Engadine Tavern — Restaurant in Sydney

Five stars for the lovely gentleman hosting trivia night, kitchen staff and security who were the exception to the disgusting experience I had tonight with the bartender Vanessa and the curly brown-haired manager on duty with the beginnings of a bald spot. I have been here several times both with family and my partner for dinner and drinks. Having personally mixed my drinks before on those occasions I visited, the bartender Vanessa is fully aware that I am of legal age as she has checked my ID.

However, her manager was around tonight so she decided to ask for ID, which she obviously has the right to. I had my Singapore ID which had the date of birth on it (which was not accepted although they have previously accepted it with no issues at all) and did not have my drivers license on me, nor my passport (although I did have an online pdf of it because who walks around carrying their passport?). She is well aware that I am legal as she has mixed my drinks before so why create an issue over nothing?

We decided to sit down and just wait for our food which we had ordered before, trying to shake off the ludicrosity of the situation. The manager then came over twice to sit uninvited, without even asking if he could interrupt, trying to “explain” and unnecessarily prolonging and escalating an issue that wasn’t a big deal to begin with, causing other diners to look over. It was unnecessary and bang out of order.

My partner and I went there for a quiet dinner and ended up being publicly and unnecessarily embarrassed by this manager with zero emotional intellect and Vanessa. Perhaps this dumb blonde needs to go to university and take a degree in common sense instead of cakey...

The food was great, no issues there, however the service was extremely disappointing. Last night they had a 49% off cocktails special between 4-6pm for members. When it was my turn to order unfortunately it clocked on 6pm. I was told the special has finished and I therefore can't order the 49% off. As disappointed as I was , I accepted it is what it is. However, I pointed down to the menu that explicitly said "HAPPY HOUR COCKTAILS 6-9PM EVERYDAY'. He said he can't do that for that night due to the 49% off special which delays the happy hour until 7pm. Both myself and a few customers behind said that doesn't matter, it says in writing on their menu 6-9pm 'EVERYDAY' so they have to do it for that price, but they rudely refused what was written on the menu and told us we need to wait until 7pm. Extremely poor and rude service. If thats a legitimate rule each time there is a 49% off, fair enough, but that needs to be written and communicated for the customers. It came across in that moment like they had no idea what they were doing and created a rule on the spot to avoid charging less, instead of doing the right thing and upholding what was clearly written on their menu.

On top of that, the service in the bistro was terrible too. When we walked in, we walked passed at least 3 workers, none bothered to greet us. We walked around for a few minutes trying to find our name on the table we booked, however no worker offered to help us find our table. It was just not a very welcoming atmosphere and extremely...

I wouldn’t complain about your food because you don’t know what they’ll do to it!

The Engadine tav was our go-to local restaurant - good cocktails, good meal deals and great food however a few nights ago our steaks were undercooked and we asked politely for one of them to be cooked a bit more so that it wasn’t undercooked… we didn’t ask for a new steak, just for it to be cooked a bit longer… the chef was rude but gave us a buzzer, we went to pick up the steak and the chef had cut and tied a chux dishcloth into a bowtie and left it on the steak when we took it off the pass… insinuating here’s your steak with a bow on top.

I wasn’t going to stoop to writing a public review as I believe one bad egg doesn’t need to ruin a whole venue but now instead of owning up to it and just apologising for our experience when we’ve been contacted after the fact they’ve doubled down and tried to say the chef was checking the temperature of the steak or wiping the plate, that they use a new dishcloth for every steak and they forgot to take it off the plate??? Sorry what… find me this magical temperature measuring dishcloth🤦‍♀️ we also have a chef in the family who laughed when we told them the excuse they had made for this chef. Not to mention the size of the bowtie was too small to be useful for anything as then their fingers would’ve been wiping the steak also? We are still gobsmacked and it’s safe to say we won’t...