Pumphouse Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Sydney

I’ve been dining at this restaurant almost every weekend for years, but sadly the quality of both the food and the service has completely collapsed. After my most recent experience on 31 August 2025, I won’t be coming back.

First of all, I previously sent a complaint email and never received a reply. That already showed me how little the management cares about their customers.

Even though I was the first customer to arrive, I was the last to be served. The female waitress was shockingly rude, she ignored me when I politely asked where my food was, and later she even took away my plate before I had finished eating, without asking or apologising.

When the food finally arrived, it was one disappointment after another. I ordered medium rare, came out well done. I sent it back, only for it to come back well done again. The male waiter insisted it was medium rare, but it clearly wasn’t (see photo attached). Firstly, the burger was missing cheese, and even though I specifically requested the sauces on the side, they were slopped directly onto the burger. The arancini serving was reduced to 6 pieces, even though the staff had confirmed there would be 8, and their social media has consistently shown 8. That’s misleading and feels like false advertising. The barramundi dish used to be well-presented, saucey, and delicious. Now it just looks like mush, as you can see from the photos I’ve attached.

The food quality has become so inconsistent that it feels like there’s no proper chef in the kitchen anymore. From my latest experience, it looks like the chef is now an inexperienced international student who doesn’t know what they’re doing, missing key details like sauces on the side, even the cheese on the burger, overcooking steaks twice in a row, and serving sloppy plates of food.

To make things worse, when I raised these issues, there was no apology, no accountability, and no effort to fix anything. The attitude from the staff was dismissive, as if the customers don’t matter at all.

This restaurant used to be a favorite of mine, but over the years it has gone from a place of quality and consistency to one that serves poorly made food with rude, unprofessional service. After this last experience, I will never dine here again, and I strongly suggest others reconsider before wasting...

I have never had such a bad experience at a restaurant in Sydney before. We booked the table and was told they hold they table for 20 minutes, we got stuck in traffic and arrived 10 minutes past our booking time and was met at the restaurant by a short skinny lady with short brown hair who had a massive attitude on her and barked at us saying we were 20 minutes late and she gave our table away. We asked her to let us know when another one would be available. When we started waiting we checked the time and we were only 10 minutes late so I asked her ‘don’t you hold the table for 20 minutes?’ and she snapped back ‘no only 10’. That’s ok if they only hold the table for a shorter amount of time however, I suggest informing staff who take bookings of this new rule to avoid confusion. We managed to finally sit down 40 minutes later on a table we found ourselves, then we were waiting… waiting.. waiting.. no menus so we went up and asked for the menu. For some strange reason they do not state on their website what food you must order at the bar and what you can order from your table, so we went out expecting to all buy burgers however, was told by another waitress (who was really nice) that we could only order burgers from the bar. We would have gone to the bar however, the place was packed and they only had limited staff on the bar so we knew that would delay our night even more and we needed to be out to make our show. After we ordered from the nice waitress we were waiting for a further 30 minutes for food. We asked the waitress with the short brown hair what was going on and she barked at us saying ‘yes you and everyone else want their food we only have three chefs on tonight so it’s not my problem’. One of our food choices was garlic bread and I have never been anywhere where it takes 30 minutes for bread to come out. We ended up walking out and the nice waitress who was working did apologies. Management should take a good hard look at this restaurant and how they run it. How can you expect staff to be polite and enjoy their job when you under staff. I was so disappointed. Update the menus on your website and make it clear that burgers must be ordered at the BAR. I will never ever come back here and I really encourage others...

Situated inside a historic pumping station, Pumphouse offers a quirky and intriguing setting perfect for casual dining with friends. What it has in atmosphere, however, it lacks in service: Pumphouse sorely needs more staff. We arrived well before the place was truly busy, and even then the two staff behind the bar were struggling to take both food and drink orders, let alone make said drinks. By the time we were done with our meal, the bar was a mess, with easily 20+ people looking bored and annoyed in line. Apparently it was a similar understaffed story in the kitchen too, as our most of our food arrived cold, having obviously spent too long waiting on the pass. This was a shame, as the food actually tasted great. The big salad with pumpkin, ricotta and beetroot ($16; +$6 for prawns) was full of crisp, clean flavours - practically faultless. The Korean fried chicken with gochujang ($18 for 12) had a good spicy kick, although the pieces of chicken were on the small side and there was too much gochujang, which ultimately masked the fact that the chicken was fried. The Kobe beef rump ($35) was cooked brilliantly, to a perfect medium rare - juicy and succulent, each mouthful was a delight. The accompanying 'pots' of salad and chips were unwieldy on the plate, especially since the contents could have easily fit on the plate anyway. The Baileys crème brûlée ($10) ended our evening on a disappointing note - the top layer of hard caramel was burnt and far too thick, so not only was it difficult to eat, it also imparted a bitter, unpleasant flavour to the crème. We couldn't finish it.

Pumphouse should consider separating their bar and dining operations, and offer table service for the latter: their food, which is certainly a cut above the standard pub fare, deserves better than the current inefficient ordering system, which really cheapens the...