The Home Grounds - Five Dock — Restaurant in Sydney

The Home Grounds is confused about what it stands for. I have been about 10 times since it re-opened from its old life as a bowling club which was heavily focused on affordable food and families. The problem is we find ourselves going for the food, not the service.

While the food is phenomenal and the interior renovations are chic, drinks can be pricey and some staff seemingly have a disregard for patrons despite it not necessarily being that busy. At one point I was the only person lined up to order while three staff walked past me as the main one was making a cocktail. It wasn't busy. Just say "be with you in a moment". Many of the staff seem really miserable. The odd one powers through that and makes you feel really welcome.

The location means it should be targeted at families but as soon as you walk in, there is now a sign greeting you effectively saying 'no fun' because they don't want children playing ball games or running around on synthetic grass with shoes on. One of the managers came out one night as we were sitting outside to round up all the kids playing and booting them off his precious artificial grass. He was the same guy who this week fired up at his staff member because they let someone's toddler touch the glass of a cake display cabinet. It is constant paranoia that children will break things that is really wrecking the vibe here.

Why go to all the trouble of building an area that people treat like other bowling clubs like Concord or Briars only to ban them for playing handball? Dedicate one area for lawn bowlers and one area for kids to play. They do have a table tennis area and small climbing set too. It could be such an easy win to be way more laid back about this.

The restaurant was emptying at 9pm one night this week and instead of letting the remaining patrons watch the second half of the Matilda's game (which they had been watching since kickoff), they just turned the lights off - which we interpreted as the universal symbol of "please stop spending money and leave".

The GOOD:

The food in both the restaurant and bistro sections is very good. Haven't had a bad meal. Pizza is probably in the Top 5 pizzas I've ever had. Despite the bad press about the schnitzel, the serving sizes are pretty generous and priced accordingly. The pasta is fantastic and restaurant menu items are fresh and varied.

The cocktail and whisky/cognac options are extensive.

One of the restaurant waitstaff is hilarious and makes dining very enjoyable.

Big screen for watching live sport.

The BAD:

Despite the location and space it isn't really family-friendly. It could be and should be but there needs to be a serious shift in attitude.

If you want to play table tennis, you literally leave your licence behind the bar because they are terrified someone will steal their 5-cent ping pong balls. There's that paranoia again.

Many of the staff seem miserable and it feels like they're doing you a favour by allowing you to be there.

Tap beer options are fairly limited.

This place has so much potential. It could be the kind of venue you visit weekly or more. But each visit I seem to leave less satisfied than the last. And that's not because of the amazing food, it's the service...

First and last time we will ever visit the Home Grounds.

On paper this place looks fantastic - good menu(although pricey), good selection of beverages, nice decor, great location and fantastic area for the kids.

But in reality this would have to be one of the worst places we have ever visited in Sydney.

We waited well over 1 hour and still no food had arrived for our order. When we complained we were told that it had already been sent and pretty much abused by the staff behind the bar that we were lying(although at that exact time there were at least 5-6 other families also making the same complaint), then we were told it was because they had over 300 covers to feed and to give them a break. You know what that's not my problem, if you can't staff up to meet the demand of both front of house and the kitchen - don't open or shut the kitchen. We had to fight to get agreement that we never received our meals and was then told it would be at least another 30-40 minutes to get the meals if we still wanted them. By this time we had starving children and adults and didn't even want the food. There was no customer service and we were made to feel like it was our fault and we were lying. The fact that there was a line up of people complaining and querying the whereabouts of their food as well had a lot to say that it wasn't just a one off to us. Chatting with others at the bar it seems that they were also being treated poorly.

On average, it took over 15-20 minutes to get served at the bar. The staff behind the bar were slow to serve, not paying attention and you had to repeat yourself many times as they were trying to serve multiple people at once. Drinks were over priced - eg $12 for a small jug of soda water and the soft drinks were inconsistent in size and quality.

The food that actually did arrive at our table(as the other people on our table got theirs after about an hour) was average to say the least, cold, unappealing, lacked taste and generally awful. The portions were small and overpriced.

I would suggest giving this place a very big miss unless you are desperate.

hopefully they take feedback on board and do something to improve their service, food quality and ability to manage a restaurant appropriately. Pity that they are likely losing many customers in...

I believe this restaurant has a lot of potential but I’m not entirely sure that the team possesses enough humility to take on feedback, or it could just be that they’re content with the local families and their noisy children so moving up a level is irrelevant. Let’s start with the service. We had a wonderful attentive young man called Juliano looking after us. Unobtrusive, polite, and responsive, really could have scored a gig in a fine dining establishment but here he is at a sports club restaurant. Whatever, fair play to him for trying something different. We ordered a Napoletana pizza and some calamari and octopus to nibble on as starters. The pizza was delicious, the pastry puffed up and just slightly under charcoaled to our taste, but still a respectable offering. The calamari and octopus could have been any protein you’d like to imagine, drowned by the vinegar dressing which also rendered the seafood into a stewy mess. Just BBQ or grill it and serve that overwhelming vinegar sauce on the side if you absolutely have to. For mains we had the mussels - very nice if a super small serving, pizza Alfredo, delicious, and the fennel sausages on roasted peppers, also very nice. Some annoying things. The restaurant was about 15% full, there was a band in the corner playing songs from my parents’ generation…and no diner there would have related to it. What target audience are they aiming at? The acoustics are terrible, make sure you’re sitting well away from the band. The staff insist on setting the cutlery with the knife on the left and the fork on the right because the owners told them it would display better…cringe. Just set it properly and don’t be seduced by pretentious attitudes. A note on the wines, the red we ordered was a Cab Sav but we got a Shiraz, which was fine - we also get that restaurants need to add a margin but really, offering a bottle which retails for $15.60 at $51 is a little offensive. The bill for four people with two bottles of wine, two entrees to share, three mains, a beer, an Affogato and a coffee was $80 a head. They’ve been in business for two months, they’ll need to lift their game if they expect to survive and flourish, alternatively, the locals may well buoy them for a while - and they’ll get exactly what...