Royal Cricketers Arms — Restaurant in Sydney

It's been a few years since we've been here, and I must say I'm disappointed. As an prologue, The Royal Cricketers Arms seems to lack direction. The style of the pub is old English, but the menu is fancied up fare, that doesn't live up to the prices.

We ordered 2 starters and 2 mains for our meal. 5 cheese arancini ($18), onion rings ($12), 300g scotch fillet ($42) and a cheeseburger ($20, Friday night special).

The onion rings were over-fried, a dark brown colour and tasted mostly of oil. There was real onion rings inside each of them, which is a start, however the heavy batter and oily taste made them stodgy and let them down. A decent serving size though.

Arancini was almost completely hollow, with 5 extremely small arancini balls. There is less than a teaspoon of rice in each (no word of a lie). The actual ball is slightly smaller than a 50 cent coin, and you're essentially paying $3.60 per ball for 20 grains of rice and some breadcrumbs. Roasted garlic aioli is nice though, if they made a dish filled with rice (and 5 cheeses), it would be amazing.

The steak, was incredibly small. With a 300g steak, I would expect AT LEAST 200g after cooking down. I would wager I received 100-150g. I've seen bigger dish sponges. Not only that, the steak was quite dry, overcooked for medium rare, and the mushroom sauce for accompaniment was bland, with 2 half slices of mushrooms (so, essentially 1 slice of mushroom).

My wife had the cheeseburger. While it was $22 normally, on Friday nights all burgers are $20. Being a burger lover, I am used to a good burger being around this price range. Those burgers are usually prepared with passion, fresh and intriguing ingredients, and leave me with satisfaction and a smile on my face. I was appalled to experience neither satisfaction, nor a smile. The meat patty is freeze dried and tasteless. The bun, dry and stale, like a forgotten loaf after a week on the counter. The only flavour came from the sauce and mustard, not even the cheese stood out. My wife mentioned that it was cold when she started eating it.

The only pleasant experience from the night, was the bar maid, whom was helpful and honest, and happy to share a laugh. She was the first person we saw on entering, unfortunately the food could not match her energy.

Overall it was a harrowing experience, one that left us wishing we had gone elsewhere. For the price of the food, I would expect restaurant quality. What we received was less than pub quality. (Better alternatives would be the Blue Cattle Dog, Marayong Hotel, or the Kings Park Tavern, to...

My meal was great!, i asked for a medium rare steak and that was what i got but my partner is gluten intolerant and when we asked the wait staff and the chef about gluten free options everyone was scratching their heads?, more attention to detail would be great, it is hard enough to buy stuff at the shops that is gluten free, when you go to a restaurant and you are paying good money you expect quality and something more than a "ahh yeah that is gluten free" is expected, if the staff that sell the food look unsure then you can guarantee that it probably contains gluten, my partner was sick for the next week because of a random guess and time restrictions for the staff and lack of proper menue planning and training and ingredients listings in restaurants, i get it some times people call in sick and restaurants are short staffed but the staff that are working should be able to go to the kitchen and grab an ingredient listing for any dish and confidently say that dish does not contain gluten , too many cowboy chefs or cooks who like to parade as a chef and too many young people who dont care about there jobs and are just in it for a buck because they need drinking money on the weekend, hire people that actually care about the food they are putting in peoples mouths and that are dedicated to there jobs, im sick of going to restaurants once a month and they have no idea when you ask them about gluten free options, and it is not just pubs, 4 and 5 star restaurants are the same, it is not a matter of if but when, one day some poor bastard is going to walk into a restaurant and say they are intolerant of something and someone is going to guess because they are too busy and that guess could cost someone there life, we all remember the garaboldi incident back in the 80's, if i remember correctly a small child died because of someones negligence at work, people don't realize that chefs are like doctors and surgeons, you literally hold someones life in your hands every time you put a plate up on the pass and who wants a dead person on there conscience, some might think im over reacting but when it comes down to it people go out for dinner to celebrate something and have a good time, not to have there lives placed in danger because of someone who either doesn't care about there job or someone who is not trained correctly, my meal was great and the staff were friendly and welcoming but still something needs to be done about industrial kitchens and how staff are trained, i wont be going back to the...

Me and my partner went here for dinner, spent $85 on food and the steak wasn’t even medium rare or 400g, spent $11 on mashed potatoes and it was a small bowl that my partner got with his steak.

Got four beers and both beers that I got was unhygienic where there was lettuce inside the glass one time and the other time it had hard food on the outside of the glass near the top of the glass.

The staff looked unhappy and didn’t want to be there.

We would’ve spent probably about $150 - could’ve went to a fancy restaurant instead and got better service and food for that price.

On top of that the portions were terrible as well for the price as well. There was no female toilets available as well to use because both were unavailable due to blockage.

You may as well just go to a club instead of a small pub like this.

When I voiced the time when the second beer had hard food on the outside of the glass, she blamed the other staff but it’s also their responsibility as well to make sure that the glass are clean.

The environment was nice with the fire but everything else was pretty shit.

I don’t usually write reviews but I had to warn others, and I guess have the owners see this and actually action this issue because this needs to...