

I ended up with paying full price for the worst salad I've ever eaten, no flavour at all and of course, removed items so it's vegan. But still have to pay full price for 50% less.

Extremely disappointing. The fact that I have 0 options now and especially because no one bothered to inform us that they had nothing to serve us before we arrived. Not cool. I had the worst anniversary and had to make dinner when I got home. Because this place couldn't feed...

We booked Xmas dinner here over 3 month back, the booking was confirmed. 2 weeks prior our booking, we had missed calls and finally an email saying if we do not respond, our booking will be cancelled. I mean we confirmed already so why do we need to confirm again? We called back only to find out our a lacarte is now a set menu and set seating times. Due to the late change we have no choice but to accept. We were also staying at the resort, so it was really the only option to be convenient and relaxed.

We got to the restaurant at 5:10 for a 5:30 seating, the doors were closed and opened on time at 5:30 with a huge queue. We ended up waiting outside until the queue disapated before we entered at 6pm. At 7:10 we were told we need to hurry up. At 7:20 we were told the last two courses will be served together due to the next seating coming in at 7:30. By this time I have no mood to eat the rest of my meal. As we were constantly rushed by Kamalijit Singh to get a move on. Our two courses were served at 7:45 again to be rushed to finish our meal.

Our table of 10 ended up leaving at 8pm. While waiting to paying, we can hear Kamalijit Singh basically explaining to the guests that we were the ones who won't leave and hence apologising to the guest for the next seating in our face.

This is the second disappointment from Crowne. The first being my wife's villa room not being ready for her conference therefore being changed to a double room. And her baggage which was confirmed to be waiting for her in the room was at the front concierge until 2am.

For the price we paid for the rooms we would...