Last night instead of the busy Multicultural Festival, my boyfriend and I decided to go to Dickson instead. We stumbled upon a relatively newish place called ‘Hostage Bar and Tapas’. The menu looked enticing so we decided to give it a whirl.
The place was practically empty – that should have been all the warning we needed to stay clear of this place.
We sat down in a quiet spot on the corner near the open doors, hoping for a breeze.
They have quite a lovely sounding tapas menu – but that’s all it was, lovely sounding. We ordered some beers and ten minutes later when they hadn’t arrived the waiter came to tell us that their beer taps were broken and that we would have to have bottled beer. No big deal, “Sure bring us bottles,” we said. When someone finally came to take our order we order the mozerella balls, calamari, pork rashers and chicken wings. Shortly after the waiter then came to tell us that they had no mozerella balls and no pork rashers. Pretty unusual for a Saturday night when you would think that this would be their busiest time so a full kitchen would be important. Anyway, we asked to see the menu again to make a different selection.
In the meantime, two of our dishes then arrived. One of them was the pork rashers that they had just told us they didnt have. Ok. Weird. The other dish was the calamari. We decided not to order anything else as they servings looked quite large.
I can safely say that what happened next was the worst dining experience Ive ever had in my life. The calamari was dripping in oil, so much so that it made the crumbed outside soggy and disheveled. The crumbing didnt stick to the calamari properly and fell off in large oily clumps. The calamari itself was rubbery and chewy to the point where you one’s teeth couldn’t actually masticate it enough to swallow. The pork rashers were equally disgusting – it was actually impossible to tell if they were pork or not. They were covered in a similar and equally oily crumbing (although the menu didnt say anything to indicate they were crumbed). The ‘meat’ if you could call it that (because I’m not sure there was any under the crumbing), was made up of fat and grizzle. Again, inedible. The chicken wings arrived which looked a little more promising. The marinade they were covered in was tasty, however, the wings themselves still had feathers on them in places – and not just a rouge hair or two, several clumps of feathers.
Its one of the only times in my life I’ve actaully had to spit out food into my napkin. We decided to leave and when the waitress asked us how everything was, we were honest with her. To her credit she got the head waiter (maybe he was the manager). He listened to all the problems we had and said he would let the chef know. However, they only took $10 off the bill which I found a bit disgraceful considering we couldnt actually eat any of what they served us and the dishes were quite expensive.
Truely a heinous dining experience, we wont be going back there any time soon, or ever I suspect.
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