Karoo & Co The Old School — Restaurant in Sydney

What a disappointing evening!

This will be the 4th time visiting Karoo & Co. As you can imagine visiting the 4th time we must have really liked it in the past! Looks like things have changed.

It was a very special occasion as my brother in law was visiting from the US and we were gathered as a family to pay tribute to my late father in law.

We arrived. And we were given a table that was quite spread out so we ask if possible if we could moved to the table behind us that was empty. We were told no it is not possible as it was booked! ( the people that were there before moved from that table inside the restaurant so it was an opportunity for us to move). The 2 hours we were there the table remained empty so really don’t understand why we were told it wasn’t available …

We placed our order close to 6:45pm and our entrées and the food for our kids arrived at a good time. However from the time our entrées arrived and our mains arrived we waited longer than 1 hour! We wanted by then to cancel the mains as our kids were so tired of waiting they have finished their meals and had ice cream and watched some cartoons so really no much they could do to wait!) so finally the mains arrived around 8:20pm. We started eating but it was obvious we needed to get the kids home so ended up getting take away containers for the mains! And just like that our evening finished. Could not get dessert or coffee…. Went home hungry and disappointed!

The service was friendly but really inexperienced. No one checked on us the whole evening. We had to try constantly get the attention or even go inside the restaurant to order drinks. We ordered sparkling water at the start of the evening and kept asking where the water was and finally got the water 40mins later.

The cutlery and napkins were taken away when the entrées were finished so when the mains finally arrived nobody gave us cutlery or napkins and the waitress was no were to be seen so my husband had to get up and helped himself to some cutlery and napkins for us from the cabinet nearby…

The food still good but really not worth the trouble...

Service & management lacking on a Saturday evening. Will the manager who wasn’t on site to handle our service & billing queries at the end of the evening but was happy for a poor review. HERE IS YOUR POOR REVIEW WILL. The location & setting promised a lovely evening ahead. Unfortunately the service was lacking from the get go & after poor service & food at WahroongaI I could sense this wasn’t going to go well. Our table as a whole had not been informed of an item not available to order. The ragu was ordered & wasn’t told by staff until 20 mins after Clearly not all staff were told of this. Entrees were ok. It took some time for plates to be cleared. Mains were underwhelming & my seafood linguine was buried in chilli oil, so it killed any taste of seafood that was there. Cracked pepper goes lovely with your meal except when the clear pepper dispenser was empty. No offer to the table of Parmesan cheese! Coffee- a good Italian restaurant serves good coffee, right? Wrong. This was one of the worst I have had & my skim milk request was ignored or forgotten. Yes forgotten, and so was the peppermint tea & the Tiramisu yet on the bill at the end. See Will this is what happens when you leave the restaurant early on a Saturday evening and expect young untrained & inexperienced staff to look after...

Very rarely will I give a negative review, but last night was such a disappointment for my wife and I.

Due to work commitments and the long hours we both work we seldom have much time to enjoy a date night out.

Last night we booked Karoo and Co and was excited to get some time together, have a meal and forget about work. We drove the 35 minutes from the northern beaches and arrived perfectly on time.

We entered and had to find someone to assist, finally a young person walked up and we advised we had a booking, found us and took us to our table outside, pointed and walked off.

25 minutes later, no menu, no sign of anyone a waitress came out, went to the table next to us, then behind us asking if they wanted anything else then totally ignored us and walked back inside.

We ended up leaving not even having received a menu or the chance to order a drink.

As others have written I would put this down to inexperienced staff and the absence of some sort of maitre d' to overlook the guests.

We drove back the 35 minutes home, had a couple of microwave meals, watched half a movie and went to bed annoyed.

What a shame especially when we also wanted to try the breakfast but will...