Emu Hall Bar & Kitchen — Restaurant in Sydney

So one reason I was keen to try out Emu Hall was actually to see who’s right about this place.

There’s obviously several angry reviews alongside the nice reviews and that added to the novelty and excitement over what my possible review would be. I don’t like writing unsavoury reviews for small businesses because it’s someone’s bread that we are pouring water on , and if someone’s working hard then they should be recognised. Note I don’t know the owner.

I’m a Penrith local and very proud of the entertainment scene out here, many options for a good night so it was my friend from outside the area who kept requesting we come to try the ribs at Emu Hall. He must like ribs and he never disclosed his source of why it had to be Emu Hall, give there are other strong rib offerings and like everybody……I heard about the mixed reviews.

So we sit down at 5pm Saturday ( to beat the crowd) and we order our food and drinks. There’s cocktails on the menu so a few are ordered and we catch-up with everybody. It’s a table of 16. 15 minutes pass and we wave down one of the servers and ask about the drinks. About 5 minutes later the drinks start coming and the cocktails have nice mixes of colours and exotic fruits strung through skewers on it. The women who order the cocktails brighten up after sulking about the time and it’s insta time.

My opinion is that there are two cocktail shaker guys so it’s going to take a while because each cocktail they give about 5-10minutes to. If the table in front of you has two cocktail orders that’s 15 minutes. We waited 20 so naturally there were orders in front. Yes they could hire more cocktail guys… but oh well , we’ll live! So folks noted, cocktails will take time.

The food arrives about another 15 minutes later. Keep in mind ribs will take a while and the food for the whole table came at same time. Our corner had ribs, margarita pizza, steak and chicken and waffles.

The ribs were strong, tasty, had enough sauce , meat was tender. Not exactly life changing but good solid. The star was the margarita , wood fire style, good quality buffalo mozzarella, with smoky crust and nice high end looking tomato Napoli base. The words really good were repeated as I shared it around. Just as good as any woodfire joint you’ll find in Australia.

The steak wasn’t as exciting as one would hope but my son loved it , given he likes steak. The chicken and waffles was pretty interesting with some mayo slaw sauce over it and it’s just different.

A second round of cocktails were ordered - keep in mind 15-20minutes - and now our 3 year old was getting fomo and voiced for a babycino. So we added that on and in return we had a cute little volcano like cup covered in hundreds and thousands and the frothed milk in the centre crater. The 8 year saw it , one more baby cino.

So, would I come back? Yes, the wood fired pizza was good, I had a good time and the servers were all attentive. My buddy still thinks it’s the best ribs. The food is a level above your pub parmi, not fine dining, but there is clear effort in the menu and kitchen to please everybody. The lamb skewer also looked good.

It’s a Saturday night, everybody is dressed for a good time, there’s good high energy music, smiles everywhere , from both the servers and the folks.

The Penrith entertainment scene is amazing, there’s a lot of options and Emu Hall makes a good contribution and there’s no problems with parking. I’m still keen to try all the other offerings but will definitely pass a good word out there next time I’m asked or need to find a nice...

This was our 2nd time having lunch here and it was the nail in the coffin unfortunately! This place has such great potential and we love the atmosphere and surroundings, location is amazing but it suffers terribly in most aspects of service and quality. The first time we attended was a weekend so it was busy as to be expected and this time was Father's Day so understandably we expected it to be packed as it was a gorgeous Spring day also. I worked in hospitality for years so I understand a fair bit of planning should go into each and everyday and especially peak times like weekends, good weather days and holidays like Father's Day. The staff here generally are quite young which is fine but they seem green and I don't think that's any fault of their own but lack of training and guidance by the company. The meals come out at all different times even though they are ordered on the same table number, the chicken we ordered this last time was dry and overcooked which tells me the kitchen is overrun and understaffed and they are just either understaffed in general with wait staff or their staff aren't trained competently to handle such intense crowds. The wait times for both food and drinks are waaaay too long!! The bar staff who were serving people were also making cocktails which is absolutely ridiculous as it takes time to make cocktails so why should the next person in line be waiting that long to be served? This created chaos as the lines are long, people are getting seriously annoyed standing there and waiting and there were multiple customers going off at the bar and the food lines about waiting so long! It was chaotic and poorly handled. There should always be especially at peak time an allocated cocktail maker or cocktail makers. That's just one of the things I noticed personally that could have been done better. It has been a while between visits too and I recall it being the same issues the first time we went there so it doesn't look like anything has changed in that year or more since we last attended which is disappointing. We won't be returning unless we hear it's had a massive overhaul or...

Don’t get me wrong Emu Halls venue itself is well presented, engaging to the public eye, the perfect place for some candid pictures if you will.

However, the lack of communication skills the staff have with their guest is simply disgusting, especially trying to reserve a table. I tried ringing multiple times 2 weeks prior to reserve a table knowing Emu Hall can be a busy place (especially on a Friday night) and no answer. Sure enough they do have a website where you can book online which works quite well but the limit of 14 people is a little weird, there are quite a few number of tables so I don’t see why they can’t make that limit 20. If the kitchen staff can not handle the pressure don’t have a large menu or a large number of tables. The menu itself is mostly Pizza and Pasta so some efficiency would help them out a great deal.

Now I had booked for a table for 14 which and as I expected I’d be seated outside (fair enough) however the lack of heating is absolutely ridiculous. There are about 20 large picnic tables out on the lawn with only 6 gas heaters, two of which ‘Out of Gas’, we had asked if they could be refilled and the server said “we’ll come take a look”. Approximately 30 minutes later the server said “we are out of gas how about some blankets”. Perfect solution as only our legs were really cold. They came back 15 minutes later with only 2 blankets for 14 people, and they themselves were quite small.

Over all, the service at emu hall is inadequate for the venue type and needs some work. Communication skills need to be pick up, not once during the night did anyone come to the table to see how things were, oh and did I mention they didn’t bring out my dish which I stated I was still waiting on. And buy some more heaters for winter time or as I mentioned above, remove tables if you can’t handle service...