Esplanade Restaurant & Terrace — Restaurant in Northern Territory

Stayed at the Novotel on the Esplanade for a week and although the rooms weren’t great the food was awesome

Breakfast daily a lunch and a few dinners.

Breakfast was a good balance of fresh fruit cereals juices eggs poached or scrambled hash browns beans bacon and mushrooms.

The first night I had the steak which was a fillet about 220 grams rare with vegetables.

The steak was deliciously good with the jus and pan fried greens my coworker had beef cheeks that was tender and the rest looked awesome.

The last night we had Barra pan fried and I had oysters kilpatrick. Wasn’t great at all the oysters were overpowered by the over cooked bacon and far too much worshtishire sauce, making it sticky and heavy tasting.

My Coworker had the Barra and it was the tail end cut so got overcooked and incredibly dried out.

But overall it was a a solid four stars because when they did it well it was seriously good food.

Service can be a bit slow though.

The place needs a good update but the staff were fantastic and made up for the experience. Even when my aircon went the service guy was lovely and came pronto in the morning.

Would...

It's hard to make sense of this restaurant.

As you can see from the photos, it's a beautiful venue, with so much potential.

Pre-covid, this was a pleasant restaurant with a good menu. The standards, service and overall quality have fallen since they re-opened post-covid.

The menu online does not reflect what's actually available. The service is slow (I've only ever seen one person occasionally present for the staff, often you have to seek someone after sitting in an empty restaurant for 5+ minutes), and the food is adequate at best. Their steak ordered medium rare was more medium-done. They advertise wagyu on their website but only standard supermarket steak in reality.

The only redeeming feature is they are part of the AccorPlus program, so up to 50% off food.

I really wish they'd put more effort into this restaurant, there is so much potential. Even just reaching pre-covid standards would be nice.

Positive point, their laksa entry for the 2023 laksa festival was...

Do not come here. The worst restaurant I have ever been to. The bruschetta was not bruschetta. On no planet does cheese and capsicum belong on a bruschetta. The gnocchi was obviously microwaved and not worthy of the price. Several people ordered steak but the waiter got mixed up and attempted to give us schnitzel instead which belonged to another table. The wait was quite long despite the lack of customers. Terrible for a Novotel, and quite embarassing to have this hotel restaurant. Seriously do not come here. A lot of issues with hotel...