Harvest Kitchen — Restaurant in Rowland Flat

A bit sad, TBH - was not expecting this type of service. Realise it was Easter Saturday, so busy as, but since hospitality is your business, you should be prepared well in advance. Greeted friendly and seated straight away (2PM, time of the booking - tick) - when the girl talked about our experience, I asked for a menu with the 5 courses to see what I was going to have and she also told us: the food might not be what was on the menu - surprise: WHAAAAAT???? I paid for that food, and I'll get a surprise?? So, are you making what's left in the fridge? Second concern - the first one was the dirty tables that stayed dirty for a while. Understandable. First antipasto came out pretty quickly - bread, corn; not overly difficult though. Second course, broccoli and fish crudo, took 1 hour. When we got the food, it was already past 3PM. I could see other people complaining and getting served quicker than us (probs I should have complained too), but we kept it quiet. At 4PM, when I saw other people (who came in after us) receiving more food, I called the girl and said I was going to leave and pay for what I ate. Then the magic happened. They wanted me to charge for a one full experience, $72 when I only had 2 courses (one course per person out of 5!!!!) The owner also said: you had the fried chicken - for which I had to say no, others had it though before us. He came back with a bill of $59 making me pay for the small experience (which we were not allowed to book due to the "their rules for that day" - can't keep up with a full experience, perhaps a small one would have been better!!).In a nutshell, I paid $59 for some broccoli, bread, butter, olives, pickles, and fish crudo - seems ridiculous - plus the extra surcharge for public holiday. He also had the guts to say - "did we get an agreement?" I also asked him what he would do if he were in my position - no answer. Overall, bad taste - too busy, shortage of staff (industry problem though), expensive for what they put on the table, and not reasonable AT ALL!!! A serious business would say: I am sorry for the mess up, please pay the wine (for which we had) and a sincere apology. Instead, I paid for a small experience which I wasn't allowed to order from the start and for which I did not have it in full. What...

It was 'okay', perhaps it was just my selection that missed the mark of being worth $110 for two people sharing 5 dishes. The first was a tiny little bowl of pickled vegetables (that I could've bought in a jar from Foodland) not even a cracker or bread to eat with it. The second was 5 pieces of corn 'ribs' (sections shaved off of the cob); However, I doubt that the 5 pieces we got would've equated to one whole cob & the capsicum(?) dip we received with the corn was okay but the corn had minimal seasoning. The third, was a salad with 2 teaspoons of bean puree sitting under half a head of raw broccoli florets sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and cranberries. The fourth, was a small pork top loin(?) steak glazed in plum sauce on coleslaw, nothing mind-blowing. The last, soggy buttermilk chicken pieces on top of chopped iceberg lettuce, sprinkled with sesame seeds & what can only be described as Big Mac sauce. The chicken was definitely not crispy like the pictures on their website, an original KFC chicken tender would've had more flavour. The last dish was, essentially, a deconstructed chicken burger with Big Mac sauce (made with dill instead of little pickle-pieces). My partner ordered a bowl of chips, which we thought for $10 would be handmade, but the chips had the grainy texture of processed, soggy, frozen, chips you buy in the freezer section. I wouldn't say any of the food tasted bad, but I don't believe that based on the selection we tried it deserves the hype...

Lunch at Calabria Winery SA Harvest Kitchen. A group of 11 people very disappointed! Whilst we we’re at Penfolds, we asked the guy serving the wine tasting- where we could have lunch? He suggested harvest kitchen a few minutes away. I asked him whether the Penfolds winery had somewhere for lunch and he said- not really. Anyway, I’m leaving the wine tasting section I walked past the restaurant and they had a pizza menu. I turned to george and Joanna and say - hey guys, there’s a pizza place here - but we kept going because Harvest Kitchen was recommended to us. We did end up at harvest kitchen - and very disappointed. Sporadic serving, cold meals that should be hot, meals served with sauces that were specifically asked to be eliminated because they were going to be consumed by diabetics, wine that we had to argue about because we were told at the tasting we could order at the table - but was not in the wine list etc etc etc and the final bill tried to charge us for 2 x bottles of wine instead if 1. Silver lining - at least we were...