Port City Bowling Club — Restaurant in Port Macquarie

Whenever I go out to dinner these days, I am looking for a fabulous family experience and this is exactly what we received on Friday night @ Port City Bowling Club. There is a bit of an art form to having a successful buffet. Finding that fine line between quality and price is difficult, not to mention maintaining 30+ dishes and keep everything consistently hot and fresh.

The club did a great job of providing a variety of fresh salads and a range of standard Chinese and Aussie dishes but the real heroes for me were the pork belly and roast duck (just delicious), the king prawns (nuff said) and my personal favourite the freshly grilled satay chicken - fresh off the grill and sensational.

After an excessive amount of food (The staff did a fabulous job of not making me feel guilty for being such a pig), I noticed the desert bar and the coffee machine.

Luckily I reserved a little space for sweets and greatly enjoyed a small portion of pavlova, a little black forest cake, a marshmallow dipped in the chocolate fountain, a teaspoon dipped in the chocolate fountain then drizzled on the pavlova, a little chocolate mousse and a small scoop of vanilla ice-cream..... and of course the coffee!

I was not the only one enjoying the food - the restaurant was packed. After we all staggered out with silly smiles on our faces (that are still there three days later), a really terrific band started up in the family friendly lounge area so we danced a few numbers which capped off a really fun outing.

To the staff of Port Bowling Club Buffet. Thanks again for a fabulous night and thank you for being so understanding when my son created his own personal Matterhorn from soft-serve ice-cream replete with candy and sprinkles and chocolate sauce. You have given him a memory that will almost certainly be with...

I believe in second chances but not third chances. 16/10/23 lunch. 8 staff and maybe 12 customers. 30 minute wait for an inedible chicken schnitzel that had likely been cooking the entire time. Wait staff were excellent, possibly far too experienced at dealing with issues like this. No time for replacement so was happy to take a voucher in lieu of refund. 3/11/23 lunch. reluctantly returned to use voucher. When ordering, said to my wife "I'll get the cheeseburger as surely you couldn't stuff that up". Guess again! Came out fairly quickly and after the first bite could tell it was raw. Again, wait staff were excellent, albeit shocked at the raw hamburger, quickly ordering a replacement. I joked at the irony of coming back to use a voucher only to get another horribly prepared meal. The result can only be described as a childish and unprofessional response to a genuinely undercooked burger. The replacement looked like it had been run over by a steam roller and attacked with a blow torch. No chance of being raw this time. Perhaps the 'cook' thought it would balance out the first attempt or they are just that immature and unprofessional. Charcoaled but edible, I ate the burger as I was 1, starving by then, and 2, safe in the knowledge we would never return to the...

We came here for a function last Saturday night. We had been told there would be nibbles provided at the tables and in addition we could order drinks from the bar and pizza (for some reason, only pizza) from downstairs. The room was attractively presented and the provided nibbles were nice. The selection of beers at the bar was pretty ordinary, with 4X and VB the main contenders when at the bowling club across town we can choose from a variety of interesting brews including two different XPAs, including a local. But the most ordinary part was when we went down to order our pizzas - there were about 4 or 5 choices, all meaty. Not even a plain cheese. Now, I know a lot of their customers might not be vegetarian but there are enough people out there who might be, or might not be even be actual vegetarians but just feel like something a little lighter tonight, that it seems like offering at least one non-meat option would make sense. The bartender taking orders said there were other options on the menu and we let him know we'd been told we could only order pizza and he said hm. Then we asked him if the kitchen could take the meat off one of the other pizzas before they cook it and he said, "you can take the meat off". Now that's customer...