Bar Woolloomooloo — Restaurant in Sydney

Booked a reservation for our 8 year anniversary. Our expectations were high given the type of restaurant & the reviews. Sadly is was disappointing at nearly every turn. When we arrived there was no one around to greet/seat us, not a great first impression. After waiting a minute or two we went to the bar to advise them we had a dinner reservation. The bar staff alerted one of the waiters & we were shown to our seat. Despite the restaurant being nearly completely empty, we were sat at a table that honestly, seemed like it had been placed there when they ran out of other tables. We initially thought they sat us there because we were just a couple, but during our meal we saw them sit other couples at larger tables. Disappointing also because when I made the reservation online, the form asked if there was any special occasion & I had selected anniversary, so I though they might have seated us somewhere nice or in one of the private booths that were all empty when arrived (& still mostly empty when we left.) But no one even mentioned our anniversary. Next disappointment came when we were h&ed menus & discovered that the a la carte menu wasn't included. I enquired about it & was told that it wasn't available on weekends. Super disappointing as we were most excited to order the Cacio e Pepe. Additionally, the confirmation email made no mention that it was bar food only on weekends & even included a link to the a la carte menu. So we were left to order from the Bar Menu, which consists of snack food, entrees & appetisers. The menu also states that all of the meals are "designed to be shared"; interesting considering a Cheeseburger was one of the options. Seeing as we had already travelled there & we had a show reservation after dinner, we decided to eat there. We ordered Fried Olives, Focaccia, Meatballs & a Cheeseburger. Happy anniversary! Should have just gone to Lord of the Fries. The description for the olives was; “Sicilian green olives, cream cheese, feta, crème fraiche”, we had expected the crème fraiche to be served on the side for dipping, but when I asked about it I was told that it was inside the olives, but my partner & I found it hard to believe the managed to stuff everything inside the olives. The Focaccia was nice, but the “ricotta” that was served with it was the consistency of aioli & tasted like some sort of coconut yoghurt. We enquired about the ricotta, thinking that maybe there was a mix up or they had substituted it for some reason, but we were assured that, what was on our plate, was the ricotta. Slow Braised Meatballs looked great, but that’s where the praise ends. At $36 for 6 meatballs, I expected to savour every bite, but they had very little salsa on them, were quite dry & the only discernible flavour was that of pepper. The Cheeseburger, of course it was just a single cheeseburger served with a knife, classic sharable meal. It was the best dish, but I think that’s just because everything else was disappointing & we were still very hungry at this point. It was really no better than any other vegan cheeseburger I’ve had, including ones I’ve made at home. The waiter came to clear our table & asked how everything was. I don’t normally bother giving honest feedback unless it is good, but I told them that, honestly it was disappointing. I mentioned about the a la carte menu not being available & not being mentioned when I made the booking, & that the meatballs were disappointing. The waiter apologised & said he would pass the feedback onto the chef regarding the food. I expected him to return with the bill, but instead he came back & said after speaking with the chef that they wouldn't charge us for the meatballs & would like to offer a free dessert. We certainly weren’t expecting that. We graciously accepted the dessert & chose the Tiramisu & it was pretty good. Points for trying to make it up to us with the comp meatballs & tiramisu. Our bill only came to about $50, which was much less than I was expecting to spend, but I'd have been happy to spend 4 times that for good food & a...

I was looking forward to trying this place out after hearing raving reviews from my friends and honestly I wasn’t that impressed. I took the same friends who have dined there before and it didn’t look like they were impressed either.

We sat in the lounge area where the waitress kept tripping over our lounge chairs no matter how much we tried to move and tuck ourselves into the table. I was basically straddling the legs of the table by the end of the night. She was short staffed and looked understandably tired, so I don’t blame her. The seating was just so odd, paired with louder than usual non ambient restaurant music, it was not a comforting atmosphere.

Usually when I go to places and they serve mocktails, it’s quite disappointing, but here they served me a beautifully mixed mocktail that was right up my alley. Bar/drinks menu is big which is great. However, the food was the downfall. The raw lasagna was flavourful and fresh, but all I could taste after a few bites was straight up ‘cheesy’ pesto. It was incredibly small for a sharing dish. It barely fed one person and was cumbersome to break apart to share. The Mexican salad was big enough to share, but not even worth sharing considering there was nothing Mexican about it apart from corn that tasted straight from the can. The sweet potato gnocchi (just the gnocchi) was over cooked and under seasoned. The purée underneath also tasted like it came out of a can and was barely warm. And it was garnished with stale popcorn. Strawberry shortcake was also disappointing. The pairing with coconut sorbet was nice, but the actual cake was chewy (unless it was gluten free then I understand why) and the strawberry purée/jam tasted so sweet and artificial. The highlight was 100% the burger however. The crumb on the southern fried chick’n was perfect and tasted great. If you were to spend money here for food, I recommend the burgers. With a menu that has many different cuisines on it, your safest bet is always a burger. And let’s not forget that little odd menu item in the desserts section where you can pay $450 for dessert in a hotel room wink wink.

I don’t think I will want to come back here however. I can definitely pay half the price for these dishes elsewhere and it’ll be much better than here...

We were yesterday at Alibi for their set share menu with matching mocktails.

Let's first talk about the mocktails. these didn't match the courses at all. All of them were sweet or sweet/sour, while the courses were not. The taste itself didn't add anything to or even remotely fit the course. Could as well just get a soda. we only got three mocktails and they weren't that great. In fact I wouldn't even consider them as cocktails/mocktails. Only the kombucha I enjoyed, but again not matching the course. Good thing is they charged each drink separately, so we paid 44pp for the drinks instead of 55pp (the cost of alcoholic matching beverages), but I still find that very expensive for two sparkling waters with fruit taste and a kombucha.

Now the courses: the courses were simply underwhelming. There was some flavor in some courses, but in each course there wasn't more than one layer of taste, the taste itself was either bland or it was mostly relying on the sauce, which wasn't special and taste-wise there was definitely not much going on. some courses had no good flavour (and combinations) at all. The meatballs tasted exactly like the blackbeans-quinoa meatballs I tried to make once from the Minimalist Baker’s recipes website, which fully taste like cheap tomato sauce. Which was the reason I never used that recipe again.

In my opinion this is all quite expensive regarding the points above. I would expect more dynamic layers of flavors and taste-consistency for a 75pp set menu.

Since Alibi also has a High Tea with a set menu of sweets and savory, I was excited earlier on to come there twice to try that out as well. However, after having tasted the desserts, which might be a representation for their sweets, I regret that I had to change my mind about that.

What I did enjoy about the restaurant was the presentation of the food, the atmosphere of the place and the style.

But taste-wise, if you want to introduce your omni friends to vegan cuisine, I wouldn't suggest the share menu as it wouldn't be a very good representation of vegan food. Actually, I find this disappointing value-for-money quite damaging to the representation of the vegan set-menu-experience. I would expect a lot more quality, and definitely...