Battlesticks — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

My husband and I had heard all of the rage about this place so on several weeks ago on Saturday the 24th March we booked in for an 8pm reservation.

Here are the highlights...

Strike 1: The table reserved for us and that we were sat at was dirty. Like, spilled water and food crumbs all over it dirty. When I asked the young blonde girl behind the bar for a rag to wipe the dirty table she picked up a blue rag and.. wait for it... HANDED IT OVER THE BAR TO ME .. and said "sorry babe" and let me do the table cleaning! My husband's jaw dropped to the floor. Yet, we are positive and open minded people so we just chuckled with raised eyebrows, sipped our espresso martinis and began browsing the menu.

Ordered lots of yummy nibbles and....

Strike 2: THE FOOD was terrible. Look, like we aren't pro chefs, but seriously, the food was TERRIBLE. The house salad is sliced iceberg with slivered nuts and a crappy honey mustard. My child could put together a better salad than this. The chorizo meatballs and risotto balls tasted like they had been frozen and thawed and slapped on the plate. The halloumi was sloppily, unevenly sliced and grilled and doused in something sticky. The photos speak for themselves I think.

So naturally we just think to drink more booze....hard to screw that up.. until.

Stirke 3: I was waiting at the bar to grab a glass of wine. Not only was there some sort of liquid spilled ALL over the bar, (to the point where you could not set anything on it unless you didn't mind mystery fluid covering it) the young bartender with brown dreadlocks was staring RIGHT at it and did not wipe it once! Even with customers looking at it obviously disgusted. Look, I'm talking there were long dark hairs mixed in this liquid. It was seriously stomach turning. I get it, things are busy but this chick was not so frantically busy that she or someone could not give the bar a wipe. I know what "in the weeds" looks like, I bartended for years in uni and service 101 is WIPE THE BAR UP.

In summary, Battlesticks has tried extremely hard to portray an atmosphere of luxurious and exclusive waterfront dining. In our opinion, they have failed miserably at achieving anything remotely close to this by skimping on food quality and proper staffing/training.

Hope this helps others in the Newy area. My hubs and I make the best of all situations and were sort of just laughing the whole time at the situation. We just want other people out there to know our experience so they can make the decision to spend their money elsewhere.

Hey, at least the espresso martinis...

My friend and I came in to sus out the place as it recently opened. We were pleasantly surprised and intrigued by the setting of the place; lovely portside and view of the sea. We got a mojito and a whisky sour on bourbon. The mojito could use some more soda and slightly less ice, I couldn't taste that nice hit of soda. As for the whiskey sour, it was nice, but could've used a slice of orange, either fresh or dehydrated (fresh preferred). Next, there was a lovely young gentlemen whose name was Kieran and I lay my hands and faith in his hands for my next cocktail. When I say, this cocktail was the best cocktail ever made, I mean it. I highly suggest anyone coming to Battlesticks to ask for Kieran to make their cocktails, he knows his stuff and he knows how to mix them. All in all, it's a lovely place,...

Great food and service!!

Every time i visit the "live music" is way too loud. Too much glass, causing too much reverb to have it blasting.

Also, no one person is there for the music, keep it low to fill the silence in-between conversation but having the volume so high competing with everyone taking makes the place sound horrible.. everyone is yelling to talk to each other.

Live music was nice, just needs to have better volume control and, as an alternative, could use more baffling to reduce reverb. Why they choose glass splash backs after having glass windows it interesting.

My ears hurt after 45min. The food was awesome. The staff were awesome and the view was great! Again music was nice just the volume needs to be...