Rick Stein at Bannisters — Restaurant in New South Wales

We’re occasional patrons of the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow and we all very much enjoyed a long family lunch at Rick Stein at Bannisters restaurant in Port Stephens last year. This year we’re campering from Sydney to Melbourne and have built-in a stop at Rick Stein at Bannisters’ other Australian restaurant at Mollymook, nearby Rick’s Australian home. We’ve arrived in the midst of a four day ‘weather bomb’, rain that’s unlikely to stop for another two days, very rough seas so there’re probably no boats going fishing so our expectations are set appropriately, but this is Rick Stein, right?

First impression: unremarkable. The restaurant doesn’t seem to have benefited from ex-wife and business partner Jill Stein’s designer touch. Dark blue carpet and staff uniforms remarkable only because they are so bizarre. There’s no view of the crashing Pacific arriving Australia’s east coast because of a line of straggly gum trees blocking the view. OK.

Tap, still or sparkling water? Tap, please. Indeed, as promised, straight from the tap along with a straight-from-the-tap chlorine smell. It’s a small effort to filter the tap water before serving it to your guests.

Sourdough bread slices, cooked by us today, served with two flavoured butters. Sourdough? It looks heavy, like it’s been over-proved or not properly proved in the fridge overnight. It is too dense. Right now we’re at a one, maybe two, out of ten, score. The only way is up!

Aperitifs? A G&T and a Bellini. Both are competent but unremarkable. The wine we chose is too. We're missing a Rick-owned or recommended wine like his old Tower labels.

The menu doesn't include a couple of dishes I’d read online a couple hours earlier and there’s a salmon curry dish which I also hadn’t clocked earlier. No, I'll stick with the snapper, a very lovely sustainable fish.

First course/starters/entrees: Lovely large fat mussels in an extraordinary fragrant Cambodian soup, presumably one Rick learned on one of his Asian tv series visits. One of the mussels is completely closed. Either the chef who prepared the dish didn’t notice one of the ten mussels she cooked and served into my dish was closed or she didn’t know you don't serve a closed mussel. I put it next to my half-eaten sourdough slice because I’m now ready to point this out to our server. She laughs. I explain that we always enjoy eating at Rick Stein’s restaurants in U.K. and Australia but when one of ten mussels served is closed it might indicate a dead, and therefore potentially dangerous, shellfish which I’m really not expecting at a Rick Stein restaurant. Off she goes and a minute later a colleague returns with an open mussel replacement in a small dish which really wasn’t the point.

Despite the rain and the recent devastating bushfires in the area the restaurant is filling up nicely, family groups and couples, friends eating together in what is probably one of the nicest restaurants in the area. But our feel, so far, is Sunday is the head chef’s day off and Rick himself is not expected to drop in today.

Mains: I’ve ordered simple fillet of snapper in a beurre blanc sauce, she’s ordered Rick’s signature fish pie which she always orders at Rick’s restaurants. And we wait, and wait. We consider we’re in the doghouse because of the mussel complaint, which they’ve offered to take off the bill.

The pie and snapper arrive and it’s clear the snapper is either overcooked or has been kept under the pass’s heated lamps too long. It’s pleasant but no cooking thermometer has been near this fillet. What a pity. The fish pie is excellent, again, but overall we’re not scoring better than a five. French beans and new potato side dishes are competent but no flavour of vegetable stock, no seasoning.

I order an affogato desert which arrives with a lovely Pedro Ximenez dessert wine alongside a ‘long black’ with milk on the side.

Indeed the mussels dish is not on our final bill but the usual Australian Sunday 10% supplement doesn’t feel...

The stern booking conditions and military-style reminders foreshadowed a different dining experience, and it was. The official language of the restaurant is Franglais, something that must be de rigueur in the UK that is still tugging on French apron strings but smacks of trying-too-hard pretentiousness in Australia. See, eg, “served with spinach and fines herbes”. The atmosphere of the restaurant is pleasant, except in the far corner at our table where stunning views over the bay were paired with hot and stuffy air. The water glasses triggered déjà vu: it was hippy-fashionable in 1970s Europe to cut 0.5L beer bottles in half and use the bottom as a glass. Of course these days it’s a designer item, not mutilated beer bottles. The food was a mixed bag. We shied away from the prawn or scallop entrées, $9 and $12 per piece, respectably, and went for options with seemingly better bang-for-buck ratios. My dining partner was very pleased with the entrée of crunchy fish bites and julienned vegetable salad and the main of tuna steak with beans and fennel. My entrée was a superb fusion of tuna sashimi and Peruvian passionfruit ceviche: new-school, well executed. I combined it with my partner’s surplus chopped chilies that really rounded it out - it turned out later when re-checking the menu that chilies were supposed to be part of my dish too, but they were left off. My main of grilled fish with hollandaise sauce proved very old school and boring. The fish was cooked to perfection, only to be brought down to earth by the sauce: ‘les herbes’ were far too ‘fines’ to cut through the fatty and very salty dominant flavour. A good measure of chives would have had more chance. There was also a newborn child’s fistful of spinach hidden under the fish whose only purpose was to add another truckload of salt to the dish. From the menu it was impossible to tell if the vegetable component of any dish was a significant quantity or added in traces for flavouring, so I was left rather unfulfilled. The drinks menu is up to the standards claimed by the place: we had a delightful Australian Riesling and a superb Corsican rose. As I expected coffee to be the high-fashion pale and sour brew, we moved on to seek it elsewhere. Resisting the huge and un-Australian pressure to tip I defiantly gave none. In all, the restaurant is a hard-nosed tourist trap that trades on Rick Stein’s name and some of his recipes, but has none of his charm. Some nice food can be had, but one should hold on to the menu to be able to ascertain that what is delivered is what...

We stayed at Bannisters and dined at Rick Stein. We had an issues with our restaurant reservation seating. When we mentioned this on check out, was told to put it in writing to Pam Smith the Front Office and Accomodation manager. I did not want to post this review publicly but due to nil response to my email I feel a review is necessary.

We had come down to Bannisters to celebrate my partners birthday. I had booked both the accomodation and dinner booking at Rick Stein just over 4 weeks before our attendance. Once I had made the booking I emailed saying that this was a special occasion birthday celebration. I was informed that this was noted on both our room and restaurant booking.

I was extremely disappointed by the seating we had been given at the restaurant and it did take the shine off what we were dining for.

When we first arrived the restaurant host said and I quote “Plenty of seats available, take a seat wherever you want mate”. For a restaurant of this caliber I was surprised to be told that and not ushered to a table.

Second of all we had to take a table right at the back without a view. When I questioned this and said that the restaurant knew that this was a birthday celebration and asked why we weren’t reserved a nice table, his response was “The front row tables a first come first served”. Whilst I do appreciate this as you cant be holding all the front row tables, I can’t understand the logic. Someone could book a day before and be offered a front row table whilst I book so far out, for a special occasion, which is at great expense for both the restaurant and accomodation and the best I can be given is a table in the back corner next to a coffee machine.

The restaurant host did not seem interested when I raised this.

When I also raised this upon checkout I was surprised at the level of ‘care factor’. I always like to raise these issues in person before publicly leaving a review, because I do believe in been fair and hearing what the response is and how genuine it is, and I was simply told to "leave feedback in the email".

I drove out yesterday with...