Merchants of Ultimo — Restaurant in Sydney

Having walked past Merchants for a few weeks we finally decided to stop in and try out the desserts they have displayed, unfortunately, that was where it all started to go down hill.

As we entered we tried to tell the girl at the front that we had four adults and three children, including one in a pram, however, we were interrupted after telling the girl we had four adults and they showed us to a table which wasn't suitable for our entire party. When they finally realised we had the three children, and a pram we were taken to a larger table.

About five minutes after ordering from a waitress who struggled to understand what we were saying, we were told that they didn't have a particular dessert that we had ordered two of (we ordered four desserts in total). It would make sense to have this explained to us before we spent 10 minutes looking through the menu and wasting our time.

Our new dessert items were added to our order and were brought out promptly, however, two of the original items that we had ordered had been forgotten and were only brought out when we reminded the waitress that we had ordered more.

There is either a lack of teaspoons or they are made with gold because they definitely didn't want us to have any. Three of the seven drinks and two of the four desserts didn't come with teaspoons, and asking multiple times we managed to get our hands on all the utensils we needed.

After finishing the drinks and desserts we headed to the cashier to pay our bill. I asked the staff member if it was OK to pay with Amex, she said yes and I made the payment. After I had paid I noticed that there was an additional fee charged for using Amex. I mentioned this to the girl who was extremely rude and condescending and said "it's written on the menu". I have never been anywhere, either in Australia or overseas where the staff member doesn't inform you of the additional fees associated with using an Amex.

The staff here need to either be totally re-trained or fired. We will never come back here again and I will not be recommending this restaurant to anyone. If you're reading this please consider going somewhere else as the service is shocking. I wish I had read some of the reviews prior to today because I definitely wouldn't have gone. Hopefully one day the owners will read some of the reviews and start to make changes to their training and...

I was on my out of Broadway when I saw this place - not a local - and it seemed really popular; busy, with most of the tables occupied, busy staff etc. Figured it must be good, so I had a look at their sweets, deciding to get a few to take back to my hotel. A nice asian woman, who was very friendly and patient while I browsed my options, served me, and maintained a level of professionalism even as she worked away. I ended up deciding on a Tirimasu, a Lemon Meringue, and some weird looking log thing that looked interesting. She boxed it up neat and with care, and it all stayed put and fresh on the cab ride back to my hotel. I ended up trying them that night and was genuinely surprised at the lack of flavour for things that looked as good as they did. I am the biggest fiend for citrus sweets, so lemon meringue is a must, and I dunno... it was definitely a lot of meringue, but the lemon was extremely sour, like not balanced at all by the meringue - the shortcrust base was good though! I don't know what that log was still, but it was akin to eating a spoonfull of whipped cream. I genuinely don't know what it was supposed to taste like, because there was chocolate involved, and some cakey base, but yeah - no clue what that was all about. Best of the three was the Tirimasu. It was soft, creamy, flavour was good - not too coffee heavy, not too coffee weak - but was decadent enough to require two sittings to finish. But I also don't have a big sweet tooth, so that's probably a me thing.

Overall, an okay experience. Service gets the upvote from me, that lady was a profesh and deserves...

We used to know this place well and came several times over the years until 18 months ago. Always had fantastic food there. Due to C- 19 and us being interstate, it was challenging to come to Sydney. The quality of pizzas and pasta were very good, they even had a GF option for pizzas which was an incentive to come back! I don't know what happened within a year and a half but today it felt like being in another restaurant. The waitress was clueless and wasn't sure about much on the menu. No more GF pizzas apparently so I opted for lamb skewers without the pita. I have an auto immune condition therefore I specially told the waitress that my plate should be without the bread. And of course, the pita was served regardless. I asked for a replacement plate, but saddly the meat was overcooked and overly salted. I could not finish it. We ordered two pizzas. The first with prawn was just ok, a bit too soggy in the middle and the second, the Capriciosa, was bland without much flavours.The pesto pasta was just average, and the little focaccia served with it was swimming in oil. Overall we left disappointed with the food, the service and wondering if the management had changed. One thing hasn't changed though, the cost! Way overpriced for what we got. We...