BLACK Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Sydney

Dined at Black last night with 4 others. I’ll start. By saying the food was good, not exceptional as one would expect for the price but good, and that’s where it ended…

When seated and offered water, I asked if we could have ice and a slice with the sparkling. The waitress immediately started to pour and I said no, please bring ice and lime or lemon for each glass. Her manor changed immediately and “rolled her eyes” while looking at the table, said nothing and left. We were all “wow, is it possible she needs to sell her left kidney to get us ice or a slice?” On her return, she had 2 small glasses of ice and a plate of sliced lemon. She proceeded to put the lemon slices in each glass, one guest got just the end skin bit of the fruit, and asked her for another piece. Her distaste for our table was quite obvious at that stage and we had done nothing what so ever to have earned her attitude. She then proceeded to fill our water glasses, it was a race to get your 3 ice cubes into the glass before she filled them with no regard to water being splashed on the table or elsewhere. We were all astounded and in hind sight should have called the manager over at that point. Drinks - we went through our first round of bloody expensive cocktails and ordered another. Miss attitude waitress who was genuinely not present to deal with took and confirmed our order. A new waiter around 15 minutes after the order was placed returned with all of the cocktails on the tray but only placed 3 on the table and he headed off to another table. He then gave the 2 remaining cocktails to a table further down the restaurant. After waiting around another 5 minutes, we called over a waiter and pointed out that we were missing drinks and please get them served. 9 minutes later (yes I was timing now) mine and my wife’s drink arrived just in time for the other 3 guests finishing theirs and starting to order more. Knowing how long this process would take, we ordered 5 martini’s only to be told by the waiter that we wouldn’t process the order because there were other active drinks on the table! When we finally got our drinks served, the fun at our table was rapidly becoming “just another Sydney restaurant experience”.

The delivery of our first course - a starter of two tins of caviar was delivered with uncooked blinks - still raw batter inside. Entree - scallops and kingfish, faultless however let the scallop speak for itself! It was amazing without the near for a spoonful of peas and stuff on top. We all agreed the scallops were overdressed however still delicious. The kingfish, very good.

Mains - presentation! It was embarrassing to be served near $300 of the chefs choice in a bloody (from the meat) oven aluminium pot type thing. Goodness me, so many ways this could have been served but it arrived looking like an afterthought. The others who all had steak also were left underwhelmed at the presentation - many pub meals are served better and when looking at the cost, this was now definitely “another Sydney restaurant experience”. The sides we ordered were served in Indian Restaurant style copper pans - why? What is wrong with you people!!!

The food quality of the entrees and mains was good, but with my shared plate, the aluminium pot it was served in had no heat retention so my steak turned cold in a very short period. Over half of a very expensive steak order was left behind due to being cold.

I’m hoping the manager of this restaurant takes note. With what we ate, in general the food was good, but your staff and the presentation was unbecoming of any restaurant that claims to be the best and charge accordingly.

For a $1500+ dinner (I did receive a casino discount on that price), you guys need to fix your issues as I’m not willing to spend like that again knowing the service would be a repeat of last night.

If you need a good example of how to charge high and provide a fabulous service, dine at Black Hide at Treasury...

My friends and I went to Black to celebrate one of our friend’s birthday tonight, and it turned into a terrible experience. While we were eating, my friend’s, who is celebrating her birthday today, hand got cut on a piece of loose metal sticking out from the table. We asked a waitress for a band-aid, but she disappeared and never came back. A second server came by, and we asked for the band-aid again and also asked to speak to the manager. Shockingly, Black didn’t even have a band-aid on site. It was clear that Black is in violation of CODE OF PRACTICE FIRST AID IN THE WORKPLACE. They had to run outside and get one from the medical staff at the Star Casino. More than 10 mins later, the Star medic came to treat my friend’s hand with saline, and by the way they don’t even have alcohol wipes. Later on, someone claiming to be the manager just slapped some scotch tape over the exposed metal. No one bothered to apologize the entire time. Naturally, this incident completely killed the vibe for the night. And the whole evening was shadowed by it.

When the bill came, the server didn’t say a word of apology, and we were given a full-priced check. It wasn’t until we complained that we finally got the first “apology” of the night. Then, as if doing us a huge favor, they knocked off a measly $100 from a nearly $1400 bill. It felt completely insincere, and the lack of any real apology was appalling. After we pushed further, a manager Vina, who had been missing the whole time, and was not the same ‘manager’ who taped the table earlier, finally showed up to apologise reluctantly.

In the end, they only comped the entrée, dessert, and water, leaving us with a bill of almost $1100. Throughout the entire experience, the staff at Star showed no genuine regret and acted like we were the problem. Not to mention their lack of training on safety procedures, violation of the law by negligence of customer’s physical health. A lot of staff were just staring at us as if something fun happened here but no one offered help. During the entire meal, no one bothered to check with my friend about her hand. Obviously Black did not practice the duty of care and showed no sympathy to their injured customer. There are a lot of good steahouse in town, and this is the last one I would ever visit. I suggest everyone to avoid this place because we all deserve a better service with a place serve...

Ok so you’re probably wondering why we only ordered 500g of steak at a steakhouse but rest assured we left comfortably full and incredibly satisfied with our experience. We were here to make the most out of our visit and wanted to try a bit of everything.

🥩 The ribeye we ordered was a 40-day dry aged grass-fed Angus MBS3+ slab of meat and if that means absolutely nothing to you but a bunch of words (because same): it was amazing. It was fatty in all the right ways and the meat just melted in our mouths. Cooked perfectly, really don’t have any complaints about anything.

🦪 Sydney rock oysters were nice and fresh, can’t screw it up.

🦀 Spanner Crab was chefs kiss. Really digging this entree at restaurants tbh!! They were quite generous with the chunks of crab meat.

🐚 Mooloolaba Scallops was actually the highlight for us out of the entrees. It’s on the menu as a serving of 3 but they gladly accommodated to our party of 5. Grilled beautifully and served with a vegetable salad and buttermilk dressing. It was a wonderful balance of cream and citrus 👌

👅 We went a little crazy with the sides but how can you not when it’s 3 for $30. We went with 6 sides: 2 x cornbread, mash, chips, mac n cheese, and broccolini. Everything was amazing, the mash was our highlight. It was so fluffy, smooth, buttery and salted, truly everything a potato lover could hope for 🤩 It was my first time having cornbread and it was unexpectedly sweet but still a nice addition to the savoury feast. We also ordered 2 mushroom sauces at $5ea.

🍮 Last but definitely not least, the crème brûlée. This was a great way to end the feast! The sweetness of the white chocolate crème brûlée was nicely balanced with the passion fruit, and the mango sorbet. The other desserts sounded a bit too rich so this was just perfect for us.

All in all, loved our time at @blackbargrill and would actually come back! Can’t say that there was anything unique about it all but it was just so tasty and the...