Sirocco — Restaurant in George

As a long time patron & fan (18+ years) of Sirocco I unfortunately have to write this negative review. We've had birthdays & celebrations here through the years & while it's never been amazing, it's always been good enough to warrant going back for. All things considered this now doesn't appear to be the case.

I think overall, I would have to assume the restaurant's ethos is now that it has decided it is a great location, with reasonable food, and patrons must just pay for that offering.

I'll start with the 200g beef fillet. At R285 without a sauce, this takes it into the realm of serious high end South African restaurants - but without delivering the same experience. The steak was good, but you can get soggy oil laden chips and plain steamed vegetables anywhere. In similarly priced restaurants, it would be Josper grilled, smoked mash or an aubergine puree, with a tomato salsa, artisans elements involved or just SOME level of creativity would be shown, elevating the experience in some way. Disappointing. Likewise disappointed on why else would a single portion of 1 Sole be R195 there, and at their sister restaurant, also in a prime location, the Dry Dock, which we are also regulars at, it is R160 for literally 3x the portion (yes I wrote that and you read that right) ? I estimate my sole was 80-90g in weight. I raised the issue and another portion was brought of similar portion. The Manager said they've been having problems with their supplier portions so apologised. Great - but if the Manager knows this, surely the Chef, Sous Chef and Waiters know too - how did it ever get to our table with no-one knowing? The Calamari was average and a non event and portion also extremely small. The inverted mould of rice that accompanied the calamari, was larger than the calamari portion. Maybe it's the same supplier as the Sole but who knows.

General comments other than the food (Starters & Desserts were fine) When patrons book for a celebration, at least acknowledge it. Doesn't have to mean a freebie. Wine Pricing. Don't try confuse your customers. As an example, we ordered Warwick First Lady on page 1 of the Winelist. There were 2 prices side by side -as is common - I assumed this was the glass & bottle price. So I ordered the bottle (admittedly at R195 it was a good price for on-consumption for this wine but I just thought they must've had a good deal with Warwick as happens). On the bill arriving, I was charged R315 which I queried, at which point, this clever positioning on the list, was pointed out to me that I needed to page further to find the bottle price. My fault I guess but then a further curiosity that no-one could explain also became apparent. At R315 for 750ml, you are paying more per Litre, when buying the whole bottle, than you are when buying a 500ml carafe. Very curious.

I have no problem with a restaurant repositioning itself. If you want to deviate from the standard costx3 model & move to a costx4 to determine selling prices go ahead. My suggestion would however be, add to the experience, try renovate the restaurant at least to make it a different, costx4 experience. Don't just charge & expect customers to accept it...

Went with a small group for dinner service, and was awfully dissapointed. Not only did our food take over an hour to arrive after being ordered, but the quality of said food was possibly some of the worst I have had. The pizza I had was cold, with raw dough in the middle, and resembled re-heated store bought frozen pizza. The steak someone else at the table had was ordered medium and came as an almost raw, low quality cut, which was tough as nails and tasteless. Veggies were also raw. Someone else ordered pasta that was missing half its ingredients, and asked for a replacement, which looked like a completely different meal when it arrived and was thankfully much better. Service was at least friendly albeit painfully slow.

Given the nice atmosphere, especially high prices, and appearance of this restaurant, one would expect great service and food. We were all very dissapointed. Several restaurants in the area offer much, much better food and service at half the cost, and twice as fast. We will not...

We were Very Disappointed with the food, the taste and flavours of the food didn't really go together and price for the food was also ludicrous. The service was also not great. We ordered large oyster but they were out of stock, so we ordered the medium and they were actually very small and over priced for the size. They were also not opened properly and there was a lot of grit. The sushi salmon salad was disappointing and highly over priced for the size of the portion. The starter mussels needed more flavour, I found it very bland. The hake was undercooked and mushy, there was no firmness to the meat and flavours to the sauce were not complementary to the fish and the portion size was very small for the price, so I feel that they really need to improve on a lot of things before they can charge those prices for what they are serving. The service was also not attentive and they were not busy when we were there. The only thing this restaurant has a great view of...