Australasia — Restaurant in Manchester

We planned to share a celebratory meal at Australasia for some time. We had to cancel our previous attempt due to covid, so we were looking forward to this one. We were out to celebrate 48 years of marriage, accompanied by our son and daughter-in-law. For clarity, I'm 68 years old and under investigation for heart failure and my wife is an amputee in a wheelchair. My career had focused on delivering excellence in the customer experience, so I'm a bit sensitive to customer service issues.

Things started going wrong early. In my booking, I specifically requested a table suitable for a wheelchair user. When the younger couple arrived before us, they found we'd been allocated an unsuitable table, so that was changed. When my wife and I arrived at the entrance off Deansgate, I phoned the number posted next to the door to request assistance. I was instructed to go to "Sunset by Australasia" "It's around the corner." Had the staff member advised us that it may be locked, but would get someone to come let us in, things would have been easier. If we'd been given clearer directions , the following few minutes would have been less stressful.

The entire area is cloaked with black hoardings, but I set off with my wife in the wheelchair to find the entrance. Having had no useful directions, we made our way down along the West side of the building and found our way through the gate near the Magistrates' Court. Arriving at the door of Sunset, we found it locked and empty. By this time I was feeling pretty stressed and we started up the East side, pushing the wheelchair where we found our son walking down to meet us. He was certain that Sunset was the correct entrance, so we headed back there and found that some one had arrived to open up and let us in.

Arriving at the attractively laid out restaurant, we studied the menu. My son and I share a liking for fish in various forms, including sushi and sashimi as well as generally more adventurous palates than our partners. There was an expensive, but very attractive proposition on the menu, effectively a tasting menu in four "waves" at £75 per person with a minimum of two diners. We both liked the idea of sharing that while our wives could choose dishes from the general menu to suit their tastes. When we'd all made our choices, our server came to take our order.

When I explained what we wanted, our server indicated that we couldn't have that. The restaurant won't do that. The sharing menu could only be served if it was ordered for the entire party. Since that would not be suitable for our party, and since I couldn't see the sense in this approach, I asked to speak with the manager. I got the same answer, but still with no justification. There we were, offering to order £150 worth of food for the two of us, with additional orders of starters and mains for the ladies with desserts to follow, but this was unacceptable.

My son and I went back to the menu and managed to choose a few individual dishes for each of us, saving quite a lot of money, but severely diminishing the experience. I chose some pork belly skewers, scallops, squid tempura and a salad of udon noodles with kimchi. All the others started with teriyaki rump steak, but then went in different directions. My wife had grilled sea bass, my son had yellowfin nigiri and a pork belly main. Our daughter-in-law chose a tofu main course. Their starters arrived fairly quickly and they'd nearly finished theirs when my pork belly arrived.

There followed a delay of around 30 minutes, during which our dishes were cleared and there was no indication of what to expect. I eventually caught the attention pf our server and asked. He returned from the pass moments later with my remaining three dishes. My squid came with a sriracha mayonnaise and this had been sitting on the pass long enough to form a skin and to harden. The scallops were fine, if small, and with no caramelisation. The squid and the udon salad were both tasty.

Others were all happy with their mains and we were pleased with the desserts, but on balance, I'd rather...

As has been famously said recently... Dear oh dear...anyway

We booked this for my birthday which also coincides with our wedding anniversary, so a double celebration. Had been looking forward to it although only able to get a table for 4pm on a Saturday (15th October 2022). Fair enough you think, if it's busy that's a good sign

Entering the decor is fancy, it's welcoming and tasteful Our waiter was affable and engaging

Unfortunately, things went badly downhill from there.

We opted for the small plates options - a good way to sample quite a bit of what was a tasty looking menu. That said when I placed my order, our waiter informed me I must have been given 'an old menu', as it transpired that one of the dishes, I ordered was no longer part of the restaurant menu. So, 'new' menu in hand I was able to order food that was actually being served - or at least that we hoped would be served.

We ordered a few dishes and waited...and waited...and waited

I could see the pass from where I was seated and the only word I would use to describe it was chaos

Our first 2 plates arrived after more than hour, bearing in mind one of these was tempura prawns - not something that takes very long to cook properly. At the same time a plate arrived which was not part of our order. I flagged this to our waiter and his response when I asked what the 3rd plate was, was Ah you didn't order tempura squid.

Another 20 minutes passed before the 3rd of my plates arrived (tuna sashimi) that's right raw tuna, thinly sliced. Now I may be being overly critical but seriously 1hr and 20 minutes to slice some raw fish - Did they have to catch it first or something.

At this stage none of my wife's food had arrived. I had ordered prawns, octopus and sashimi so not being too keen on either raw fish or octopus she had had a couple of tempura prawns - that was it.

We called the waiter who told us the rest of the food would be a few minutes.

A few minutes later no more food had arrived. Instead, the manager arrived at our table to tell us that the rest of our food order would take at least another half an hour.

That would have been 2 hours since my wife had ordered her food, and none had been served.

Our conclusion was that they simply wanted the table back at that stage and so were not going to even bother to try to fulfil our food order.

To say we were both appalled at the total lack of competence or customer care would be an understatement.

I expressed to the manager that this should be reflected on the bill and while the small amount of food we received was comped, however we were still levied full charge for the drinks. While this was a small effort towards compensation, I would have thought they could have extended themselves a little further.

At this stage we just wanted to leave.

Australasia is not cheap, and trades off a reputation of being incredibly busy (one would assume for good reason). While the decor is lovely and what little we managed to consume was tasty, the abject failure in co-ordination, competence, customer care would tell me this reputation is sadly misplaced.

Would never darken the door again - what was supposed to be a special occasion was badly negatively impacted by shoddy treatment. Fortunately, we were able to get a taxi back to our local in Worsley (The Woodside) who were only too willing and capable of providing food, even though their restaurant was heaving as it tends to be at...

The biggest disappointment! I took my wife here for a date night after a long week and this made it so much worse. I booked a table for 18:00 on a Friday so expected a busy restaurant with lots of atmosphere, and even panicked when I had to ring and let them know we'd be half an hour late. We arrived to the emptiest restaurant I've ever seen. The place was huge and bright with mirrors everywhere so it just looked even more empty. There was maybe two other tables sat before we arrived, which should have been our first red flag for a Friday evening. We sat down and ordered some wine and water for the table. About half an hour later we were given glasses dripping in condensation. If a wine has to be freezing cold to be drinkable then it should be £10 for the bottle, not for a small glass. Unsure why it needed to be so cold anyway because the restaurant was freezing, I ended up sitting in a big wooly jumper (in July) and still shivering. The music was a bizarre choice of what I could only describe as intense elevator music which was just far too loud. I don't mind noise if it's atmosphere but it just seemed to be overcompensating for the lack of atmosphere. I'm glad we did go for the restaurant though rather than the "piano bar" because there was no pianist around the time we were there which was between 18:30 and 20:30, if anyone was going to turn up to play, you would have thought they would at that point. We ordered our food and were recommended 4/5 plates each (which would have cost around £100 each). We got 5 plates to share and were told they come out "when they're ready". I didn't mind this as the assumption is that it's all heading out the kitchen when it's at its freshest. Well we must have been sat for close to an hour before anything arrived. The service was incredibly slow, especially to say there were around a total of 10 diners, and about 20 servers who were all seemingly trying to look busy, carrying empty trays back and forth. The first two plates arrived, sushi, which was okay, nothing amazing, but fine. We then sat for a further half hour waiting for anything else to come. We were about ready to leave at this point because it was becoming ridiculous. Then the rest of the plates arrived. "Crispy duck" which was nowhere near crispy, drowned in dressing and buried under piles of what I'd describe as an aldi salad bag. The "frites" which were just oven fries in a wooden bowl. They were okay but it would be pretty hard to get fries wrong. The chicken coriander skewers which were just dry. And then the biggest joke was "wagyu steak skewers", £20, not the worst when you're expecting wagyu steak skewers. But two tiny skewers arrived with dark brown dry chewy beef, drowned in sauce. We had about two bites of the entire thing and then decided the whole thing was a joke. We told our waitress we were unhappy and she offered to get the manager. We must have waited another half hour or longer for someone to turn up and tell us it still needed to be confirmed by a general manager so I don't know who he was with a 30minute wait time. They charged us £50 for the wines, sushi plates, and the £5 water, included service charge. It was am absolute joke but we were just glad to be leaving. In the end, we got a taxi to a wine bar and...