Avalon Restaurant & Cocktail Bar — Restaurant in Sydney

Delicious food with good portions and pleasant ambience. Service a little patchy. Good value overall. We walked up to the top of the stairs in the converted old cinema building and saw the bar area on the left and restaurant through the doorway on the right but there was no clearly indicated area to wait to be seated. We hung around near the doorway and eventually caught the attention of a man in a floral shirt who appeared to be on staff. He was friendly and humorous and checked our reservation and after a short wait took us to our table. We explained that we had had time to look at the menu and were already ready to order but he vanished without taking our orders. After some time another man came to take our orders. Having done so he offered us a choice of two styles of bread while we waited for our first course and was very obliging when we asked for plain toasted bread with butter instead. We had time to absorb the decor - a mix of jaded antiques, garage sale bric a brac, 60's lamps, oriental carpets, old movie star portraits and original paintings that might be found in any suburban house, with one large portrait of a lady whose name and significance we never did find out. The cutlery and crockery was remarkable for its variety - no two items seemed to come from the same set, except for the large plates for the main course. Altogether a pleasant quirkiness which works. We shared the chicken fillets with rosti and salad and the baked salmon with dill sauce and chips (see photos) and both were delectable, the salmon in particular close to heavenly. For dessert we had the lemon tart with clotted cream and the macadamia cream accompanied lemon myrtle cheesecake, both heavily decorated with strawberry slices and both as tasty as they sound. The glitch there was that we had ordered both courses at the beginning and when a different waitress was clearing our dishes from the first course, we requested some decaf coffee to come with the desserts. When the desserts arrived they were brought by a third waitress who raced away again and nobody ever brought the coffee. Finally when it came time to pay, the coffee was on the bill, even though it had never been served. This place has great food at appropriate prices but I would suggest a more systematic server system where each server handles a particular set of tables throughout the session. It would probably make for happier staff and...

An experience so bad, it was comical. Its a quirky little place, if you like random old decor, it fits the mood. We had a 6pm booking for 2. Arrival downstairs to an empty bar with chairs facing a small stage, but nothing on for a Thursday night which is expected, but felt a bit eerie with the metal fence off around the downstairs area. Upstairs to the main dining. Not a favourite feature to have paper lining the tops of the table with table clothes underneath but I get the practicality for the staff cleaning up. Didnt feel like it fit the setting. My partner and I ordered an entree to share. A bowl of warmed olives. Which were some of the poorest tasting I've experienced yet. Not tasty, seemed like odd seasoning paired with them, and they weren't really warmed. For mains, I got an eye fillet steak that was just terrible. The worst, toughest, chewiest one ive ever had. It was bland, no salt, no pepper and was watery as if pulled from a fridge or freezer before cooking. It was also covered in a thick layer of breadcrumbs? The dish had mushrooms that were dressed in balsamic vinegar? And a blob of cream mixed with a little horseradish. At least the crispy potatoes that werent soaked in balsamic sauce were good. My partner, ordered slow cooked lamb. And it was cooked. That kind of cooked where its dry and kinda chalky on the tongue. 0 flavour, was wrapped in bacon that tasted like nothing and drenched in a sauce. Sided with kale? Some beans and reheated frozen peas... it was pretty grim. For us, the most, hilariously bad part is that my partner does not love mashed potatoe and his dish was served with it (as expected), and of everything it was the part he liked most, because the rest was so grim! 😅 Needless to say, we were disappointed thoroughly for a $140 dinner. We've had better at a pub. We also ordered a cocktail each which were ok and service was also standard. We did have a good laugh at the expense of the bad food though. Wouldn't go in with high...

Well… what can I really say about this place, just bitterly disappointed. We came to this restaurant following the positive reviews, but we don’t think the positive reviews are warranted. We booked the downstairs bar, based on the photographs online of the “jazz band”. Unfortunately there was a lack of atmosphere / ambiance downstairs and it certainly was not a jazz band - rather a singer and a pianist. We felt we needed to sit in silence and watch a ‘show’ rather than have lovely background music. Admittedly, upstairs looked more lively and we requested to move tables but unfortunately they couldn’t accommodate us.

In addition to the above, the food was average - one meal had to be returned for being too cold and when brought back, it was still luke warm. We had planned to get desserts but decided we had had enough.

The service overall was almost neglectful. We were ignored when we first came in for several minutes as the woman downstairs looked at us and stood still. Later in the night, we ordered a round of drinks. During the time the drinks were being made, we got our food, one was returned and re served, we ate and then asked for the bill all before this round of drinks was delivered. We felt the drinks only appeared because we had asked for the bill. The woman downstairs also only had 4 tables to look after. We felt the whole night we were waiting to be served - again, disappointing.

The decor may be to some people’s tastes but I have never seen a restaurant designed like that. The movies playing on the walls, the mannequin in the bar, the strange ornaments everywhere and the umbrellas in the male toilet, made for a very strange environment.

Sorry to leave a bad review but I feel like people should know before booking as it was an expensive night for...