I recently went to Sydney on a family trip and thought what better way to treat a couple of teenage/young adult boys than a meat-fest? I, however, was planning on buying a lovely bottle of Malbec and pacing myself for the hour and a half...session. This was not to be.
We arrived early and were allowed in. We ordered a couple of cocktails and a beer to get us started and the onslaught of food began. The sides and sauces came out, or drinks came out, the meat came out. And more meat. And more meat. Now don't get me wrong, I understand the concept of the whole thing. That's the point. I would have loved to try everything on the menu. But we were absolutely smashed for the first half hour to forty minutes, and then pretty much ignored. We missed out on certain cuts that the tables on either side of us got. And nobody came back to ask how we were for drinks. Not a great business move. I'm sure they make their money on the meat alone, but they could have made so much more out of us if they'd only come back to offer us more drinks. Just imagine if you will, I'm sitting there enjoying my wine, and they come around with another meat I haven't tried, and I accept as I still have plenty of wine to get me through that allocated hour and a half.
Instead, everyone was full, we'd finished our first drinks forever ago and were just drinking the water, and we were all over it. When the meat-runners did come back they asked if we had specific requests for a favourite.... The rest of the options would have been nice, but not really.... We're out of drinks and don't want to order any more at this stage, so the bill will be fine thanks.
Highlights of the night were trying chicken hearts. We've done that now. Not as gross as we thought, but I don't need to eat it again. The good menu items we had were the pork neck, the rump cap and tri-tip, the pineapple and the bean stew that was in the sides.
Lowlights were most of the other meats. The sausages was dried out and tough, the lamb was too fatty, the pork belly was less than ordinary. We didn't get the haloumi even after they went out of their way to bring one serve without the coating for the Gluten-Free option at our table. And things like the pineapple and the pork neck that would go great together would have if they came out near each other time-wise.
Overall it was quite a disappointing experience.More