Bella Char Restaurant and Wine Bar — Restaurant in New South Wales

We stayed at the Mecure last week (24/11/21-26/11/21) whilst in town for a wedding. As the weather was very average on the 25/11 we stayed local and really were quite stumped on where to go for dinner. Myself and my partner are usually not ones for dining at hotel restaurants usually due to them being very sub par. The local places we found searching Google seemed all ok and to be honest what you'd expect from a nice little seaside town like Gerringong. The rain was pouring down and we thought we would look up the hotel restaurant for the sheer convenience. The menu looked good. Reviews, although mixed all seemed pretty good for the most recent 6mths. The menu showed a good variety of foods. The only concern we had was the price. Not cheap, but not exorbitant. I'd day $$$ to $$$$ from a possible $$$$$. We booked and went along. Again, the booking was made purely due to the bad weather and us not being bothered to go elsewhere in the horrendous rain. Well, thank heavens for the rain. The restaurant was a lovely clean space with nice furnishings. Tables were also not on top of each other. My partner who is predomintely vegetarian didnt have the biggest options available but ended up choosing the Polenta chips with Gorgnzola sauce ($14), we shared the in house baked bread that came with black garlic butter ($11). I took on the duck terrine ($24). So far, all amazing. For mains my partner had the local beer battered snapper and chips ($34) that was huge, amazing batter, 2 massive snapper fillets and came with a in house made dill tartare sauce that was devine. I had the beef cheeks in pappardelle pasta with a rich tomato sauce ($30). I would have to say the pasta was also made in-house and was spot on al dente.... Unfortunately there was no room for desserts but from what I saw coming out of the kitchen they looked the goods... Overall, this blew our minds. Friendly staff, amazing food, lovely setting... food bill (we drank 2 x Cokes each) was $150... $20 of that was for 4 cokes so food was $130... I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Bella Char to anywne staying in Gerringong or even up the road in Kiama or anywhere surrounding as it would 100% be worth the 10-25mins drive... we will most deinftely dine...

Over priced for what you get if you get what you ordered The Sunset menu is what we ordered, entree (after a 50mins at least waitime) was lovely great start to the oncoming 3 course meals, fettuccine came as oil drowned PENE, small piece of Chicken Breast come with no portugese spices, very bland and had a large dollop of sour cream on top that was not mentioned at all on the menu. Salted caramel cheesecake was over taken by the chocolate dressing therefore could not taste the salted caramel at all and there was no sign almond praline as mentioned in the menu. Hot apple pie was small and sad with weird bread things that we believe to have replaced the “oat crumble” mentioned....on the menu. Passionfruit and Pineapple individual pavlova had very little meringue and loads of cream tiny bit of passionfruit and some red berries???? Again, not matching the description on the menu! Staff was lovely enough but dismissive when the Pene was mentioned and changed the subject. Very much overpriced for what was offered (would have been happy to pay the price had we received what we ordered) Rather...

Food was horrible, staff are rude including the owner! I got married here and it was disaster after disaster on the venues behalf. Nothing was what we paid for. Our items went missing from both out room and the function room, including my wedding cake. Besides me and my partner noone else had a key to our room besides staff. They had stolen a very important box of prescription medication that has to be authorised and could not be replaced! Among other things. The quality of everything we actually recieved on the day was literally like it was all purchased from a $2 shop. And food was poor quality and room temp when received. Very embarrassing when we spent big money and were very specific when asking questions upon actually booking the venue but as soon as the wedding came they didnt care what level of service they provided. I would never recommend this...