Dunbar by Palomas - Watsons Bay — Restaurant in Sydney

We recently visited this restaurant to celebrate my grandma’s 91st birthday. The location is stunning—right on the beach with a beautiful view. The ambiance and decor are lovely and well-maintained, and it’s genuinely a nice place to be.

Unfortunately, the experience was pretty disappointing for a special occasion like this.

To start with, there weren’t enough menus, even though the restaurant was only about a third full, and we had to wait while they printed more. The air conditioning wasn’t even on until another table asked for it, so it was a bit uncomfortable in the meantime.

Then, my water glass had black specks in it, which wasn’t great. I’m vegan, and there was nothing on the menu that suited me except the “petite salade.” After chatting with the staff, they suggested I get the salad served with the barramundi (without feta). When it arrived, it still had feta in it! They took it away with no apology, and the replacement left me anxious because it had cream-colored spots. I asked if they’d just picked the feta out, and while they said they’d remade it, they didn’t stick around to answer my questions properly, which left me feeling uneasy. I gave the salad to my mum to eat, and unlike the salad in the plates of barramundi my grandma and aunt received, this particular salad had no pieces of avocado in it. You would think if anything they would have put more veggies in this salad, especially as they were charging the price that should include fish, so this was really disappointing.

Overall, the staff seemed disorganized and didn’t really make an effort to create a warm or special atmosphere.

The toilets were out of paper when we arrived, and even though my mum told the staff straight away, it wasn’t replaced until about 40 minutes later, leaving both restrooms unusable in the meantime.

When it came time to pay, my grandma, who uses a walker, went up to the counter, but they insisted on bringing the bill to the table. She had to walk all the way back and wait for it, which felt unnecessary and inconsiderate.

Lastly, we’d mentioned on the booking that it was a birthday, but they didn’t even bother to put a candle on her dessert. It was such a small thing, but it would have made a big difference.

The location and setting are absolutely beautiful, but the service and vegan options left a lot to be desired. This may have been normal a decade or two ago but the world has changed and the restaurant has fallen behind the times. I really hope they can improve as there is so much...

Really disappointing experience from start to finish.

Dunbar House used to be a favourite place for special occasions. It's well positioned, nice views, and has nice decorations. A little pricey, but it's manageable.

The last visit was not good. Firstly, we were given an extremely wobbly outdoor table, and so we were then moved inside to an uncomfortably low table with even more uncomfortable chairs. We were waiting on one more member of our party, but a staff member started clearing away the extra place setting before I asked them not to.

We had to ask staff to order drinks and food every single time. No one checked in on us otherwise (given that there's a 10% Sunday service charge, this was already disappointing). A number of issues happened at this point. The hot drinks ordered with oat/almond milk were given to us with cows milk (cue upset stomachs), I asked for a sparkling water with lime and they tried to give us a big bottle for the table (I had to ask for a small one, but still no lime), one of our mains took so long to come out that the rest of us had finished our meals (and we had to prompt the staff twice for an update), the roast veg had cheese on them which was not advertised on the menu, and generally the staff seemed poorly trained, inattentive, and unnecessarily loud when speaking to each other.

On top of that, numerous lightbulbs weren't working in the dining area, the bathroom ran out of hand towels and the hand dryer was switched off, one of the toilet seats was cracked, and the tables were all crammed in too close to each other.

I have no idea what's going on with Dunbar House. It's always been a lovely experience with good service, but yesterday's experience was disappointing in so many areas. The food was decent once it arrived, but very limiting for my vegetarian friend who had to pay $32 for a prawn pasta without the prawns because they had run out of the one veggie main options.

All of that and no split bills either....

Dunbar House is positioned in a beautiful landscape directly opposite the beach. The dinning rooms are spacious and there are also tables available on the verandahs for outdoor dining. The authentic charm of the gracious old manor house is inviting especially along with the lovey outlook but that’s where the enjoyment of our visit ended. Unfortunately the service was lacking in many ways. They didn’t have any menus to give us when we arrived so we waited for over 10 minutes whilst they printed some up. The choices in the menu were quite limited and there was absolutely nothing for vegan dietary needs which meant that one of our group ended up not eating at all. The waiting staff were distracted, didn’t listen to questions well, and were rarely seen anyway giving the impression that there wasn’t any management involved to even lend some professionalism to them. Although there were very few other diners our food took 40 minutes to arrive. Whilst the quality was good and the pricing reasonable, it fell short of what it could have been to have been worth the wait. We went for my mother’s 91st birthday and she’d chosen Dunbar House because of times she had of really beautiful memories with her husband. I felt very sad that she was so disappointed with our time there. It’s an incredible shame that the current management is letting the venue slip this way. It may be that they rely heavily on the wedding reception market for the upstairs space and so are not energetically connected to the needs of the...