Oncore by Clare Smyth — Restaurant in Sydney

Oncore relies too heavily on their view, and not enough on the basics. Having visited other restaurants within Australia considered the same calibre and price range, we can firmly say it did not meet expectations.

The window tables are the best tables in the restaurant, and personally I would say it's not worth paying $1200 for 2 people (including food and wine) to dine there if you don't get one of these coveted tables. Of course, they can't confirm prior to the booking if you will or won't, even if you book months prior when bookings open.

Fortunately, we did get a window table and the view was lovely.

The food was fine, but very much a disappointment considering the price tag. The bread was served cold - something I have never had happen in any fine dining restaurant, and with the most basic of butter. No smoke, salt, truffle or other flavours in sight. The flavours throughout the meal were also nice, but nothing exceptional or particularly unique. The pumpkin tart was the standout dish for us on the seasonal menu.

The presentation was beautiful, but after 5 courses of theatrical "pouring", we felt that it was very overdone. We also had a different wait staff member for every course, making the experience feel a bit cold as there was no ability to bond with one staff member throughout the meal.

The wine "pairing" was not a pairing at all in our eyes. The wines fell far short of expectations, and to have a heavy red served with the chicken main was very odd.

They brought a little dessert with a candle for my birthday which was really lovely, and appreciated.

Basically as soon as we put our dessert forks down though, a team member rushed over, 45 minutes before the end of our dinner booking, to say that they had an excellent table available in the bar but we needed to come now as they couldn't save it. We were meant to have a booking in the bar 45 minutes later, and had requested a window table to watch the drone show as part of Vivid.

The table they gave us in the bar was not an excellent table. They told us that the couple sitting by the window who did have the truly excellent table had arrived at 5:30pm to snag that table, and that "there's no time limit in the bar" so they couldn't do anything. This is inherently false, as our booking in the bar said that the tables were limited to 1 hour and 45 minutes. This couple was still dining in the same table almost 4 hours later. We pushed back, saying that we booked the restaurant almost 3 months ago, and that we had requested that table at the bar as part of our bar reservation a couple of weeks before. Meanwhile a couple that walks in on the night is allowed to overstay on the best table in the house - in spite of us booking.

We felt that the staff treated us different to the older couples dining beside us in the restaurant - often explaining dishes to them in far more detail - in spite of us asking questions and showing interest. To then move us on from our restaurant table 45 minutes, and to behave in a way that was both unhelpful and rude when we expressed that we were unhappy about our worse table in the bar, means that we will never recommend Oncore to friends or family. Due to the calibre of the restaurant, I was expecting a call to follow up within the days following our booking, however this did not occur - hence this review.

While we can't confirm our theories, we assume that the couple dining by the bar window for 4 hours on the full restaurant degustation menu (in spite of this not being offered in the bar from our knowledge) must have been important to the Crown Hotel in some way or another.

Save your money and go elsewhere. Botanic in Adelaide also received 3 hats, and is well...

Tasteless in passion, creativity and service. Underwhelming, overrated to say the least.

My recount on some of the highlights below:

Ambience of the restaurant was that it was far too noisy, wasn’t able here ourselves and also the waiters explaining the food clearly - very hard to hear, mostly unable to capture it.

To further add to this ambience, complete overload of staff. Very much unnecessary when they would just casually talk to each other doing nothing. Too many people just walking around the small area that it seems - quite disproportionate. Everyone in the kitchen and working in the floor just looked stressed, tired, unhappy which all contributed to hindering our enjoyment of the food.

Serving etiquette for a place like this, expected much much better. Sometimes serving female members on the table last when they should be served first - very inconsistent throughout the night which was not helped by different waiters (of varying experience) managing our table.

Bread served was cold. Not the norm that I’d expect. Even in airplanes you get warm bread - doesn’t give me the sense of freshness and the effect of having the butter melt on the bread.

Going back to inconsistency in staff experience, there was one time a waiter had almost forgot to explain one of the dishes for a guest (as he’d ordered a different set menu). Again, something that I wouldn’t expect for such a restaurant’s reputatIon I’ve read about. On top of all this, the waiters seemed to be rote learning the menus - instead of addressing us and talking to us about the dish we were served, they addressed someone in “mid-air”, eyes looking up as if reading from a teleprompter, very strange.

Sauce pouring was very inconsistent, some guests receiving a noticeably greater amount or a lesser amount. Simply distorts the whole experience, very unacceptable for a restaurant 3 hatted.

Wiping the table seems to be all an “act” from the staff. Every time they came to supposedly wipe off crumbs/spillovers - they always seem to keep missing the actual crumbs. If you have 2 eyes, you should use them.

You should consider coming here if you want to try the most expensive potato. It’s not a gratin but simply a whole single potato that isn’t even complete (both top and bottom cut off), garnished with some caviar. There is a significant problem when everyone on the table just talks about the sauce/gravy only.

One of the desserts called Lemonade and Honey, was quite sour. Unable to the honey and overall reminded me of the honey lemon flavoured Strepsils.

Another dessert was their signature ‘Core Apple’. Mine came with a bit of dent on the surface and the bottom of it was not cleanly covered, but rather jagged. This was inconsistent compared to others that got served the same dish - accuracy to detail is not there.

Whilst serving the final course, being the petit four, one of the waiters dropped one of the wine jelly balls on the floor.

When leaving, one of the waiters brought our jackets we wore. She only brought 3 of them and we needed to remind her that we had 2 more… For a restaurant of this calibre in a 6 star hotel, do we need to remind them?

Very disappointed in this experience! As someone who has been to some of the Top 50 restaurants in the world, Oncore across food and service fell significant below par, inconsistent. Will not go again nor will I recommend someone to go unless significant changes considered.

Came to give it chance but sadly my thoughts also echo the thoughts from several of our friends who have come...

I just want to preposition that there is no malice or anything and this is purely my feedback out of love because I had very high expectations of Oncore given the reputation of Clar, instagram, and pricing.

My husband and I have been to some really good restaurants namely Pilu at freshwater and Ormeggio at the Spit recently which are both with four dollar signs. So it's not about the money. It was just about the food.

The view from the restaurant was great. The service was great. The optics and how the food looked was great but I felt there wasn't a lot of substance.

I felt like the pre - entrees were the best part of the whole experience. Especially the truffle gougeres. Every other dish was for some reason to sour. The bread was decent.

Entrees - we got the pumpkin tart and the potatoe and roe. We were not offered to have the sauce on the side and it would have been preferred. The pumpkin tart itself was great. But the sauce made it really sour. It would have been much better to have the sauce on the side. The potatoe and roe was decent. Again it was sour too with the sauce. Not every dish needs a sauce...

Mains - we asked the sauce to be put on the side for these dishes. the short rib was great and the sauce reduction complemented it well. We were expecting portion size to be slightly bigger than the entree but it didn't bother us too much.

The whiting was well cooked.. But the bed of white stuff didn't really add much to the dish. The sauce was good and there was a good value add.

Pre - dessert - was too sour overall. Only the caramelised apple in the middle tasted good. There was no balance-only optics.

Dessert - I am a HUGE truffle fan and so got the truffle forest. I was very disappointed that there was no infusion of the truffle into the cream. And the autumn leaves only added texture - no flavour. I didn't even finish it because it was not really a dessert to me. Shaved truffle usually goes on savoury dishes too.

The lemonade parfait was ok. But again, too sour. The smoke that was used as another optic to 'enhance' the sensory experience was superfluous..

Instead of the experience of eating, I would really love to see the food uplifted. For $250 each, it wasn't value for money compared to the other restaurants I've been to that had similar optics and good that was twice or even three times as good. We were going to do the degustation but we were I in a rush so we just decided to do the a la carte. I'm glad we did because I don't think I could have handled the same dish twice. We had a $350 dining credit via the luxury escapes deal with the Crown hotel and we had some other crown points which meant our final bill was $179 for two people.

I personally felt like the food itself, was only worth $80 in totality. The view was worth the most money and then the service.

As I have said, I do not mean any malice at all. I just love food. I would not recommend this restuarant to my friends unfortunately because in Sydney, good food is not hard to come by if money isn't an issue. I really hope the good does improve so I can come back for a degustation experience with my friends. Again my favourite part of the whole experience was the truffle gougeres because it was done really well. I would love to see the food go back to basics and just look at the flavour rather than just looks.

Substance over...