Bathers' Pavilion — Restaurant in Sydney

Updated June 2024 as an annual celebratory venue for me

Overall pleasant. Attentive and friendly service. Many experienced servers whom I recognized from past years of visits. Big thumbs up. They really made a difference. Food presentation and balance of flavors were great across all courses. They were also served quite promptly. First time trying the cocktails here instead of wine — quite nice A little bit of letdown of no complimentary bread and butter at the start — not a huge issue, but it’s an unexpected change as a fine dining venue The decor was also more simplified with the white table cloths all got rid of. Probably easier for cleaning and maintenance — but losing the fine touch considering the class and price of dining. The use of the grey mats from Daiso/Kmart was a bit of mismatch. Nonetheless, the ambience, flower decoration, lighting, and beach views remained top-notch. It could get a bit noisy with big groups around (as some reviewers suggested), but I think the restaurant did the best they could to space out the diners. Hence it’s a bit of luck factor whether you came at a busy time on a busy day.

I’d still recommend this place to someone who wanted to have a meal for some sort of celebration.

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Previous review in 2020 (1-star);

Came to this restaurant a few times for the 3-course lunch before the renovation and never got disappointed overall. It’s been my go-to place for both personal and business special occasions in the area.

Today’s the first time I came after renovation (and reopening post lockdown in Sydney). I’m afraid I’d give it 2.5/5 stars as opposed to 5/5 before.

The new decor is more modern, while maintaining the original architectural elements, and nice view over Balmoral Beach — 5/5 Taste of dishes still great in general, especially the textures in the appetizers - 4.5/5 Food presentation - 5/5 The dessert has got less sophisticated and thoughtful than the previous menu — for all the choices I tried — but still not bad - 3.5/5 Service was friendly like before - 4/5

I was surprised when I almost ate a long bone in the main dish (cooked trout), and then discovered one more later. Fortunately only the first one stung my mouth a bit (as I got more cautious afterwards)...

I reflected that to the server who then reported that to the kitchen and apologized for the human error involved. But still, it’s quite a let-down for a fine dining experience especially when safety is concerned, and some explanation of how that could happen would’ve been helpful — especially for me to consider it safe and confident to come back to give the restaurant another chance.

I hope they can maintain focusing on the food standard after...

You know when you go out to dinner and the food is so nice and there's so much of it and you feel like you ate too much, but you wouldn't change a thing? There's not much risk of that happening at the Bathers Pavillion.

The food is pretty nice, but there's not that much of it. Despite being astonishingly expensive, the meals don't come with vegetables. They want you to anticipate both the taste of the main dish, and how frugal the servings are, select matching vegetables, which they charge a lot extra for. I'm not just upset that once you've found a way to justify the enormous expense of this place in your head, they make it clear that it doesn't cover a full meal, but also, it feels like they're really abandoning their responsibitly. If you're serving duck, what does it go with? if you're serving whiting, what else goes with that? This is an opportunity for the chef to be creative and find interesting or at least complimentary accompaniments, but it seemed a bit lazy.

I apologise for belabouring this point but when you do pay extra for veggies, the options are (literally, I'm not making this up, you can check their website): potatoes, salad, beans, and carrots, the four most boring options imaginable. My mum used to bribe me with dessert to eat this stuff, no such luck at the Bathers Pavillion.

The menu offers 2 or 3 courses, but they don't provide a dessert menu unless you ask, so, you don't necessarily know if you want 2 or 3, and if you've decided to have 2, you don't know if it should be an entree and a main or a main and a dessert.

The service was a bit meh, we had to pester them for wine, then they didn't ask the others if they wanted soft drinks, and they didn't return during the meal to see if we wanted anything more to drink. They did surreptitiously fill up our water glasses, which was nice, but they missed an opportunity to get more money out of us, by not offering us more drinks.

There's a great view, and lot of natural light, but not a lot of internal light, and it's a bit noisy.

Miscellaneous: The sourdough bread was excellent. The main meal knives were a bit blunt and not quite up to the task. The soap in the bathroom was a bit gritty (I understand that this is probably some fancy exfoliating thing rather than a result of someone refilling the soap dispensers with sandy...

Wasn’t expecting this from such a reputable restaurant. This is my first ever negative review for someone because I never do this, although this experience was worth notifying. I came here during my shift as a support worker with an elderly client who wanted to grab lunch. We didn’t have a reservation and asked for a table for 2. At the entrance itself, the waitstaff was anything but friendly and we did not feel welcomed for simply not having a reservation. Mind you, my client has a diagnosed mental disorder (something that I had shared with the staff too). She wasn’t comfortable at a table near the entrance and wanted to be seated at the corner where there were heaps of tables available, yet for some reason, they said we couldn’t sit there. Not a big deal, I can excuse that. She wanted to start with some cappuccino and grab lunch as she hadn’t decided anything on the menu yet but before we could even do that, the manager who was on the other side of the room, walked up to her and talked to her about something that made her visibly uncomfortable. None of us are Caucasian and I’m not sure if it’s got anything to do with that, hopefully not. The manager then said if all we wanted to have was coffee then we had to do takeaways or sit on the other side of the restaurant where there wasn’t anyone at all. Even after mentioning to the staff that I’m a support worker and my client just needs some time to make a decision, it felt like we were rushed out or excluded from what was going to be a beautiful lunch. We ended up leaving without ordering anything at all, and were truly made feel very uncomfortable. The manager, I assume even forcibly walked us to the door which seemed like he was trying to get us out. I’ve never been here before and I highly doubt I will go here again. I find it appalling that their disrespectful behaviour was continued even after mentioning I was doing a support shift for my client with special needs. It was beyond disgraceful. Hopefully in the future, you can learn to provide good service to all...