Waterfront Tavern — Restaurant in New South Wales

My husband took me here yesterday as a surprise saying it’s expensive but the seafood is really good and fresh. I was left high and dry to say the least. we spent just about the $500 mark including food and drinks for 2 adults as well as $40+ on Sunday/public holiday service fee. The mocktails were good but as for the food: seafood was NOT fresh. We ordered the waterfront seafood harvest platter which was not worth $195.. the oysters tasted off and old that I had to spit some back out after eating. The sauces that came with the fish were not nice at all. The octopus was chargrilled to the point of being rubbery and burnt that all I could taste was the burnt skin of the octopus legs.. the kill Patrick oysters tasted like they were cooked in straight seawater. The prawns also tasted soapy for some reason. We also ordered the seafood basket $46 which actually didn’t come with any tartare sauce so I asked for tomato sauce after looking for a waiter to hail down for 5 minutes, then I waited 5-10 minutes as I continuously saw the same waiter I asked for sauce just fix up tables and chairs around the empty restaurant (we came at a quiet time). The salad had sad, dry and mushy vegetables, the cucumber slices were old and wrinkly like they were cut up and left out exposed to air for a few hours before added to the dish. The hot chops tasted old and disgusting which was a shock because it’s literally hot chips, how could you even get that wrong? Then I had to ask another lady for sauce which after I explained what happened the sent someone over shortly with sauce. We also ordered the grilled chicken boscaiola $33 which was not great for the price. The potato’s did not taste right and one of the chicken pieces were soo dry and overcooked, it had a burnt flavour lingering through it but not any black signs of burnt on the chicken itself. We also ordered tomato basil bruschetta $15 which I can say was the only dish I have 0 complaints about, it tasted like what you would expect. Overall, I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone if they came to have seafood, especially oysters. The only good parts are the view and perhaps drinks - but I can only confirm 3 mocktails and not for any actual alcoholic beverages. Because the food prices was soo expensive, I got takeaway containers to bring home for friends who might want to try before throwing out completely. I hate wasting food but to me, these dishes were not edible. For such a large scale restaurant at a quiet time, I would expect a waiter to come do the rounds in case someone needs something but no. No one came around unless they had to do something and even the staff at the bars don’t even look around expect chat amongst each other. I walked to the front counter to find a staff member to ask for a takeaway box and she told me to help myself to the back corner near the toilets for it and continued to chat away with the male bartender. As I was walking towards that section a lady asked me if I needed anything in which I told her what I was doing and then she told me to go sit down and she will bring it to me. I don’t understand why different staff are telling me different things.. very unprofessional and it just shows that some staff are clearly just there for show and don’t actually...

I don’t even want to give this 1 star. I have my father in law over from England and have heard positive things about this place… We ordered 3 starters, 2 came out after a while, 10 minutes of waiting still no sign of the 3rd after asking 4 times, whilst we are in the middle of our starters they proceed to bring our mains to the table, we asked to have our STARTERS first (hence why they are called a starter) with still no sign of the 3rd starter, the young waitress was lovely and very understanding and took our mains back to the kitchen (she did explain that it will be sat on the side ‘keeping warm’ until we are ready) and brought out the 3rd starter finally… it was cold, we paid before receiving our food so we kindly asked for a refund for the mains and the cold crab cakes, as we had already waited quite a while for the starter to come out, and didn’t really fancy eating chewy lukewarm steaks that had been on the pass for approximately 20 minutes before the 3rd starter even arrived!!!!

The manager (woman) was the most rude unprofessional person I have come across, she refused to even listen to anything we said, talking over us like the rude obnoxious individual that she is. She then arrived back at the table and stated she is only going to refund $75 of the $200+ bill! And when questioned about where the rest of the refund is she decided to call security and threatened to call the police, literally because we complained. We did not raise our voices once, we was not rude in anyway shape or form (as we have clearly been raised better than this disaster of a person)

My poor father in law had to experience an absolutely diabolical service and treatment from this individual and felt embarrassed they made him feel as though he was lying and trying to just get his money back!!

There are many ways this issue could of been dealt with professionally, I do not know how she ended up with the ‘managers’ title, I am guessing they must of been stuck for choice.

Such a shame because the place itself is beautiful, the lady that seated us was lovely, the waitress of our table was very professional and apologetic, the rest of them are an absolute embarrassment. Oh and not to mention when we arrived they had actually booked our table for the wrong day!!

Not impressed in the slightest form...

Firstly they market themselves as fine dining to charge upmarket prices on drinks and food, however there's no table service offer. Isn't that the epitome of what fine dining entails? The food ordering app also defaults to paying a tip. Ummm why would I pay a tip when noone waited on me? That makes no sense. Who am I even tipping? Next onto the food quality: We tried the Pub Classic Schnitzel and the Seafood basket. We've definitely had better at establishments not marketed as fine dining. The snitty was over beaten and thin on the edges which made it overcooked around the edges and thinner than it needed to be. I also felt that the crumb description was oversold on the menu, and was basic at best, not seasoned or salted, Just fairly plain ... seriously if you are going to have a "fine dining" description on a pub classic, it needs to be bloody good and better than the typical pub snitty. Finally we move on to the prices.. $12 for a beer... c'mon, that's plain greedy. People need to stop pretending that $12 for a beer is reasonable when there are many other near by establishments that will pour an equivalent tap beer for half the price. An added prawn to the snitty would have also cost $9... yes that's right, $9... even if you wrap that up in a bit of fruit or a vegetable that's insane. The cooked prawns in the seafood basket were slightly overdone - other than that the rest of that meal was ok. I was also impressed that there were no scavenging seagulls around at a restaurant so close to the ocean, so that's definitely a seaside selling point and made the view and experience more enjoyable.

Overall, I felt that the atmosphere has a lot of room for improvement as does the food.

3...