The Edmondson Tavern — Restaurant in Sydney

I really wanted to love this place since it’s close to home and has a great play area for the kids. The staff were genuinely lovely — both table and bar service were attentive, and they did a good job keeping tables cleared and wiped down. One small suggestion: please change out the cloths used for wiping tables more often, as the one used on ours smelled unpleasant and seemed dirty from multiple uses.

Food: Unfortunately, this is where it fell short. The kids’ meals were $14 each, but the portions were very small for the price. We ordered the kids’ fish and chips and the kids’ chicken schnitzel and chips. The schnitzel was literally half a piece with just a handful of chips — nowhere near the serving size you’d get at other restaurants for the same price. That said, one of our kids did enjoy the crunch of the schnitzel, but even she complained about how small it was and that it came with no sauce (which is standard at other places like Rashays or Volcanos).

My Lamb Ragu Pappardelle was also a disappointment. At $32, I expected more generous portions and, ideally, fresh pasta. Instead, it came on a small plate with packet pasta, a runny, under-seasoned sauce, and no real depth of flavour. The lamb was tender, but that was the only highlight. The Rib Eye steak was the best dish we ordered — cooked well, but at $56 that’s the least we’d expect. The chimichurri was far too spicy and not very balanced.

Dessert was another letdown. The sticky date pudding ($14) tasted store-bought, and the presentation was poor. The ice cream was full of ice crystals and clearly old, which made it really unappetising. Honestly, a supermarket version would have been better.

Overall, the only dish worth ordering again would be the Rib Eye (with a different sauce). Sadly, everything else missed the mark. For the same or even cheaper prices, the local clubs are offering better food, larger portions, and more value.

The upside: the tavern itself is spacious, family-friendly, and the outdoor heaters were a nice touch. It has so much potential, and we really do want to see it succeed. Hopefully management takes this kind of feedback on board and lifts the standard of the food, because the place could be great with a few...

UPDATE 23.04.2025: The tavern has now added high chairs and change table, food gets delivered quite quickly, especially when its not too busy, so it seems that they listen and want to improve. We are very happy after todays visit! Good to see that management is making the place more family friendly.

The only thing I dont quite like is that the playground can get wet during the rain and unfortunately parents don't really supervise their kids, meaning lots of them break the rules and staff is not there to enforce them (fair enough, its a tavern!).

ORIGINAL REVIEW FROM THE OPENING WEEK: Food and ambience were great, really enjoyed it, staff is very friendly too. Music is not too loud, which is such a refreshing change from other similar places. You can have a good conversation with good drinks and tasty food.

There are unfortunately some things that are not going well just yet and the tavern needs some improvement.

The wait for food can be way too long - one day, we have waited almost an hour for our food, only to discover the order was lost somewhere in the system. Shortly after discussing the issue, we got our food, as well as someone else's order, due to another mistake.

What's more important, management seems to be making some poor decisions, starting from lack of updates for the community while building took ages and ages, to issues with kitchen performance and lack of family friendly considerations - no high chairs or changing station in a place that advertises as family friendly, with a big built in playground? Interesting choice...

All in all, I will be coming back, as I live locally and the atmosphere is overall nice. Hopefully kitchen performance improves and management reflects on certain decisions they made and some changes will happen. As a family with 2 young kids we were hoping that it would be a good place to visit on a regular basis, especially as its literally in the neighbourhood filled with young families, but it is hard with a toddler and a baby if the place doesn't accommodate young kids. We normally can manage, but the experience is not as pleasant without amenities...

The Edmondson Tavern presents as a shiny new establishment conveniently placed on the corner of a new housing estate and is freshly styled with comfortable seating and up to date styling, the staff from the greater to the kitchen staff and wait staff all seemed pleasant and dutiful, perhaps a little disinterested in some cases. The place seemed quite busy at near capacity just after 1pm on a Sunday when we ordered our food, service was fairly slow but being busy it was forgivable. We ordered Bruschetta as entree. Prawn linguine and a Southern fried chicken burger as mains, the burger had a classic combination of crumbed chicken, cheese slaw and pickles, all seemed like good quality ingredients and well presented but unfortunately seemed to be pre prepared and cold, in part saved by decent hot chips as a side, the prawn linguine had adequate prawns but was low on sauce and dry with an aroma of starch still heavy on the pasta, it was edible (with salt) but not recommended. The bruschetta was a cheap nasty knock off of what it should be, the tomato was cut appropriately, that’s all I could claim as a positive; the onion was either non existent or pre cut and stored until any flavour had long since left, dropped on what seemed like a half slice of cheap stale supermarket white bread with a single leaf of basil and a hasty squirt of balsamic that failed to cover the boring pedestrian lacklustre affair that the whole meal ended up being (apart from the chips) at $71 excluding beverages. I expected more, hopefully these are teething issues setting up a new establishment and although I doubt I’ll be back I wish them the best. The place has potential but we left very...