Bar:Musque — Restaurant in Tanunda

My partner and I went to Bar Musque for dinner/ drinks whilst visiting the Barossa this week. We’d seen the Google rating and figured it must be amazing. However, this was not the case at all. Firstly though I will say the young blonde girl working behind the bar was AMAZING. Her service was impeccable and really was the only 5 star part of the experience. We ordered several small and large plates off the menu including Asian greens, scallops, dumpling, lamb and pork belly. We also ordered some cocktails. This all came to $200 between the two of us. So the review -

The cocktails were incredibly average for a bar that offers such a variety of alcohol. But that wasn’t the worst of this. The food was shocking. The gyoza reminded me of grocery store gyoza you pull out of the freezer when you’re desperate. It was drowning in plain soy sauce. The Asian greens lacked flavour entirely and tasted again like a novice home cooked version. However the scallops were the worst for me with me actually spitting them out. They were $30+ for 5. They smelt off and were COVERED in fried onions from a packet. It’s all you could taste. They apparently had miso and citrus however the citrus lacked flavour and the miso was non evident. Mostly, these scallops reaked of burnt and dried packet onions. I’ve NEVER sent a dish back in my life and I eat out a lot and have had some dismal stuff over the years but these scallops took the cake. So I politely told the waiter we didn’t want them but were happy to pay for them.

Next thing, the chef came out and quite literally asked what my problem was with the scallops. She then told me it was likely my ‘palette’ not the scallops themselves. She told me that maybe my palette couldn’t handle such a dish and recommended the arancini balls filled with cheese/ deep fried (an obviously vastly different dish to Japanese inspired raw seafood scallops). I felt slightly offended? So I advised her that I love flavours such as miso, yuzu and fresh raw seafood and eat it regularly but I felt the flavour of these scallops was not right. This was humiliating with the chef and waiter at our table in a small room infront of all the other patrons. She was argumentative and presumptive. She swapped the $30+ scallops out for deep fried spring rolls which also were absolutely awful and had 0 flavour.

I will say though that the pork belly was well done. Not the basic sweet chilli sauce it sat in but not bad. The lamb was cooked very well.

We paid our bill and left. Not the best experience. I don’t quite...

I went to Bar Musque for the first time today. I was really looking forward to the set menu special event "Flavours of Singapore" as I love Asian food. It was a cold day today in Tanunda, only 10C when we arrived at 12 noon with only a high of 13C expected. However all the large windows at the front of the restaurant were open and it was really cold. As all other tables were taken, we didn't say anything, but my husband went back to the car and got me an extra jumper and a coat to put around my legs and an jacket for himself. As we had paid in advance, and the restaurant therefore knew when everyone was arriving and what everyone was getting "Flavours of Singapore" we were surprised when it took around 40 mins for the entree to arrive. It was chicken skewers with satay sauce, the skewers were pleasant and the satay sauce was excellent. Fast forward to 1.15pm so an hour and a quarter after we arrived, and the main finally arrives. It is what appears to be boiled chicken (maybe it was poached but still), served with boiled rice. The chicken is cold and very bland, although juicy, and the rice is warm, not hot. It is served with 3 sauces, oyster, chilli and lemongrass on the side, but it is not enough to make the blandness of cold chicken and plain rice appetising. This plus the fact that as our table is right by the window we are now cold to the bone. A cold boiled chicken dish really isn't what we imagined for "Flavours of Singapore", especially in winter in the Barossa. We did ask about the chicken being cold and we were told that it was intended that way, that is how the dish is. We now decide to leave as we are so cold and don't want to wait possibly another half hour or so for dessert. The staff were lovely, and did offer to give us our dessert as takeaway which we declined. Plus they waived the cost of our mineral water. Service overall was good and nothing to fault there. The experience was really let down by it being SO cold in the restaurant, and having to wait so long in a cold restaurant for a cold bland main. I think this is the first time I have ever given such a low star review to a restaurant, but it was a really cold and...

Extremely disappointing... Bad food, average service. An awful meal for our anniversary dinner... We had the tasting menu at Musque, and it was extremely sub-par. Each dish had something wrong (I'll give more detail below), but the worst was that the pork belly wasn't cooked, so was about 50% gelatinous fat...yuck! To be fair, there were some really good elements (yummy cured salmon, perfectly cooked lamb), but these were completely overshadowed by the aggregious mistakes the chef made in each dish. We ended up just feeling sick and wanting to leave, not great for $59 per person...

Course by course: First course the duck was completely dried out in the duck pie. Next course (salmon), the asparagus didn't have the end cut off. Next course was the pork - it came out without the fat being crisped up, so was like 50% gelatinous fat. We asked them to fix it, and they took it away. Took 20 minutes to get it back, and it wasn't much better, crackling wasn't hard and crunchy, was still mainly yucky gelatinous fat. The coconut rice was a poor compliment for the pork and was pretty flavourless. All round, this was the worst dish, and left us feeling quite sick The lamb main was next, and while the lamb itself was nicely cooked, the vegetables it was served with (carrots and cauliflower) were basically raw. The dish was also far too large, which meant we felt horrible wasting half the meal... Finally desert was pretty average too. A deconstructed fruit cheesecake, but there was very little fruit, and a lot of plain cream cheese/cheesecake mixture. We left 3/4 of the cheesecake mixture...

Service was poor. The main waitress serving us could tell we hadn't liked a lot of courses (it should have been a giveaway that we left half or more on our plates...), but chose not to even ask us. The waitress looking after drinks left us without water for probably 30 minutes too.

I typically don't write reviews, but this was just so bad I needed to warn other people. If the chef focused on a couple of nice dishes, it might actually be pretty good... Such a shame. Especially because we came here to celebrate our wedding...