Worst Canberra Restaurants

Pear said :

Tilley’s is definitely the worst restaurant I’ve been to. Very average food, appaling service, over priced, rude staff, slow and a ridiculous ordering system (could they be slower or less efficient?).

Yes, but they also have lesbians.

Absent Diane said :

Montezumas for lame tasting mexican

Definitely. Awful food – only the fact that it was burnt gave it any flavour.

Absent Diane said :

And podfink I have to agree with hogs breath

I’ve heard that their steaks are cooked and imported from the US, thawed and warmed here. No idea whether it’s true or not but, as you’d expect from grain-fed beef, they taste like and have the texture of boiled newspaper. Why tf do they make a point of advertising that it’s grain fed – who’d want to eat that crap?

Their ribs were delicious (had to go there – office farewell) but yes, priced like a 5 star restaurant for what’s basically not much more than a fast food joint.

I would like to nominate the burns club kambah and the west belconnen leagues club as the 2 worst experiences Ive ever had! my partner had the crumbed lamb cutlets which came out raw and when asked to remedy came back burnt to charcoal. West belconnen EVERYTHING on the menu is terrible had the fillet-mignon came out raw i dont mean a little under cooked it looked like it was on the grill for 4 seconds MAX! also had the salt and pepper squid from west belco and would describe it as battered squid (also under-cooked) AVOID THESE PLACES!!!!

Tilley’s is definitely the worst restaurant I’ve been to. Very average food, appaling service, over priced, rude staff, slow and a ridiculous ordering system (could they be slower or less efficient?). They hate kids (I understand people being offended by poorly behaved little brats, but mine are restaurant trained) and the staff abused me once for one of ‘my’ children breaking a chair. When I advised it someone elses child there was no apology. I have so many bad stories about that place – definitely on my boycott list. But people will keep going there for the ‘image’ so there is no need for them to lift there game.

rosscoact said :

Erg0 said :

rosscoact said :

The ones that drop the ball like above are on their exorable way to oblivion

Good thing it’s exorable, or it might be impossible to stop or prevent.

Touché, you should be a food critic

I dunno. I’m feeling quite gruntled at this rare use of exorable.

shadow boxer said :

Maybe these are not the apartments for him.

Not too fussed by either side of the disgruntled steakhouse man, but this was a ripping line. Well done (pardon the pun).

Without a doubt Sabayon. Hard to believe the same man behind Water’s Edge and Courgette owns/owned the place (it’s for sale as of writing). Granted, the place had a hard time for some reason getting a head chef before settling on a duo of fill ins before none at all. Basically, cheap decor, odd smell of toilet cleaner, slow and poor service and food that was less than desirable.

It seems the much maligned Carlo’s has changed hands. I went past there this afternoon and it has been gutted. Does anyone know who has taken over ?

Erg0 said :

rosscoact said :

The ones that drop the ball like above are on their exorable way to oblivion

Good thing it’s exorable, or it might be impossible to stop or prevent.

Touché, you should be a food critic

Stevian said :

To be fair, most 5 yo children are vermin, yours would be no exception. They have to think about the comfort and safety of their other patrons

Yes, when I read that the Narrabundah Italian is not child-friendly, I moved it up quite a few notches on my “worth a visit” list. I rather wish establishments that are prepared to not tolerate screaming/running kids would publicise this a bit more, as the business they’d lose in families would be made up by those wanting a child-free night out.

I’m assuming it’s the place with the ancient bricks.

Helen said :

We had a booking at a well known, very busy Italian restaurant last weekend. We arrived 5 minutes early for our reservation. There were two blokes talking to a waiter about getting a table, they were walk ins. A waitress took our name, crossed us off the book, and went to take us to a table… only to find that the waiter had just given the two walk ins our reserved table. There was not another free table for 15 minutes – and by that time, another 3 groups of people (with reservations) were waiting for tables.

In the scheme of things, 15 minutes isn’t long to wait I guess. But if you know that your restaurant is fully booked for the night, why would you accept walk ins? Why would you give away a table that has been reserved for people due to arrive in 5 minutes? And, as Stevian points out, what is the point of making a reservation if walk ins get preferential treatment?

what you experienced vs what Norbert_syd experienced were a little different, obviously the restaurant should have held the table if they had an expected booking, the waiter should have asked the gents to take a seat to see if they had any free tables (and checked the running sheet) rather then just take them to the table.

obviously your scenario is different, but theoretically how long would you expect a restaurant to hold a reservation if you were late with no communication?

(Aiming for three post loon as i have been lurking for the longest age.)

Stevian said :

Then what would be the point of booking if you show up and some blow-in has your reserved table.? Has your brain gone on holiday?

going from what Norbert_syd the manager should have responded with, I will see if there is a table clear, then go on to the other customers with the booking.
just because Norbert_syd walked in first doesn’t mean they should have been seated first, but they should have be served first rather then bypassed.

rosscoact said :

The ones that drop the ball like above are on their exorable way to oblivion

Good thing it’s exorable, or it might be impossible to stop or prevent.

rosscoact said :

shadow boxer said :

Man, i’d hate to run a restaurant, someone without a booking came in, didn’t like that someone with a booking got served first, thought his medium steak was underdone (somewhat subjective), didn’t want real mustard and didn’t get a smile with his bill.

All while admitting he did get seated late at night and received friendly service.

For that he lambasts a good business of 40 years standing all over the Internet.

If you run a business your only aim should be customer satisfaction, successful business’s invariably all do this, unsuccessful businesses invariably don’t, period.

The ones that drop the ball like above are on their exorable way to oblivion

There’s customers and them there’s customers, considering they have been running a steakhouse at the same spot for over 40 years I’d say they know a bit about it and sized this guy up pretty quickly.

Even still by his own admission he was too lazy to book but still got seated and was provided with excellent service. His only complaint appears to be a disagreement on the defintion of medium.

Maybe these are not the apartments for him.

Blamemonkey said :

shadow boxer said :

Man, i’d hate to run a restaurant, someone without a booking came in, didn’t like that someone with a booking got served first, thought his medium steak was underdone (somewhat subjective), didn’t want real mustard and didn’t get a smile with his bill.

For a Premium price, you would expect premium service.
what is wrong with the old adage “First come, first serve”
the customer that had booked is revenue is revenue that was expected, where as a walk in is a bonus, and neither should get preferential because they are both still customers.

We had a booking at a well known, very busy Italian restaurant last weekend. We arrived 5 minutes early for our reservation. There were two blokes talking to a waiter about getting a table, they were walk ins. A waitress took our name, crossed us off the book, and went to take us to a table… only to find that the waiter had just given the two walk ins our reserved table. There was not another free table for 15 minutes – and by that time, another 3 groups of people (with reservations) were waiting for tables.

In the scheme of things, 15 minutes isn’t long to wait I guess. But if you know that your restaurant is fully booked for the night, why would you accept walk ins? Why would you give away a table that has been reserved for people due to arrive in 5 minutes? And, as Stevian points out, what is the point of making a reservation if walk ins get preferential treatment?

shadow boxer said :

Man, i’d hate to run a restaurant, someone without a booking came in, didn’t like that someone with a booking got served first, thought his medium steak was underdone (somewhat subjective), didn’t want real mustard and didn’t get a smile with his bill.

All while admitting he did get seated late at night and received friendly service.

For that he lambasts a good business of 40 years standing all over the Internet.

If you run a business your only aim should be customer satisfaction, successful business’s invariably all do this, unsuccessful businesses invariably don’t, period.

The ones that drop the ball like above are on their exorable way to oblivion

Americanberran said :

The little Asian kitchen inside Erindale Centre;won’t Google the name for fear I might never be able to get it out of my head(two haunting experiences is quite enough, already.) Their $5 meat w/rice/noodle “special”, could spark a riot.. at a slave camp! I mean- the batter & sauce incorporate.. shamelessly congeal, as to form a most unsavory paste;their noodles are living testament.. that the Italians crafted this precious artform;the rice being the most palatable element(possessing the least taste)
Admittedly, they are well-situated.. right next to the toilets.

I was in the toilet at Erindale the other day and the woman from there just left without washing her hands. Ugh.

Watson said :

Big Al said :

La Capanna in Kingston served us mouldy garlic bread and then their staff argued the point with us when we refused to pay for it. Carlo’s in Watson seem to be able to take a wide variety of italian inspired dishes like pasta and risotto and fuck them up completely, Whatever “The Habit” has become is adept at trying to charge restaurant prices for what is essentially a short order menu.

Oh, I forgot about La Capanna! I never went back there after I got kicked out once because they needed the table. We were still ordering coffees and more wine but they’d already promised our table to a waiting couple. I actually did give them one more chance a few months later when I went for dinner with a friend who claimed she knew the owner. And was eventually asked to move to another table to have our after dinner coffees for the same reason. If you want to run your place as a take-away only, you should promote it as such!

Apparently the Italian place in Narrabundah is quite good but I never ate there because the one time we went in to ask if there was a free table, the owner looked at my 5yo daughter as if she was vermon and refused to let us have the 2 person table (for 2 adults and a child) that a waiter had already promised us. I’ve heard other stories about the owner’s extreme snobbery.

And agree about Carlos too. Over-priced and very mediocre meals. And the one time I ordered a pasta from their kids menu there, they’d put chilli in it so it was a total waste of my money. (If anyone can suggest a way to get a 5yo to eat chilli, please do tell me about it.) I hope the new place will be a big improvement.

To be fair, most 5 yo children are vermin, yours would be no exception. They have to think about the comfort and safety of their other patrons

Blamemonkey said :

shadow boxer said :

Man, i’d hate to run a restaurant, someone without a booking came in, didn’t like that someone with a booking got served first, thought his medium steak was underdone (somewhat subjective), didn’t want real mustard and didn’t get a smile with his bill.

For a Premium price, you would expect premium service.
what is wrong with the old adage “First come, first serve”
the customer that had booked is revenue is revenue that was expected, where as a walk in is a bonus, and neither should get preferential because they are both still customers.

Then what would be the point of booking if you show up and some blow-in has your reserved table.? Has your brain gone on holiday?

My apologies for responding to such an old post!

Big Al said :

La Capanna in Kingston served us mouldy garlic bread and then their staff argued the point with us when we refused to pay for it. Carlo’s in Watson seem to be able to take a wide variety of italian inspired dishes like pasta and risotto and fuck them up completely, Whatever “The Habit” has become is adept at trying to charge restaurant prices for what is essentially a short order menu.

Oh, I forgot about La Capanna! I never went back there after I got kicked out once because they needed the table. We were still ordering coffees and more wine but they’d already promised our table to a waiting couple. I actually did give them one more chance a few months later when I went for dinner with a friend who claimed she knew the owner. And was eventually asked to move to another table to have our after dinner coffees for the same reason. If you want to run your place as a take-away only, you should promote it as such!

Apparently the Italian place in Narrabundah is quite good but I never ate there because the one time we went in to ask if there was a free table, the owner looked at my 5yo daughter as if she was vermon and refused to let us have the 2 person table (for 2 adults and a child) that a waiter had already promised us. I’ve heard other stories about the owner’s extreme snobbery.

And agree about Carlos too. Over-priced and very mediocre meals. And the one time I ordered a pasta from their kids menu there, they’d put chilli in it so it was a total waste of my money. (If anyone can suggest a way to get a 5yo to eat chilli, please do tell me about it.) I hope the new place will be a big improvement.

I knew a Norbert from Sydney – he was once nearly thrown off a flight for having a go at the check-in person because he didn’t receive a free upgrade to business class (on a ticket that he didn’t pay for, no less).

Coincidence?

shadow boxer said :

Man, i’d hate to run a restaurant, someone without a booking came in, didn’t like that someone with a booking got served first, thought his medium steak was underdone (somewhat subjective), didn’t want real mustard and didn’t get a smile with his bill.

For a Premium price, you would expect premium service.
what is wrong with the old adage “First come, first serve”
the customer that had booked is revenue is revenue that was expected, where as a walk in is a bonus, and neither should get preferential because they are both still customers.

Man, i’d hate to run a restaurant, someone without a booking came in, didn’t like that someone with a booking got served first, thought his medium steak was underdone (somewhat subjective), didn’t want real mustard and didn’t get a smile with his bill.

All while admitting he did get seated late at night and received friendly service.

For that he lambasts a good business of 40 years standing all over the Internet.

Norbert_syd, that’s sad to hear. It’s always disappointing when an otherwise excellent establishment completely drops the ball. Dining alone has always been a challenge for many Canberra restaurants. If I were you, I’d give them one more chance. If they fcuk up again. Never go back.

How to loose long-term customers

For nearly 25 years, every time I came to Canberra, I made sure I would visit the Charcoal Steak Restaurant. Sometimes several times a year and sometimes with an interval of 1 or even 2 years.
For my German meat taste, this was always a superior restaurant, not only for the quality of their steaks, but also the atmosphere and coziness and overall good service.

However, all this goodwill towards this establishment was blown out today., March 9, 2011. Walking past the restaurant at 7:30 pm it was very well occupied with no spare seat visible. A good reputation, of course, guarantees good occupancy. But at times, it seems to make owners or managers feel invincible, I guess.

So I took an appetite building walk around the Canberra CBD to come back at 8:30 pm. Yes! There were a few empty places. As it happens immediately with me, two other gentlemen entered.
I approached the person on the reception, Julian, and asked if they would have a place now for a single guest without a booking.
“We close in 30 minutes” was the reply and than looking past me, he pointed at the other person behind me and said “are you Andy?”. Upon a positive reply and without bothering to remind them that the restaurant would close in 30 minutes, he advised them their table.
Graciously, it seemed, I was assigned a place to seat afterwards.

So far, so bad.

A lovely waitress, who could produce a most welcoming and lovely smile served my table.

I ordered a steak, ‘Medium’ . I know that it s not easy to cook a steak to perfection, but in a place, which specializes in Steak, one should expect the best. At least if the place has been operating for more than 40 years.
But the meat was fat and not cooked medium, but strongly on the red side.
Further more, when I asked for flavor enhancing mustard, they offered only the ‘seeded’ variety or a taste killing ‘hot’ English one. I thought in a place, swarming with international guest, such as Canberra, they would know about a gentle, Dijon Mustard, which would do the meat proud.
But not so.
As I do not like re-heated meat, nor did I want to appear to ask for freebies, I said nothing about the redness.

After the table was cleared, and after declining the desert menu, but without given and opportunity to order coffee, another wine or so, the manager-in-charge, dropped the bill on to my table. He did not look at me, but his face was pointed away, such as I was not worth his attention. Pay-up and get out, seemed to be the message.
This I did, at least half way. I paid and than I spoke to the friendly waitress about my experience and left.

Going back? I am not so sure. Paying in excess of $50 for such an experience is not really encouraging. Isn’t it? Maybe I try the Thai restaurant next door, at least they may know what good service is and how to make customers welcome.

By the way, I got out before 9pm. So everyone of the staff could go home on my account, but maybe not on Andy’s or other lingering guest.

Sorry to resurect a long time topic, but on a (slightly) related topic, it has been reported that on 19 Jan, a motorcyclist was killed in an accident on the Princes Highway near Bega.

I believe the rider was Carlo, from the restaurant of that name, in Dickson.

RIP.

i love a 4.5 year old thread 🙂

3Jane said :

Bad service doesn’t bother me. Things go wrong and it’s not always the fault of the waiting staff. I don’t need servitude.

It should bother you. You are paying a premium for a service. If you don’t get it, you have every justification for being annoyed. You are right, however. Usually it is not the wait-staff’s fault, but the owners/managers who are too stingy too put on an appropriate amount of staff.

Sometimes, however, it is the wait-staff, such as the lovely gentleman who was ‘serving’ me the other night and took over an hour from me finishing my meal to him collecting my plates and taking my dessert order. He was too busy chatting to his 3 mates at the bar.

I’d love to try Tak Kee. I think I’ve ingested enough bacteria to be immune to whatever they’ve got there.

Bad service doesn’t bother me. Things go wrong and it’s not always the fault of the waiting staff. I don’t need servitude.

My worst restaurant experiences:
1. Wagamama – at the top because this slop was recent. The staff don’t want to be there and who can blame them?
2. APK Civic, but I’ve had great pizza at APK Woden.
3. Lovely Pancakes in Civic were inedible, but fortunately I only went there for the air conditioning.
4. The Saigon in Pearce has about a hundred items on the menu, and the one I had tasted and looked straight out of the freezer and into the microwave. That was just once, about ten years ago.
5. The Bistro at the Hellenic Club serves up some horrible stuff sometimes, and you can often smell the toilet. But a lot of people like it, and it’s cheap if not cheerful.

rigseismic67 said :

TAK KEE restaurant in Dickson
A grease-coated kitchen, food in a car park and meat attracting magpies got a Dickson restaurant owner into trouble in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday.
The proprietor of the Tak Kee Roast Inn was convicted and fined $1500 for failing to comply with food safety standards and allowing food to be handled in a way that made it unsuitable for sale.

The court heard a health inspector was on the balcony of the Dickson Backpackers when she noticed meat defrosting and vegetables being prepared in a car park behind the Woolley Street restaurant on February 26, 2009.

The food was unattended on a chopping board, exposed to the weather and attracting wild birds, so she took photographs and phoned her superior, who sent another staff member to help her investigate.

So, it’s been said before, it’s an authentic chinese restaurant. I love the place, been there dozens of times and like JB says it tastes so good (and although the paper would have you believe you are taking your life into your own hands, I’ve never been even queasy after eating there)

rigseismic67 said :

TAK KEE restaurant in Dickson
A grease-coated kitchen, food in a car park and meat attracting magpies got a Dickson restaurant owner into trouble in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday.
The proprietor of the Tak Kee Roast Inn was convicted and fined $1500 for failing to comply with food safety standards and allowing food to be handled in a way that made it unsuitable for sale.

The court heard a health inspector was on the balcony of the Dickson Backpackers when she noticed meat defrosting and vegetables being prepared in a car park behind the Woolley Street restaurant on February 26, 2009.

The food was unattended on a chopping board, exposed to the weather and attracting wild birds, so she took photographs and phoned her superior, who sent another staff member to help her investigate.

it’s truly authentic chinese. yum! never been sick from their food, it is my second kitchen…

australia pizza kitchen goes a long way to my worst food in canberra; that and all and every outlet at all foodhalls in all canberra malls!

TAK KEE restaurant in Dickson
A grease-coated kitchen, food in a car park and meat attracting magpies got a Dickson restaurant owner into trouble in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday.
The proprietor of the Tak Kee Roast Inn was convicted and fined $1500 for failing to comply with food safety standards and allowing food to be handled in a way that made it unsuitable for sale.

The court heard a health inspector was on the balcony of the Dickson Backpackers when she noticed meat defrosting and vegetables being prepared in a car park behind the Woolley Street restaurant on February 26, 2009.

The food was unattended on a chopping board, exposed to the weather and attracting wild birds, so she took photographs and phoned her superior, who sent another staff member to help her investigate.

Dickson Tradies has apparently been advertising that the schnitzels are back. Anyone got any info on this? I’m too burnt by the appalling crap they’ve been serving up ever recently to go back and find out.

chewy14 said :

Motleychick,
you went to a club and got club food with club service?
Shock horror.

I’ve had great experiences and great food in clubs. This was just disgusting.

Motleychick,
you went to a club and got club food with club service?
Shock horror.

Would never recommend the Weston Club. Just went with a bunch of people from work, ordered some entrees and mains all together, and they brought out the entrees with the mains and a few people didn’t even get food (after an hour!!). Absolutely ridiculous. Over a span of half an hour most people were fed. It pisses me off, if you’re a good chef you should know how to time cooking the food so the whole table gets it together. Very disappointed. The food isn’t that good anyway, the service is shit. I asked for a rare steak and got it medium well. Only good thing about it was my beer.

the National Gallery cafe is shite also. Such a pity.

The whole set-up is a disaster. You move along the line with your tray, which starts with hot meals, meanders sloooowly past cakes, salads etc. Eventually you and your luekwarm lamb shank reach the coffee machine which is close to the cashier. guess what – now you have to wait for the people in front who are ordering a variety of complex coffees. Finally you pay for your cold congealed lamb shank.

Oh – and don’t bother trying to order any of the fancy drinks etc advertised on the boards behind the food – none of it is ever available. and don’t ask the staff what the soup of the day is etc – they just give you blank looks.

Alas, the cafe at the National Portrait Gallery is failing on several fronts. I bought an “eccles cake” – it was inedible – a block of solid currants (no exaggeration) with a couple of shreds of zest somewhere in there and a pastry shell as thick as 100gsm paper, not enough to soften the currant taste. Have you ever tried to eat a solid mouthful of currants? Try six mouthfuls worth. Coffee: ordered “very hot”. Arrived barely tepid.
On previous visit, table was unstable. Asked the waiter if I could have something to chock it with. Waiter made a vague attempt to chock it, couldn’t do it (!), abandoned the task.
This visit it was 1.45 pm – but a staffer was loudly packing up all the tables and chairs outside except for the two directly outside the doors – both occupied. Staffer refused to leave a table and chairs there for us! Herded inside. Hello! The Portrait Gallery is open until 5 pm. What’s the point of having a view to the lake from a verandah the length of the building if the cafe has packed up the outside tables and chairs?
It’s so disappointing. The Gallery itself is amazing, and the bookshop is simply perfect.

dashboard_1984 said :

Woden Turkish Pide house.
Worst service, RUDE staff.

yep, agree. Avoid anywhere that makes you feel like we should be privelidged for being allowed to eat there. Food is usually good though

Woden Turkish Pide house.
Worst service, RUDE staff.

My experiences in Cons in Mawson has been pretty good, the lady there served really well, and the Fillet Mignon was tasty. The owner was nice enough to talk with the customer and checked up on the meal.

My pick for the worst in Canberra will be the Charlies in Belco, super slow service, foods not good, over-priced!! Will never go back!!

Icepoet said :

Why, oh why, oh why, oh why, was I foolish enough to eat at the Australian Pizza Kitchen in Civic…

’nuff said.

Why, oh why, oh why, oh why, was I foolish enough to eat at the Australian Pizza Kitchen in Civic last week? Bad food and lousy service. I don’t think I’ve ever boycotted a resturant before but APK will be the first.

For starters they couldn’t get our order right. After taking the wrong pizza back and cooking a new one, they then served us a raw pizza. The waiter was never around and we were continually unable to get his attention. When I finally gave up and walked over to the chef (the only member of staff in sight) to ask if we could please have the remainder of our pizza (the non raw bits) to take away I was simply handed a box.

Surprisingly enough the waiter turned up again when we made our way to the front to pay.

My friend mentioned to him that the second pizza was raw and was inedible and the waiter replied ‘Oh. Okay’. And proceeded to charge us the full price of $58 for 2 pizza’s (one uneaten), a small garlic pizza and 2 cokes.

No apology. No offer of free drinks. No acknowledgement that they’d even done anything wrong. And bloody expensive at that. I’d have had a more enjoyable time had I walked in and just handed the waiter $20 and walked out again.

Never again Civic APK!

bearlikesbeer said :

Babar (Woden) – “Slow-roasted Wagyu Beef” is a great way to ruin a good cut of meat. Dry, tough as boot leather, and as grey as my grandmother’s lamb roast. A bargain at $28.

Babar (Civic) – An Ossobuco that came out cold, was sent back, returned cold, was sent back again, eventually returned lukewarm. There were problems with the other meals ordered that night but I can’t remember the specifics.

Babar (Anywhere) – Coffee.

Mezzalira is still the worst for service. Nine customers arriving at 7pm and leaving at 9pm without being fed is ridiculous. We waited until 8.15pm to have our order taken, had to open our own wine with a swiss army knife, and were well pickled on *many* vodka lime and sodas on empty stomachs.

After quite a few warnings that we would have to eat elsewhere if they didn’t get our food to us soon, we left at 9. They had the nerve to (not only not apologise) but charged us corkage when we opened our own bottles as we couldn’t get anyone to serve us!

Good point someone made about them allocating a waiter to a particular table. Their service is a mess and their management staff are snooty and arrogant and apparently couldn’t care less about unhappy customers. I think they have their core clientele that they treat very well and the rest they could care less about.

I will tell you all about my “Australian” experience at the new pub “The Australian” in Civic. My friend and I were after dinner one night after an evening of rubbing shoulders with Canberra’s literati at a journal launch and we stumbled upon this new pub which looked dreadful but we thought what the hey it was really hot and they had fans…..

The menu is intriguing – tapas and fancy stuff and we thought WOW so we ordered damper & dips, deep fried cabernet with cranberry jam & zucchini fritters. Of the 3 only the zucchini fritters was edible, one the so called dips that came with the damper was tomato sauce! (what the), the other was meant to be avocado and macadamia and had no macadamia in it and the last one was meant to be corn and cream cheese – instead they gave us cheap hummus and didn’t even mention the substitutions.

Furthermore the cabernet was cold and not cooked so we sent it back and the waiter said yeah yeah I will just throw it back in the deep fry and I said no we want it made again from scratch fresh…an argument ensued.

Furthermore when they poured my friends beer it looked like a tainted creamy soda cocktail (think of the film American pie) so of course we sent it back and then the proprietor comes out and starts crapping on about the keg and the oxygen in the beer etc it made a really bad impression on us.

This is the italian place at Erindale next to Woolies

Warning enough I would have thought.

Yup, this is where cultural apathy takes a “dive”…down, and bites us right in our restaurant seats.
Hey, do you think they might have gotten away with this sort of crap in a country like, oh, let’s say…Ireland?

good rant, mrpc. i was taken to that place a while back and while there were only four of us, the food was extraordinarily ordinary and the service, while not up to your spectacular experience, left much to be desired. one of the worst dining experiences i’ve suffered. very sorry for your partner’s birthday – many happy returns from me – and i hope all other rioters – to said birthday celebrant [singing: ‘never been twenty one before…’ la la…] and hope the rest of the evening went some way to making up for dinner’s catastrophes… ; )

my worst canberra dining experience was at the old ottoman’s, upstairs at manuka above abels, watching the moon eclipse but failing to have anything i ordered (in a group of about twelve people) delivered, mostly not being told it was ‘off’ until everyone else had been served their course. in the end i think i had a dry falafel and a piece of baklava for dinner the whole night and, strangely, was never very compelled to return. sux, a bad night out, huh?

La Piazza just ruined my partner’s 21st! (This is the italian place at Erindale next to Woolies).

We had a group of 8 tonight, arriving at 6:30 for dinner, having called in advance asking if they did banquets and if they were BYO (yes on both counts)

At 6:35 our orders were taken, we just wanted Banquet 5.

Five minutes later, the waitress came back and said they only did Banquet 5 if you booked Banquet 5 in advance. (It didn’t say that anywhere on the menu). We switched to Banquet 4 with no questions asked.

Another five minutes later the waitress came back and said “With Banquet 4, you have your choice of Main, what choice would you like?”. Surely a waitress could have asked this when we switched to Banquet 4 at her request!

Another five minutes later we were told it was BYO for wine only, the beer that had been brought could not be drunk, though they were OK with us finishing the ones we had already opened.

About an hour later, the mains arrived. Admittedly 7 out of 8 of the mains were good. That was about the only thing that was good. However, the birthday boy’s risotto was mushy and he was quietly unimpressed.

During dinner it was starting to get dark outside, but when we asked if they could turn the lights on, they later found they couldn’t. Both lights at our end of the restaurant were blown. We were gradually getting to the point where we were eating in the dark. I asked if they had any sort of lamp they could bring out. There was no reply to that request.

Once we were done with our mains, they laid down the law about what limited selection of tea and coffee was available with our choice of banquet (Long Black, Flat White, Earl Grey and English Breakfast IIRC). Three of us ordered tea and the other five ordered coffee. Only two teas and two coffees arrived. The birthday boy noticed his coffee cup still was dirty. It was stained from the chocolate they sprinkle over cappuccino, except that he didn’t order cappuccino. He was astounded that they would serve coffee in a dirty cup! Also, there were solid coffee grinds visible in the coffee. He and his best friend sent their coffees back. They found (and the waitress then told us) their coffee machine was busted. They tried cleaning it out but it was still making bad coffee, so she said they wouldn’t be able to serve coffee for any of us. The waitress offered the two who sent their coffees back an alternate beverage. Soft drink, tea etc. The waitress didn’t even remember the 3rd tea or the three others that ordered coffee, and none of them were offered any beverage as at about 10 minutes later.

In the middle of all that, we also asked about the dessert that was meant to be included with Banquet 4 (Gelato). Surely the dessert should have come out before the coffee, so where was it (politely)? The waitress insisted that Banquet 4 didn’t have any dessert, but we remembered that the menu said otherwise. About 10 minutes later, no dessert was forthcoming, and I went to the counter and asked to see a banquet menu. One of the three waitresses said “your geleto is on the way” but the menu offered you your choice of flavours, and nobody asked us what flavours we wanted, so how could it possibly be on the way?

Birthday boy is a very good pastry chef. The best friend is a well respected cake decorator. They and his parents all decided that they had had enough and we all filed out, and the rest of us did. Three of them stayed behind to ask for an explanation.

Their recollection of what they were told when they started to query all the failings of the night’s service was “don’t blame me, I just work here”. No manager was there the entire time. Those that remained there cracked the proverbial bigtime at that point and walked out. The chef ran out to quiz them on what went wrong. She (the chef) was desperate to know if it was the food. She knew something was majorly wrong for a party of 8 to leave before the banquet was over. Admittedly those that remained didn’t include Birthday Boy, so they said the food was good, it was just the pathetic service.

After a minute of discussion with her, Birthday Boy’s father said “I don’t have time for this on my Son’s 21st, I’m leaving”. And with that, the night was over.

They say that if your service is bad, ten people will be told. There were 80 of us. I sure hope more than 10 people read this. Having said that, I still have all my work colleagues to tell on Monday.

Nothing like a resuscitated thread.

The staff at Antigo think a grasshopper comes in a standard size shotglass and costs $14.

Oportos in Woden – Ordered a chicken burger and it came with a fat black caterpiller in it. Luckily noticed it before I bit into it. Took it back to show the staff – no apologies, had to ask for my money back. Have never been there again and never will…

The little Asian kitchen inside Erindale Centre;won’t Google the name for fear I might never be able to get it out of my head(two haunting experiences is quite enough, already.) Their $5 meat w/rice/noodle “special”, could spark a riot.. at a slave camp! I mean- the batter & sauce incorporate.. shamelessly congeal, as to form a most unsavory paste;their noodles are living testament.. that the Italians crafted this precious artform;the rice being the most palatable element(possessing the least taste)
Admittedly, they are well-situated.. right next to the toilets.

Well, I just had a Vanilla Slice from Cafe Gaudi. They’re usually quite nice and made by some private baker. The thing I’ve noticed about them is they leave the old stock on the cake shelves for too long. Today the shelf was full so I thought they’d be nice. I’d got back to work and opened the wrapping to a dried, near fungus infected piece of crusty puss filled pastry. I brave taken a slight nibble on it. It didn’t taste bad as such, just dried out and stale. It was promptly binned and it’s definitely not worth ever buying from their again.

On a positive note about them though, I really think they have some of the best coffee you can buy in the region, and they’re baristas (in most cases badly trained noobs) do a fairly consistent job at preparing them. Coffee Guru and Gloria Jean’s can be just down right bitter and indrinkable. The problem is you need to pick your times if you want a take away coffee at gaudi. Even with the new fandangled computer ordering system, some of the staff are just plain useless at time management. There was a realyl nice dude named Samuel who worked there. Many times he had the coffee ready to go before I’d even ordered. He’s by far the best staff member they ever had, but he’s unfortunately gone now.

If you want the best vanilla slice in existence (except for maybe europe), go to Sorrento on the far southern eastern point of Port Phillip Bay. By golly gee they’re fine, made fresh on site. You can’t miss them, they’re on the left as you drive into town coming from Mornington with a big sign stating that they’re the home of the famous BEST vanilla slice in Australia. They make them onsite and they’re utterly fantastic.

TONGUE AND GROOVE in Civic. Just downright rude.

The main guy I see there always seems to be annoyed and have no time to be nice to his customers. It’s not bad food but rude floor management. He is disinterested at best and rude at worst. Very prissy for a beefcake: it’s like he’s there to order the customers around, and make sure everyone sits in their ‘allocated’ seating.

Think highschool cafeteria.

On that note – the seating is terrible. They have a policy of filling in the tables in the daytime like a Tetris game: you WILL get put right next to the previous customers seated, with no real room to breathe between you.

And good luck if you ask to be seated at a different table!

You’re more likely to be rejected/asked to leave.

bearlikesbeer said :

Cafe Gaudi (Woden) – My “Gaudi Burger” included a microwaved rissole.

Babar (Woden) – “Slow-roasted Wagyu Beef” is a great way to ruin a good cut of meat. Dry, tough as boot leather, and as grey as my grandmother’s lamb roast. A bargain at $28.

Calibre/Lisboa (Woden) – I sent back my “Big Breakfast” because the poached eggs were cooked solid. The waitress returned with more of the same, but this time they were cold. Obviously, they were poaching the eggs en masse then serving them later on. The bacon was more like soapy ham, and the hash brown was clearly of the frozen McCain variety. How hard is it to grate and fry potatoes? I tried to explain the problems to the manager. He said he didn’t have time to listen, and since I would not be paying for the meal, there was no more to discuss.

Oporto (Woden) – A bottle of glass cleaner stored in open view on a food service counter. While I was explaining to the manager that this was a health risk, a small child reached up, grabbed the bottle, and started running around the restaurant with it. The manager thought this was funny.

Belluci’s (Woden) – Our entrees arrived after our mains. All of them. At a table of 6. We waited 30mins for our wine. The waitress put my beer glass on the table, held the beer bottle 30cm above the glass, and started to pour. My partner and I were covered in beer.

Redsalt (City) – We ate our desserts while the plates from our mains were still on the table. Prawn shells and ice cream just don’t mix. When I complained to the head waiter, he explained that the oversight occurred because they were so busy. We counted approx 50 people in the restaurant, which is about half capacity. There were 8 waiters on duty. WTF?

On Brierly (Cooleman Court) – I ordered kidneys in a cream saPardon my saying but you really do sound like a fussy ass BITCH. You obviously love the drama of being served a sub-standard meal. I bet you’re a regular serial pest at the health commission’s complaints department. piss off.uce. As soon as I cut into a kidney, the cream turned pink from the blood that oozed out. The kidneys were almost raw. The waitress explained “that’s how we serve it”. I photographed the plate. I spoke to the manager the next day. He apologized, and offered me a free meal. I told him that if I ever walked past his restaurant and saw the same chef working in his kitchen, I would pass the photo around his restaurant. On Brierly has since closed down.

Cafe Gaudi (Woden) – My “Gaudi Burger” included a microwaved rissole.

Babar (Woden) – “Slow-roasted Wagyu Beef” is a great way to ruin a good cut of meat. Dry, tough as boot leather, and as grey as my grandmother’s lamb roast. A bargain at $28.

Calibre/Lisboa (Woden) – I sent back my “Big Breakfast” because the poached eggs were cooked solid. The waitress returned with more of the same, but this time they were cold. Obviously, they were poaching the eggs en masse then serving them later on. The bacon was more like soapy ham, and the hash brown was clearly of the frozen McCain variety. How hard is it to grate and fry potatoes? I tried to explain the problems to the manager. He said he didn’t have time to listen, and since I would not be paying for the meal, there was no more to discuss.

Oporto (Woden) – A bottle of glass cleaner stored in open view on a food service counter. While I was explaining to the manager that this was a health risk, a small child reached up, grabbed the bottle, and started running around the restaurant with it. The manager thought this was funny.

Belluci’s (Woden) – Our entrees arrived after our mains. All of them. At a table of 6. We waited 30mins for our wine. The waitress put my beer glass on the table, held the beer bottle 30cm above the glass, and started to pour. My partner and I were covered in beer.

Redsalt (City) – We ate our desserts while the plates from our mains were still on the table. Prawn shells and ice cream just don’t mix. When I complained to the head waiter, he explained that the oversight occurred because they were so busy. We counted approx 50 people in the restaurant, which is about half capacity. There were 8 waiters on duty. WTF?

On Brierly (Cooleman Court) – I ordered kidneys in a cream sauce. As soon as I cut into a kidney, the cream turned pink from the blood that oozed out. The kidneys were almost raw. The waitress explained “that’s how we serve it”. I photographed the plate. I spoke to the manager the next day. He apologized, and offered me a free meal. I told him that if I ever walked past his restaurant and saw the same chef working in his kitchen, I would pass the photo around his restaurant. On Brierly has since closed down.

and also… the italian grill in erindale is now closed down! hoorah!
except its replacement the punjabi hut is terrible, don’t go there either. the butter chicken had the taste and consistency of butter chicken watered down with sock water.

So ive come in a bit late but heres my two cents…

Firstly i find most service in Canberra abysmal. I will always go back to a restaurant with great service and mediocre food over crap service and great food. I refuse to pay to be snooted at by a two bit dumbo waitress or waiter who is only there biding time until they get into the public service. foo to you i say! i only with i could be there for the day when karma catches up with them…

So…

Tilleys – boycott boycott boycott. Im glad everyone here see’s what complete rubbish that establishment has become. The last time i went there for breakfast, everything was cold and the hollandaise sauce on my eggs looked about the size of a pigeon poo, which might have actually tasted better than what i got. Not to mention the 45 minute wait, if i hadn’t already paid i would have left. Don’t even get me started on the surly waitresses…

Kingsleys Steak and crab house – the amazing lamo of the new restaurants in the city. If you want decent steak as per the previous recommendation go to “charcoal”. We got oysters kilpatrick served tepid with only a spit of sauce and were told we’d have to pay for extra, warm salads and cold steak. foo to them too!

Carlos – defied the imagination how this place still has customers going to it. It’s at my local shops and i have to control myself from yelling at people to get the hell out of there and go somewhere better when i duck down to the shops. If theyre your local shops too and you havent tried “satis” yet, do, everything is great there and as a bonus it’s not full of idiots.

Also turkish pide house in woden, great food but terrible service and smarmy wait staff. foo! and wagammas, my ramen had raw noodles in it and the broth tasted like dishwater. foo two!

Also a bit of kudos to the mexican place in manuka…Francisco’s Mexican Cantina… My new favourite for a while, best service ive had in a long time, good food and generous portions. do yourself a favour and go here instead of montezumas for some great mexican food.

It’s about the only thing I miss from Melbourne going out Sunday night for a final fling before the working week.

“…why does everything shut on Sunday night?”

’cause cooks and waiters need a night off too, y’know.

Actually, it’s mainly a cost thing. Penalty rates on Sunday nights are pretty punishing for any business and you need to guarantee a very high turnover to just break even. Until you’re willing to cough up the reddies for food (and no-one is; that’s why wages in hospitality are so abysmal) restaurants are going to remain resolutely closed.

Sadly, coming in late to this, I find I’ve made some serious errors of choice that could have been avoided. D’oh. Can’t agree more with the Zeff’s in Dickson comments – food is always mediocre, overpriced and the staff couldn’t be bothered (quite common in Canberra). Hogsbreath in Woden – only if you have three hours to wait while they forget you twice, despite your table being right beside the door in the draught where they can’t miss seeing you gesture frantically. But they do.
Wagamama is just flavourless, appalling low-rent wanna-bee uber-cool Japanese that sucks. The food is terrible and the service lousy, but the location is good. The Pancake Parlour of asian restaurants. Much better to go to Iori around the corner for GOOD Japanese food.
Speaking of pretentious – add Silo bakery. Told the cheese platter was great and took B/F at the time. Got hard, tasteless bread and two sorts of bland cheese, one blue vein. That was it!
Milk and Honey – overpriced but sometimes really good. Dumb waiters though. I ask for a weak latte because I can’t drink strong coffee, so they bring an ordinary latte and a jug of warm milk. But to add the milk to make it weak, I have to drink the latte… huh?
Coffee Club in Civic upstairs. Unlike any other I’ve been to, they treat you like an idiot and make you line up to order, line up to pay, then line up to take your own damn coffee to your own damn table!
And Canberra coffee places seem obsessed with making luke-warm drinks, especially weak lattes (must mean half a coffee and fill the rest with ice cold milk).
Good places – Kashmir HOuse in Narrabundah : grotty, silly, old and rund down in a cute way, with good food and good prices. Iori for Japanese in Civic. My Cafe in Civic beside the once-was-good Essen (but not My Cafe in Manuka – tossers). IronBark in Manuka for their damper burgers and platters (why is it unpopular?) and the Thai Cornar in Manuka for the masamun curry and gai pra ram. That’s my snap at Canberra dining. But why does everything shut on Sunday night?

Toriness – Pandy isn’t me in disguise, but I though the comment was pretty funny…

WoodyMann – I’ve been to that other Italian place up near Allens since the ‘run out of spaghetti’ incident at Italian Grill. I think it’s called La Piazza.

It’s quite good and has some chicken and veal dishes if you’re feeling over pizza/pasta.

The atmosphere’s nicer there than at IG and it’s about 500% less pretentious.

I have a love/hate relationship with Italian Grill. Their pizzas a pretty good for $12 a pop, but the service is really mixed. Two recent incidents spring to mind:

– we go in and order three pizzas to take away. Nice girl takes our order, says come back in 20. We come back in 20, just as three takeaway pizzas hit the counter. “Are those ours?” we ask the smarmy blonde guy. “No – sit down” he says, even though he has no idea who we are. So we wait. And we wait. And we wait. And then the nice girl comes back and says “hey, these are your pizzas” and the moron blonde guy just hands them to us without saying a word. W*nker.

– I call to place an order for six pizzas. They don’t know what I’m asking for because they have a new menu and all the names are different, even though the toppings are exactly the same. I arrive to collect them, only to find that not only do they have a new menu, they’ve moved premises, having swapped places with Turkish Grill. Thanks for the tip on the phone – not. I wait. And wait. The place is empty, but the girls behind the counter are now telling people there’s an hour wait for pizza. Moron blonde guy is there, walking around swilling mineral water. The girls are starting to panic. 35 mins into my 15 min wait I ask if it’ll be much longer. There’s swearing from the kitchen, and I watch them hastily assemble my pizzas. 15 minutes after that, I get my order. Their EFTPOS is broken, so I walk to the servo, get money, come back. People are arriving to get their pizzas, being told there’s another half hour to wait, and just walking out. I get home, and one of the pizzas is half raw. The rest were pretty damn tasty though.

Went there on the weekend (sucker for punishment) and things were much better – order on time, EFTPOS working, but we still got some weird-assed taco-seasoning flavoured pizza instead of our pepperoni. I might have gone back, but redback’s pasta story just ruined them for me. Might start trying the Italian place right next to the Erindale shops instead – they seem nice.

Agree with tylersmayhem about APK.. once great, now not so much.

For the title of worst, though, I can’t go past the Italian Grill at Erindale. Went there once and ordered a couple of dishes for the family. When the meals came out, one of the dishes was not the spaghetti that I’d ordered. I told the witress and she said, ‘yeah, we’ve run out of spaghetti, so we gave you this instead”. When I indicated that I didn’t like the alternative dish provided – and would’ve liked to have been consulted about a replacement – the cranky old bald guy who runs the show comes over and starts shouting about how it’s not the waitresses fault.

I asked if they could do something else and it was yes – but you’ll have to pay for both. I left and have never been back.

Poxy service. Ordinary food.

Ah, found this thread! Perhaps Gordon Ramsay needs to come in and ‘turnaround’ some of these places for us? Or perhaps we could start a RA cafe! Could we do it any better?

Oh yeah Azza, as far as the APK goes, used to be great about 10 years ago. I went there about a month ago and noticed the Pizzas are now about a third smaller, and after trying to drink what was once an awesome alcoholic ginger beer, I was almost poisoned by keg line cleaner that hadn’t been flushed properly after cleaning the lines. It was hard to comment on the taste of the Pizza with a numb mouth.

I’ve got to recommend to everyone to steer clear of Belluci’s in Dickson! I’ve been there twice in the last 2 months (for other peoples event’s – not my choice), and both times it’s been a shocker.

First time, lack of service blew me away, and worse – they’re “signature” dessert, The Frozen After Dinner Mint must have been a joke. I used to go to the Belluci’s in Woden and this dessert was awesome, clearly home-made and long time favourite. I made the mistake of recommending this dessert to the people who had come out for this dinner (to give them something to look forward to after their woeful meal), and we were presented with a tri-colour piece of McDonalds style ice cream cake which had a few sprinkles of Peppermint Crisp on top. As expected, it tasted as bad as it looked, and when I told them to take it back, they insisted it has always been like that. Luckily for me, they had described the dessert to be made out of “Irresistible layers of home made chocolate, mint and Vanilla Bean ice cream, topped with choc-mint praline”. The fluorescent white frozen confectionery (not even ice cream) certainly didn’t have any sign of a vanilla bean anywhere – so they took back our $13 desserts and we didn’t risk a different kind.

The last time I went a few weeks ago, we booked a table in advance for about 10 of us. We turned up on time, and after waiting 30 minutes without any apology or indication of when we’ll be seated, I had a chat to the manager and I suggested he waive all of our corkage cost ($3.50 each as we were all bringing our own wine). At least he did that, probably because it wouldn’t cost them anything.

They don’t get a 3rd chance. I hopefully won’t be going back, unless someone else decides to have dinner there and I can’t change their minds.

Belluci’s is yet another example of a once small operation that was brilliant, up scaling and/or turning into a chain which then looses it’s charm, quality and service. Don’t get me started on what was once a great Legends restaurant in Manuka.

All I can recommend to everyone out there – stop paying for shit! If it sucks, make them take it back. Maybe one day they’ll learn?!

i recently went to apk civic and i thaught it was great the food was good the service was great i give the place a thumbs up for everything if you havent been there you should try it i dont think you will be dissapointed p.s go the smoked chicken pizza

Musica e in Belco – too noisy and bad service. Same for Zeff’s in Belco – and I’ve got kids! The last time I ordered cannelloni there it will still frozen in the middle!!! My hubby regularly gets served burnt pizza. I haven’t been able to go back since.

I wholeheartedly concur with the first post on this thread. Carlos at Watson = no go. I used to go to breakfast with a group of friends. Over the last 18 months the service and quality has gone down hill. One thing that seems to remain constant is the number of “No Split Bills” signs in the place.

We have taken our business elsewhere.

I had some great nights upstairs at Dorette’s Thanks to kittycat for mentioning this.

Mr Pip now mourns the death of true freedom of expression on the internet 🙁 having been held responsible for the unlikely actions of another, Mr Pip will just CHANGE HIS FRIGGIN RA NAME and not tell anyone!!! Grow up people…seriously

pandy…..is that you in disguise VY berlina??? i am ‘married’ ie been with my partner for 6 years – and i’m afraid you’d have to ask someone else for an assessment on my appearance! unless you’re asking about my temperature 🙂

Strangely enough, i think the food was better in the late 80’s!! I remember that Japanese upstairs in Kingston. Good times.
Remember when Marrinetti was great for a night out? Fringe Benefits on Marcus Clarke? Dorettes upstairs?. Now, its all about overpriced average meals & crap coffee!!

Pancake Parlour is owned by some religious cult, apparently. Staff have to toe the line.
Gus’s isn’t a Canberra institution any more, now Gus is gone. In fact, I didn’t realise it was still going!

I would have to add to the list Gus’ in Civic. Havent been happy with the service there in years! from coffee that is just plain CRAP to delays on food and certain parts of the kitchen being closed (ie the deep fryer) at peak times leaving half the menu un-orderable. The staff all seem to have some kind of large object shoved up their backsides also (maybe their own heads). I am quite suprised that this place is seen as this a canberra institution as i think the place is terrible. Have walked out on numerous occasions from this place.

Other than that i would have to say the wort priced food belongs to that of the Pancake Parlour. the robotic waitresses at that place are just plain scary and the place is a DUMP!!!

I remember the Japanese place upstairs in green square, kingston. I thought the name was Sakura-something, but could be wrong. had an amazing evening there with friends, amazing food and service, but upon being told I didin’t eat fish, I was surprised at the non-fish bent of what we had! Jeez it was good though. This was in the 80s and I still remember every bit of the meal. What an experience.

Sometimes, I almost wonder if restaurants are getting worse, not better, in Canberra.

Tilleys is a shitfight. Last time we were there for a Sunday lunch they had run out of chicken burgers, fish & chips, nachos…WTF???? As we had a bottle of wine open, we ordered takeaway from the fab turkish place around the corner & ate it outside at Tilleys!! Very cheeky but it had to be done. Oh & the eggs that were ordered took an hour & were woefully overcooked. How hard is it for the kitchen to order extra stock for the weekend?? & come to think of it, poach an egg?? Its also really overpriced for what is essentially crappy short order food. Sorry Pauline.

I agree with Choconout about Wagamama. The food is quite good (great miso soup, tasty soy beans in their pods with salt, good vegie currie, good vegie noodles and vegie soup — though both latter are pretty bland and need added soy sauce and/or chilli), but the service as a whole rather too informal while simultaneously inflexible (an art form in itself). There was one very good waiter (William, I think is his hame), but largely I find the staff a bit too keen to overemphasise the ‘Hi guys’ over actual attentive service. Several times recently — and haven’t been back for a while because of this — we found ourselves seated at crowded tables next to strangers (hard to have a private conversation), then waiting some time before having orders taken. Then all orders come out at once and your miso soup, for example, or soy beans, go cold because you’re eating your main. We nearly walked out one time a couple of months back when it was near 20 minutes before they took our order after seating us — only reason we didn’t was we were really hungry and figured it’d take just as long to get food elsewhere. Like Choconut, I felt the specification printed on the menu that all items ordered would come out whenever is nothing more than a trendy cop-out to avoid their having to time their food production to ensure each table received the food at the right timings for each course. I will now only go to Wagamama if it’s not busy and I can get a table to myself. Otherwise, and it hurts to say this, I’d rather enjoy the ambience of the food court upstairs!

To introduce another restaurant, I’d like to talk about my experience with Flavours of India (Civic and Gungahlin). Very nice food indeed, almost all of the time. But service, at the Gungahlin one at least, is very patchy, both dine-in, take-away and home delivery (and not just in my case, I have friends in my suburb who’ve had similar experiences to mine). One time we dined in and after ordering it was 45 minutes and our food had still not arrived – not even the pappadums. We left. Yet the restaurant only had a couple of other tables occupied – and they didn’t look happy either. No apology for the delay and the waitress assiduously avoided our gaze (maybe service has since improved, this was a while back). Other times we’ve had our order stuffed up – items left out, and a couple of times the take-away tubs filled a bit too shallowly. All in all, we still go there sometimes because the food is nice, but it could do so much better by lifting its game.

Finally, for now, a quick plug for the fantastic Turkish take-away at Gungahlin shops – Sultan’s Turkish Pide. Always polite service, good food and wonderful dips.

Miyamoto-san,

I’m going to try the one in Kingston you mention, because my answer otherwise is to forget it. There’s no such thing as real Japanese in Canberra from my experience. “Iori” in Civic does a half-decent impersonation of it, but it’s not (quite) the real thing. There’s a somewhat new place in Dickson called “Meiji Cafe” or seomthing like that, which I haven’t tried yet…will let you know if I do. What I cannot find anywhere is ebi kari (prawn curry) like you get in Japanese train stations and apartment store food halls. (For the uninitiated, this is a pile of rice, smothered in a Japanese curry with two deep-fried prawn cutlets atop and red pickle chunks sprinkled over it. Divine.) There’s a pork or chicken curry in the city (can’t remember the name of that place at the interchange), which is OK, and a decent veggie curry at Wagamama…which gets me on to my next high horse issue…

Wagamama has good food but the style sucks. Sepi – talk about all the food coming out at once at Mecca Bah, this is Wagamama’s practice, and I hate it. I no longer go there, simply because I’m sick of an entree dish coming out when I’m half way through the main. It’s their policy – I suppose some sort of attempt to be trendy…you know, they way they write all over your place-setting and that sort of thing (which doesn’t stop mistakes occurring anyway!). What’s galling is that they won’t make any room for what the customer wants – if you ask them to delay the mains by 20 minutes so that you get the entrees first they’ll refuse. Yet another example of the customer always being wrong…or at the very least, of company policy being inflexible. For anyone who’s thinking about going to Wagamama, you have two options: 1. Order a main only (a decent fast option before a movie at Dendy upstairs, I must admit), or 2. Tell them to take your starter order first and that you’ll order a main later if you feel like it (which requires fireworks to get their attention). Not good enough.

miyamoto – Try Iori. It’s tucked away in the Civic bus interchange. I’ve only been there twice but it was fantastic both times.

I had great food at Mecca Bah – but all meals came at once – entrees and mains together. and they were unapologetic about it. I haven’t been back.

Choconut: a mystery name, huh? I’m sure you have your reasons. Yes…we’ve all been caught out at times…restaurants change and the service is not what it was…while others lift their game. Between your and my experience, I think it is safe to suggest Mezzalirra has taken a slide… I for one won;t be going back. Actually, I wish there were more sites like this…even one which kept an informal rating of various places around Canberra…somewhere where the moderators tallied up the comments and summarised them so we knew at a glance what was good and what stank. Sure…all based on subjective comments…but hey, that’s the best way sometimes to get news out about a place. You sure are not going to read about it in the tourist literature. What are views on Japanese restaurants in Canberra? (A theme, you will have judged by my name, close to my heart.) I can’t stand the Korean-run Sizzle Bentos…I’m somtwhat out of touch on the Japanese cusine side. You seem pretty plugged in…what say you? There used to be a place in Kingston upstairs called….something like Asakara….I forget…run by the Japenese gent from Sydney. Real Japanese chefs…and excellent service as one would expect from a properly run Japanese house. But it has gone. Don;t know if there is anything elese Japanese around Canberra worth spending good money at…

M

I found the staff at Mezzalira to be a bunch of stuck up arrogant wankers. Overpriced, undersized food. Atmosphere in the little back room with my friends was good though.

Ginseng in Manuka is great. Been there a couple of times now and was really good. I hate to say it, as it makes me feel unmasculine and unAustralian at the same time, but the fried tofu balls are gold.

Pandy – if you have no luck with Toriness, as I suspect may be the case, I’m married and hot. And with a name like “Choconut”…

A couple of additional comments:

Mr Pip et al: I should point out for the sake of the gents that Kismet also has their fair share of cute ladies…it’s not only the food that presents attractively! I agree on the dolma though…get them at lunchtime when they’re still warm and it’s orgasmic. Also, if you visit, get them to make you a zucchini puff roll…basically it’s a felafel roll but with kabak instead of felafels…I get mine with yoghurt and tahini, otherwise I fear it’ll be too dry, but it is absolutely outstanding. They ought to put it on the menu and market it aggressively…it beats any shawarma or felafel roll you’ll have anywhere (and I’ve eaten those in a dozen Middle Eastern countries, I should add). For those on a diet, the salads are to die for – the potato one beats any mayo-based version, and the lentil tabbouli is amazing.

Miyamoto: the origin of the name “Choconut” must remain a secret for all times. By the way, a take your point about me whinging about “getting wet”, but I think it was worth making the point…I hadn’t been to Mezzalira for a few years, and the previous time was much better – I recall a risotto with half a lobster on top in 2004 that was filling and delicious, for example. I should have added that their fresh bread is the best in Canberra…but again – sorry to be a broken record – let’s see more of it in a serve! Four thin pieces for four people is inadequate. I was out of touch with the place, which – you’re right – was part of my downfall.

Everywhere has an off night from time to time. And some places just aren’t right for what they’re doing (the Vienna, last sighted in Kambah, worked pretty well as a small place in Chifley but is a disaster in a large cold glass barn). I was dragged to a downstairs Indian in Curtin once and it was the most putridly dull and tasteless food I have ever had. Everything had the texture of porridge and a stale smell. It’s up there with a quarter century of disasters (the Yass Viet/Chinese, the Launceston Chinese, the Hornsby noodle house). All these places should have changed hands or disappeared altogether (and I think the Curtin one has) but I wouldn’t go near any place serving food from the same location again.

But do they serve it with copious amounts of astroturf?

Choconut said :

While I’m a bit late to the party here, I thought a few comments would be good.

Third, when are people going to realise that Mecca Bah in Manuka is massively overpriced?? Go across the road to Kismet instead – half the price, the food’s twice as good, and the service is three times better. Girls – Oktay (the owner) is a babe.

Well ladies – Oktay is not the only babe at this turkish delight – Mustafa has some smooth moves and Kamrul the kitchenhand drives the girls wild as well with his tantric growls.

But yes the food is good too…by far the best salmon steak in town and for $17 or so you can’t go wrong – not to mention their authentic and fantastic Dolma!!!

Toriness:

Are you married and hot?

[ducks]

I recently ate at Jewell of India in Manuka…few things to say. This used to be the superlative Indian dining experience in Canberra IMHO…in particular, the Lamb Korma was absolutely divine….delicate, soft texture that coated the inside of your mouth in a buttery, nutty film…meat that fell apart at the first touch of a tongue…it was superb. It still is very good….but but quite the experience it used to be. Not sure why. The Lamb Korma is good but not just quite as good… The service is still attentative…but there used to be a waiter there for a long time…a guy with glasses…who would remember your name and what you normally had…he has gone…and it has not been quite the same since. Still a great place to go, of course…and I always get caught with the size of the meals…they look deceptively small…but I have never walked out feeling hungry. (unlike Choconut’s experience above…) On the contrary…very full most times.

I also see Tilley’s is receiving a drubbing. Fair enough too! I used to love going there…the nachos was very good…but I go no more. The food has taken a slide IMHO, but most of all, the service is soooooo indifferent. The waiters have attitude plus…they always seem to me to be so self absorbed…as if they were strutting on a stage for the benefit of each other, and you felt like an intruder with your annoying order. Never any smiles…just moody, self obsessed grumps hauling around increasingly crappy food. No thanks…plenty of other places who are trying to give you a good experience to choose from.

I saw Choconut’s review of Mezzalirra…and I’ve been there in Choconut’s shoes not so long ago. Was there a couple of weeks ago with a bunch of colleagues an a US visitor….the food was very well presented and the service attentative. But the portions were tiny…you know…large white plates, litteraly one salad leaf curled beside a bed of [admitedly delicious] gravy and an exquisite, tiny piece of prime meat sitting in the middle of this huge white expanse. Very ‘oh so fusion’…BUT would not have filled a lark’s stomach, let alone a hungry adult. Our poor US visitor must have wondered when he was going to get truly fed. And the price! My sweet grandma’s backside! It was very nice food..but no way did we get our money’s worth. Mind you…I guess we only have ourselves to blame in some sense….should not have gone there in the first place…I knew what I was on for.

So…perhaps Choconut….while you are spot on, it could also be argued that people like you and me should know better than to patronise places like Mezzalirra if we want a solid meal…it’s like complaining about getting wet wehen we dive into a pool.

For what it is worth….

M

Another positive vote for Anise. I go there a few times a year and they’ve always delivered to or above expectations.

I’m a bit sad that Caffe Della Piazza has been lost, I always found their menu/food to be first class.

Good review, Choconut. I’ve always liked Mezzalirra (and it’s a funny experience to go there as my office once occupied their present premises!) but it *is* expensive. Haven’t been there recently I must say.

And the response they gave you is so typical of businesses to any negative feedback. If someone does a review in a public place like this, people invariably say “did you tell the manager/why are you whinging about it here”. Well, it’s important that people do express their opinion/experience in public places like this, because telling the manager doesn’t achieve anything, and is often unpleasant and stressful.

Just got back from dinner at Mezzalira in Civic and have to say a few things.

I can’t fault the technical quality of the food – the tastes, combinations of flavours, textures, and presentation are great…brilliant actually. The problem is, unless you know what to order, you’ll leave hungry. A few other things add up to a 3 or 4 star experience at 5 star prices.

I started with prawns with a goats cheese ravioli…two prawns on one (albeit large) piece of ravioli. For $20ish that’s a ripoff, even if the ravioli was very rich.

Next, pumpkin tortolini with burnt butter. The size was a real problem here. $28 for something that most restaurants would serve as an entree. Danman – talk about Gordon Ramsey – I felt like Gordo, sitting there staring at the thing, asking the waiter if what I was seeing was definitely a main-size rather than an entree, cutting it open vainly to see if it was somehow hiding some rare, majestically expensive ingredient deep within. Others had meat-based mains which were much more substantial for only a few dollars more – though even then, accompaniments were limited…they’re clearly trying to encourage diners to buy extras like side salads, potatoes, vegetables…for which you obviously part with extra moolah.

Finally, gelati/sorbet – $15 for three ungenerous scoops. The same price as desserts that would be much more expensive and time consuming for the kitchen to create. The others I ate with were much happier with the creme brulee – fine, but why is gelati the same price as a creme brulee??

When paying the bill, I mentioned that the main in particular was pathetically small. I got the all-too-typical reply of “We’ve been doing it for eight years now” (read: “You, the customer, is in a minority of one”). I was then told that it’s a deliberately “light” main meal – rubbish: (a) since when is a stuffed pasta a “light” main? and (b) if that’s their intent they ought to warn the patron and suggest alternatives or sides. When I said that I didn’t like spending $100 on my dinner (with bread and the wine as well) just to go home hungry, I just got a bit of a grunt in reply.

Like I say, the chefs there are doing a solid job with taste, texture, and presentation. But to have a really satisfying meal, as I said at #91 above, go 10 metres up the street to Anise. The food is just as good at Anise (the scallops markedly better, according to a couple of dining companions tonight who thought that Mezzalira’s three scallops was a pretty piddling entree). The service is better at Anise too – more attentive yet less obvious – though Mezzalira’s was quite OK (note to Mezzalira: your floor staff are quite good, but dedicate particular ones to particular tables). Above all, I leave Anise with the complete satisfaction of an all-round top quality experience.

See post 1 – the link doesn’t work – can anyone tell us what happened at Carlo’s?

Z Brasserie in Tuggers, absolutely horrible food and service.

Zef in belco is great, quick and not expensive, I always have the same thing (gnocchi amalfi). Dine it at your peril though, unless you like dining with a tribe of loud, obnoxious bogans. Had it tonight actually, fantastic.

Good luck, el.

Oh, and for a seriously good Laksa, check out ‘Ad’s Cafe’ at Cooleman Court. Fantastic.

Just had an er…interesting meal at Bamboo Cafe on Lonsdale St.

“Service with a grimace” would be a good slogan. Oh, and half the dish was scalding hot, the outer edge of the plate however was at best room temperature. Microwaved Chow Mein doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence.

Here’s hoping I don’t spray-paint the toilet later on this evening. Christ…

wishuwell, i think you’re on the money re tilleys too. i couldn’t count the number of times my lesbian friends have tried to arrange catching up at tilleys to be met with my snide derision and refusal to patronise it. as a lesbian myself i am all for supporting pink businesses and venues – but only when they deserve it. i know several personal stories of friends who have worked there (as a chef and behind the counter) and been treated like *complete* rubbish – so much for a pink business supporting its pink staff – it’s no wonder the staff never smile there!

On the Madame Woo – If you go at lunch time they make it with won tons (which are fantastic) but for dinner they make what they call the ‘laksa King’ which is a combination Laksa with seafood, chicken, tofu, etc. Not being a fan of seafood I only ever get it with chicken and tofu but it’s still top notch, just slightly more (about $20 I think) at dinner because of this.
I look forward to reading your review!

APK – They put mango on pizza – that reason enough for me not to go there!

I’ll do a comparison of Madame Woo laksa on that recommendation.

APK civic – rude, incompetent staff (mind you last I went there was about a year ago for that very reason)how are they even still in business???
There used to be a restaurant called ‘Spoon’ at Griffith (I think). Absolutely the worst dining experience in my life. Nearly ended up in tears at the table. My partner (of about a month at the time) took me out for a ‘fine dining’ experience. After ordering entrees and mains etc the (bitter, old) hostess came out and advised me the chef wouldn’t cook a steak well done and that if I didn’t like it i’d have to chose something else. I ended up with a seafood pasta and ate around the seafood (because I don’t eat seafood but was allergic to everything else on the menu). The mains came out FOLLOWED by the entrees and soon went cold. She cleared the plates and asked if there was anything wrong with my meal and I said the pasta was nice but that I don’t eat seafood – she asked why on earth would I order the dish then and I told her that I didn’t have any other options besides bread and she scoffed at me and no doubt went back into the kitchen to have a winge to the chef. All up was over $100 for two meals, cold entrees and a truck load of hostility… That place soon closed down but we still laugh about it. Thinking back now – we really should have left right at the beginning and gone somewhere else.
On a GOOD note, Madame Woo (Kingston) outstanding service, Fantastic food and great prices. Been going there every week (sometimes two or three times) for about a year now. Without doubt THE BEST Laksa in the city (cr@ps all over Dickson noodle house) and they do them for $9.80 at lunch time. GO THERE! TAKE YOUR FRIENDS WITH YOU!

Oh and I bought a tandoori roll from cafe Essen recently and the chicken is actually those frozen crumbed chicken fillets (peppercorns and breadcrumbs etc) that you get in the frozen isle at woolies, they just cover it in tandoori! I paid like 8 bucks for that and it was disgusting.

Mecca Bar is awful – nice décor but the food and service is terrible. Waited ages for food (group of about 8). I ordered the chicken skewers which arrived at least 20 mins after everyone else’s mains and the skewers were raw. Didn’t eat it of course and complained about it but wasn’t offered another meal or discount/free. I can’t believed I ended up paying, stupid me.

This one is a bit silly because if the only patrons of a restaurant/café are over 70 and probably can’t taste what they are eating, it should probably be avoided anyway – Café Fontaine in Civic mall. Waited nearly an hour for a chicken breast and salad sandwich and poached eggs. The chicken breast was in fact chicken loaf (yuk) and the eggs were cold and like concrete. The waitress wasn’t even surprised when we said “you can send the meals back, we’re leaving”, she said she would be too!

I worked at Zeff’s in Dickson – if you knew what went on in the kitchen you wouldn’t eat there. Plus the owner’s are tyrants so don’t line their pockets.

Musica in Belconnen – once you get the food it’s quite nice! Kitchen and wait staff are sleazy though.

The Halal Pide house in Yarralumla – overpriced and gross, grissly chicken, salad worse than a school lunch.

Yes…I have to agree with the Mawson Club comments. We used to go there an account of the fact that it’s a “nice” club & it’s got a kids room….but the meals & drinks are overpriced, the menu is hardly exciting & although the food is good, it’s not great for what you pay. Lately we’ve been doing the weekly club meal at Royals/The Weston Club, which since being taken over by The Raiders has been transformed from a dive into quite a nice club. Meals are good & very cheap….drinks are even cheaper. The new fitout (still ongoing) has made it really quite nice.

I went to the restaurant at the mawson club recently, not that 27 bit but inside the club, (and I only call it a restaurant due to it’s high prices). $29 rump steak that wasn’t even cooked properly – asked for medium, one half was rare, the other half was well done? Like they cooked the two halves seperately? and they managed to do it twice! and a schooner or beer was $4 (not impressive prices from a so called ‘club’).
Overall I would never recommend it. You can pay relatively the same prices for a nice restaurant and get table service, or go to any one of the other clubs around canberra and pay half of what we paid there.

RE: That place in Weston (it’s called Brierly Street Brasserie). Mrs Justands & I went there several times when it first opened, food & service were always excellent. Good value too. I must admit that the last time we went there it wasn’t quite as good & we haven’t been back since. In fact, it closed….re-opened just this week as a “gourmet cafe”.

The problem with Tilleys in my mind is the people who go there. If you go to a place only to be seen and work on your cool hipster image of course they can get away with serving up overpriced crap.

Choconut said :

Third, when are people going to realise that Mecca Bah in Manuka is massively overpriced?? Go across the road to Kismet instead – half the price, the food’s twice as good, and the service is three times better. Girls – Oktay (the owner) is a babe.

I think the locals are on to it! MeccaBah is often pretty empty at lunchtime (and they use peanuts in their kitchen, it’s north african/arab/turkish, wtf are they doing with peanuts?!), but kismet over the road is packed. I see a lot of fluro-vest-wearing blokes tucking in, too. 10 years ago they’d have been at the hamburgers.

Mr Evil, I never wish misfortune upon anyone, but that goes to show you can not rely on one time customers – you have to build a solid reputation – especially in Canberra…

Seems our friends in Weston lived on the fact that they were new and people were trying their restaraunt for teh first time.

It is inherently important that everyone who walks through the door for their first time walks back in a second and a third time and so on.

In the case of Mrs Danman outlined above – the cost of a dessert would have paid dividend 10, 20, hell maybe even 30 fold for the propieter in the long run.

People seem to forget that you have to spend money to make money…..Its just the way it is.

If I am paying my hard earned do re mi (lets face it spare money is HARD to come by these days) – I wanna be satisfied – I want good food and service and an overall great experience.

90% of people who want to open a restaraunt should just save their time and money and watch the first half hour of Gordon Ramseys Kitchen Nightmares, that way they get to have the same experience and save a lot of time and money.

For the 10% that make a go of it – I am open to salary packaging 🙂

Danman, you’ll be pleased to know they seem to have gone bust at Weston. Although there is another cafe about to open there, I don’t know if it’s going to be run by the same “Chatfish” mob.

Apoligies for spelling mistakes – I am barely an english grammar teacher.

So they delivered a bowl of tandoori pste to the table for us to add to the mess. I am still fuming over that.

Now that is dodgy.

Anyone worth their salt knows that Tandoori Paste is not a condiment – it has to be cooked people. Pisses me off as a chef when you pay for something and they can not even get fundamentals right… A Tandoori Pizza sans tandoori chicken – what a funckn joke.

If that happened to me, I would have been pretty forthright in my intention to not pay.

Reminds me of an experience Mrs Danman had at that pasta joint on the main street of weston – across from coolo court.

She was there with about 30 people for her hens night. Being a big fan of Cremé Brulee she ordered one for dessert.

When it came out, itwas not set, it was more the consistency of curdeled cream, and could easily havebeen poured pout of the ramekin. She complained to the waiter and asked for it to be taken away and said she did not want another one.

On paying the bill she was charged for the Cremé Brulee and obviously she questioned it. The waitress went blue in the face denying responsibility and saying that she was going to pay for it and that the Chef had worked in this and that restaraunt in Sydney and thats how Cremé brulees should be served.

Makes you wonder why he was working in a backwater place like weston dunnit ? Maybe Sydney chewed him up and spat him out ?

Regardless of the fact that Cremé Brulees should be set – or personal opinion of how they should be served – if the customer is not satisfied, moves should be made to remedy.

Not getting through to the waitress, Mrs Danman then raised her voice, so the whole restaraunt could hear her and said “See that table of 30 over there, they are here to help me celebrate my Hens night, Thank you for ruining that, There also sits 30 people who will never return because you do not know how to remit customer satisfaction – and all over something as small as a dessert”

When you think that a table of 30 – worth lets say minimum $750 (@$25 a head) is it not then worth customer satisfaction to make sur ethey leave happily – to guarantee return patronage ?

Yeah I am pretty passionate, when I worked in the trade as a chef, I used to look out for my customers and regulars and always make sure they were satisfied – and in return they would be loyal….. seems all that has gone to shit these days.

If I could handle ths tress and crap pay I would so join the industry again – and get someone who gives a shit to do front of house – not some kids who do not give a funk – and I would train them fully and arm them with everything they woul dneed to provide a service I woul dbe happy to use…Every little bit helps……but i feel its too late for some..i.e. Carlos.

Never been there but on the strength of previous posts – and his lack of intent to restore faith in the community – I never will.

Wow big post I *am* passionate eh….better get back to work now…

You got the joke minime2

Tilleys…pull its finger out …hear my juvenile “he-he-he” giggle at the thought of the lezzo staff doing just that while playing with your food/meal. That makes their food finger lickin good….
Seriously, Carlo is a mate; used to ride bikes with hime, but, no longer eat there or drink the coffee – simply not good value or good service. I have told him. Even the club Sat coffee run no longer attends.

Must admit that Dickson Noodle Bar pretty good all-a-time.

Tilleys is pretty darn ordinary when you think of the prices they charge for cafe style food. APK in Civic is hopeless – ordered the tandoori chicken pizza, which arrived without the tandoori. So they delivered a bowl of tandoori pste to the table for us to add to the mess. I am still fuming over that.

Tilleys really needs to pull its finger out…….

I have to agree with Choconut (who calls themselves ‘Choconut’????) about La Capanna…really great food – especially pizza – and the service is good…and it has good ambience. I find it almost inconcievable that La Capanna would not sort out some mouldy old bread – my experience has always been very satisfactory.

i agree with toriness. tilleys have taken a massive slyde. food average + overpriced. service indifferent and slow. they obviously think they’ve got a captive market and are complacent. my last burger there was so dry and tasteless. dry lump of tempeh on a bun without any decent sauce. chips are nice but oily – what happened to the great wedges they used to serve? and like cheapskates they cut the guacamole from the nachos.

While I’m a bit late to the party here, I thought a few comments would be good.

First, La Capanna is a great place – I can’t believe the story above about moudly garlic bread…I’ve been going there for lunch every few weeks now for many years; not only is the food outstanding and the service OK or better, but it’s rare to have been somewhere that often a NEVER had a mistake with the order. Well done Gino…but stop having set dinner seating times on popular nights, which has driven me and a few friends away in the past. We want to chill out when we’re there, not feel like we’re on the early shift for dinner on a cruise ship.

Second, Carlo’s in Watson rightfully deserves the reputation that it’s clearly got here. I’ve virtually had to yell at them to get simple things done (eg, hot breakfasts served cold taken away and reheated, coffee brought out within half an hour of asking, etc). I don’t go there anymore – full boycott. For those in the area – try My Friend Vietnamese restaurant or Satis, a (fairly) new veggie place, instead – both are at Watson shops and are good.

Third, when are people going to realise that Mecca Bah in Manuka is massively overpriced?? Go across the road to Kismet instead – half the price, the food’s twice as good, and the service is three times better. Girls – Oktay (the owner) is a babe.

Fourth, TurkOz is Dickson has taken a slide recently…the service is now so bad that it belongs in the s-bend. The food’s pretty good, but come on – we need more than that for a restaurant to survive. I think the owners are absentees and replaced the manager last year; the Cypriot guy who used to run it was great.

Fifth, the best value for money restaurants to me are two. One is Anise in the city…it’s towards the higher end of the market, but great value nonetheless: excellent food, with good presentation, taste and textures, and flawless service. Slurge and enjoy it. At the cheaper end of the market, try yum cha one lunchtime at Four Rivers Szechuan in Dickson…brilliant.

Just felt the need to sign up and second an opinion above that Cafe Gaudi in Woden is a disgrace. Extremely overpriced food coupled with a level of service that was beyond belief. Their waiting staff are totally incompetent and unobservant of what is going on around them. We ordered big breakfasts and drinks and it was not until we had finished breakfast that the drinks finally turned up – when we complained to the waiting staff we were advised it was because they were “busy” – odd when they didn’t even look at a quarter of their full capacity. The staff behind the counter were also terrible. If I owned this restaurant I’d be ashamed of having it run in this manner. Will strongly suggest you don’t waste your time and money here… go elsewhere… anywhere!

The Pide House at Woden. The Jamieson one is so good for a cheerful night of plentiful food and good happy service, but the Woden one is terrible! Crummy service, stingey with the food, and no atmosphere, quite sterile. I like the worn carpet and dusty/dead plants at Jammo. With the expert and humorous service, and obligatory doggy bags at the end.

Agree with previous poster. Food should always arrive at the same time, and anyone who’s waited knows you don’t start clearing plates until everyone is done. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. The “labour crisis” is biting some (but not all) fooderies quite hard.

Australian Pizza Kitchen in Woden – worst service of any ‘restaurant’ in Canberra by far, with average and overpriced food.

I’ve liked wok it up – had takeaway about 5 times – no allergies here.
Cream – definitely over priced and full of themselves. And Carlos – good on a good night but very slapdash service.

My wife is allergic to MSG too – so I know where you’re coming from.

Just wanted to let everyone know I have been goin there a while an never had a problem.

I think teh best way to judge a restaraunt is take on what everyone has said and then try it for yourself if you want to see what its really like for you.

I guess my post was aimed at those people who may want to try it – to give a bit of balance back – hey maybe they had a bad night – I am just good at dodging them 🙂

Peace man.

Hi Dan
Not allegic to anything that I know of, and assumed it was MSG as I thought all reputable Asian restaurants had abandoned that years ago…

That post was meant to end with

Maybe an isolated incident – did you take it up with teh restaraunt ?

Maybe it was a food allergy that yiou are nto aware of ?

Do they use MSG – are you allergic to that ?

Are you allergic to seafood/peanuts

If not when were you last tested ?

Just because something happened does not mean that they are automatically at fault….

Wok it Up in Gungahlin – got a SERIOUS case of hives all over from something in a meal from there. Made the mistake of also having some leftovers the next day, thereby confirming it was definitely their meal that was the problem.

Id like to say (just for another POV) that I have been frequenting Wok It Up since it opened and never had any dramas there.

M

Cream – most expensive coffees in Canberra. Beaten only by the absurd prices at Eagles Nest up top at Thredbo…

Two things that I think are really rude and a lot of canberra ‘restaurants’ seem to be guilty of (one, the other or both):

1. Where there is >1 person dining at a table, bringing out meals at different times. I.e. not bringing all meals out together. One person is finished their meal before other people have even gotten THEIR meal(s). For an experienced chef, it can’t be THAT hard to time the meals to be ready together.

2. Clearing one person’s plates before everyone else is finished. They should only clear the plates when EVERYONE is finished. I think this one is REALLY rude. If theyre doing it because they’ve run (or risk running) out of plates or cutlery, they should buy more.

On a different topic, I think that CREAM in Civic is TOTALLY overrated in terms of food and service. And its hilarious to see all the over-dressed booner wannabees sitting along the windows and out the front sipping their lattes!!

Carlo’s make crap coffee too.
Wok it Up in Gungahlin – got a SERIOUS case of hives all over from something in a meal from there. Made the mistake of also having some leftovers the next day, thereby confirming it was definitely their meal that was the problem.

Speaking of hives [thread hijack switch on], did anyone see the “news” item yesterday about the Miss Puerto Rico contestant who broke out in hives all over mid-competition after someone put pepper spray in her gowns and makeup? Crack up…

Hey I notice the resurrection of Big Al. Wasn’t he debunked some months back as a construct of a few ANU students??

All Bar Nun in O’connor. VERY crap service. Went there on Melbourne Cup Day – and had booked a table well in advance so that we had somewhere to eat and then watch the race. About 10 mins before the race started, the security guys just came and said “we’re taking your table, we’re setting up a band now… you’ll have to move”. It was SO nice of them to let us know beforehand! We could have secured a different table when there was only a handful of people in the place before it got so busy! So we moved outside and then got told we were in a spot that wasnt liquor licenced, so we moved and then got told again that were were breaching the liquor laws. We ended up leaving in disgust and missing the race. I will never frequent this overrated establishment again, which im pretty glad about anyway because these days its mostly full of meat-heads and pretentious tw*ts.

Zeffs in Belco – went there when it first opened with my partner. She was served her main fairly quickly. I got mine 30 mins after her when she had already finished her meal. Great service that! We now only go to the Dickson one, never had a problem there.

Hogs Breath in Civic – rang to make a booking and guy on the phone said “we’re too busy to take a booking now, ring back another day”. How rude. Won’t go there again on principle.

big al…la capanna would never argue with a client re. mouldy garlic bread. they would never force a client to pay for an inferior product.you are not being honest…how do i know…i was there.

As for waitressing, it depends who you work for. I guess this applies for all jobs. I used to be on an EBA at a resturant and got paid less as a 20 year old than my sister did at the local shop as a 16 yr old.

But i’m at a better paying job now, easily getting over $20 an hour. You’ll find that alot of wait staff rely on good ole’ tips.

But yes, I agree with Danman – Shit job – Shit pay (typically).

Mind you have you seen all of the signs in the shops asking for waitresses and chefs?

Thats because its a shit job with shit pay – In canberra at least.

I was working 50-60 hour weeks as a 2IC in a busy kitchen and getting about 38k a year.

Pretty good package for a canberra chef – hence why I am now a public servant.

Have to disagree about Sammy’s/Timmy’s. Always found them good, quick and reasonably priced.

My only real catastrophe was APK Woden some years ago. Everyone wound up feeling a bit off and the pizza was ordinary (no better than Domino’s, but at a higher price). Have not been back since.

I figure that if a restaurant can’t do better than I can at home, with no training and amateurishly selected ingredients, there is no point in paying for more than the convenience of having someone else chop the stuff and wash the dishes (oh, and the base food cost). On that criterion, Pinocchio’s in Torrens failed but the Sunny Kitchen Chinese in Erindale passed. (It’s pretty ordinary, but it’s good value for it).

Sammys Kitchen! For years it’s been ultra reliable quick Chinese, but since they moved to new premises the prices have been jacked up and the service has reached a whole new level of arrogance.

I have no complaints about Zeffs – it is what it is: noisy, quick and cheap. Although it’s bigger brother in Kingston, Cipriani, is EXACTLY the same just a lot more expensive. Good business idea though – put the same restaurant in the dress circle, change the name and inflate the prices.

Belluci’s in Dickson is permanently on my list. Went there for a friend’s birthday with 20 people and waited an hour to be seated (after the time we had booked for). They kept promising that our table was “being prepared” when it was plainly obvious it was 100% full. No apology. No free drink.

I am 100% behind complaints about Tilleys. They are in the same boat as All Bar Nun – once you have a steady business then why bother with customer service. It’s the customers who should be thankful they’re allowed to patronise the place.

Ok now I am going to Tuggers and get a dose of Lurch. I soooooo miss him!

YES! The Lurch waiter! He’s so creepy! I can’t decide wether he takes himself too seriously as a waiter to be polite or he’s just plain weird.

Maybe it’s both?

i went to a ‘singaporean’ restaraunt in civic last week. where little saigon used to be – they still have the indoor fishpond (without the fish).

it was TERRIBLE.

bland dull uninspiring food.

slow service.

amazing feats of memory waiters – that forgot an order.

a laksa that was like chicken noodle soup.

more msg than a can of ‘vegeta’.

light on the spices.

i could go on but wont.

‘la pas’ i think is its name.

i hope it closes soon.

Well ant if this very popular establishment is pretentious and I am ignorant on its well founded charms, may I suggest that you go no futher than the Maccas. Your kind of demographic.

BTW, you should have said your parents local, not yours living on “upper” Molonglo Estate.

I’d say you’re right in their demographic, Pandy. Pretentious and ignorant.
They are 7 minutes drive from the family home, but I don’t think we’ll be goign there again in the near future. But they stay open so I guess someone is clueless enough to spend money there.

Chill is your local from Molonglo Estate? WTF?

Actually I was just thinking about Chill a couple of hours ago and going there for Sunday brunch. yum.

Chill is one I want to say nice things about, but keep being annoyed. It’s in Campbell, our local. Mondays is Cheap Night, so we tried it last week. The service, a high point last time, was TERRIBLE. We were seated (eventually…. yes we’d booked, AND it was mostly empty),and then waited 30 minutes to order! I’m not kidding. I timed it.No drinks, either.

What the hell? They had 2 waiters on duty, and the place was empty. Back in my uni days, 2 of us worked The London Grill, a 50 seater, and it was full service too (silver service, without the silly tong-thing).

Pathetic.

And while the pizzas have improved, they are still not good. The crust is still too thick and it doesn’t help the pizza. The food there is not bad but for what they charge, it needs to all be a bit better. The fish and chips is excellent, oddly enough. puffy batter and fat chips. Also their Thai Curry dinner comes complete, with condiments/side dishes included in the dinner. Very good.
But their pizzas, which thye make a fuss about, actually suck.

Sorry meant Lurch from the Addams Family

omg, i agree..that waiter at la porchetta is so creepy!! he unforchently was taking our order last time we were there..god i’m never going back there again!!

Is the creepy waiter young that looks like Lurch from the Munsters? I remember this guy from where Krispy Kreme is now in Woden.

Worst serice is Verve in Manuka. My then g/f (where can I find a new one?) counted to ten once and said that is it we are leaving. I mean no one come and looked after us for 15 minutes after being seated by a waitress.

Mind you have you seen all of the signs in the shops asking for waitresses and chefs? Makes you wonder who is doing the cookking? Mum? No wonder we are importing Filopinos to work behind the scenes.

Agreed jayjay… La Porchetta is all bad. They have that creepy waiter… he’s a little scary.

La Porchetta has the worst service known to man. They make you pay upfront if you decide to dine outside (like Im gonna run) and the guy that works there is rude and interrupts OFTEN.
APK woden always delivers the food before you receive your coffee and water…Go figure!!

Gus’s in civic, The only place to guarantee burnt coffee and undercooked meals. Also, thay make you wait 1hour to be served. Cafe Essen isnt much better with appaling service.
NUTMEG in civic reuses salad left on the counter. (Ive seen it).

Also, as i work in Belco mall I hear alot of what goes on in the foodcourt. Centre management sent a memo around the food retailers advising that sea perch has rats in the kitchen.

God i hate canberra eateries.

I’ve usually found APK Woden fairly decent.

APK Civic, on the other hand, has consistently attrocious service – I’ve had them forget orders, lose them, take an hour to get food back to us (in a not-particularly-busy timeframe).

Woden, on the other hand, has usually been pretty quick and polite. Haven’t been back since the beginning of the year, though – maybe they’ve slipped downhill lately?

Plus Woden has the gluten-free bases, while Civic doesn’t, which is important when I’m eating with the food-intolerant friends.

Schmerica – agreed entirely. APK Woden is the worst I’ve seen ANYWHERE for lousy service. Stupidly I gave them a second…and third chance.

APK in Woden… Never Again. Been there a few times (silly me) and every time the waitress is really rude. Good food… Shit service.

Would defintely disagree with you about the Italian Kitchen (Kaleen shops – just to confirm), I rate it pretty highly. Was there for lunch during the week, and had the Surf & Turf – awesomely huge steak, topped with plenty of seafood (although for $29 it should be good). Also their fish and chips with dill sauce is really good – I would rate it as one of the best in Canberra and pretty cheap ~$16.

Right, myriad dodgy restaurants in canberra I’ve had the misfortune of sitting and waiting (and sometimes receiving the food..)
#1 -> The italian kitchen – slow service and bland, tasteless and burnt food
#2 -> Zeff’s Belconnen – Fatty sirloin that you wouldn’t believe under a new plastic type they’ve discovered (the gravy I think it was meant to be). Don’t think they’ve cleaned the floor since it was built..
#3 -> Love Salad – made my unfortunate partner crook for a week

Please do post your stories! It’s the only way to find out what’s good and what’s not, and with the prices they are charging these days, you don’t want to find out what’s bad the hard way.

Carlo’s is my local and I almost never go there any more – the service has varied all the way from just tolerable to appalling.

Tilley’s has improved recently, with a new chef. The food is less erratic.

I have many other things to say about restaurants – I think I should post some stories now I’ve finally registered.

Just got back from the Turkish Pide House in Woden. Food was fine – service was awful. Had a table for 4 booked – when we get there we were told that they had a table of 32 coming in and we would have to move after we had our entrees. Were not told this at the time of booking and considering we had arranged to meet friends there it was too late to go anywhere else.

Had entrees – mains came out and we were half way through when they made us move.

The level of service generally was poor. Came to bill paying and we rounded bill up to the nearest dollar, and as we are walking out we hear the waitstaff taking the piss out of the “$0.60 tip”

Fair enough the tip was woeful – in line with the service.

Incidentally this is the SECOND time that we have received bad service – but at least this time we got what we ordered and didn’t have to send it back. Never again.

It’s awful when you get some voucher or prize or something to save money on a meal, and they are nasty about it. Definitely a place to avoid!

Over the course of a few weeks’ worth of radio quiz competitions, my friends and I had won three dinners for two, each to the value of $70 at Carlo’s. The only condition on the prize vouchers was that alcoholic drinks were not included. We decided to cash in our prizes for someone’s birthday. However, at Carlo’s, we were made to feel as if we were seeking to ‘abuse the system’ by having 6 people at one table using 3 separate prize vouchers. We asked if it would be a problem if we sat at 3 tables of 2 and were advised that this would be OK. We subsequently did this, with a fair degree of grace on our parts. Next thing, the goatee-faced gorilla-esque manager – Con Carlissios – scuttled out from under a rock in the kitchen and abused us because “…we were getting this for free…” and for “…carrying on like this…”. It did not appear to occur to this mouth-breathing troglodyte that 1×6=3×2. Go figure. Our take on the situation was validated by the table next to us where the people were appalled that we were were treated in such a churlish and petulant manner. Thanks Con, you are one.

after a long hard think – i gotta back myself. cafe gaudi…ew…i ate there again. why? out of desperation…ergh. ew..blah…grrrrr. and to make it worse – i PAID FOR IT

Have always been underwhelmed by The Boathouse. I know it’s meant to be this great el-posho dining experience, but whenever we’ve visited, it seems too try-hard, with no quality or substance. The service is awkward, and the food never quite achieved what it was trying to. “Ordinary” is the kindest description.
There are much better upmarket places in Canberra.

Wasn’t overly impressed with the Asian fare at the Waterfront in Gungahlin. Gross spling roll and dim sim (cold in the centre ergghhhh). Other dishes were OK, but nothing spectacular. Wouldn’t nominate it for a worst restaurant, but geez Canberra seems to do ordinary asian restuarants really well.

I forgot what it’s called, but the italian restaurant in Erindale center.. where do i start? the service (when i went there last week) was so dodge, there was only about four other groups in the restaurant, and it took us ages to get service.. and there was pretty much only one trainee person who had to do everything.
and when we did get our food, it was pretty lukewarm. and the pasta sauce was watery.. eww.

But yes, Zeffies in belco rocks! Just not on friday nights..

I’ve noted that some have had to wait some lengthy time periods to receive their meals…is there any unspoken rule in Canberra that says we should all wait around for even more than say 45 minutes to receive a main (if that is the only dish you’ve ordered?)

If an opportunity exists to move onto another establishment, I’d say you have every right to indicate to staff that you won’t be staying on for an unacceptable period and just settle the bill.

Red Gecko is crap – waited thirty minutes for a luke-warm coffee in a dirty cup; and got attitude to boot.

Other than that I don’t have much to complain about – then again I’ll eat pretty much anything if I’m hungry enough.

I and a few friends try differnt places for breakfast every few weeks – who dishes up the best breakfast in town? We usually do Caphs but now we want to try others.

Oh, Im not taking it personally 🙂 Just want everyone to know its not THAT bad, tis all.

Three Mothers Thai in Garema Place: My first and last experience there was a couple of years ago when I went there for a farewell lunch and found a large dead cockroach in the bottom of my soy sauce bowl served on my plate!!! EWWW!

Kuta Resturant (Vikings Club Bistro in Erindale): The food is not bad for a very reasonable price ($25 – $30 will pay for two) but everytime we dine there they have run out of all of the deserts on the menu (fruit salad, banana split, and ice cream) WTF? is it so hard for them to cross the road to Woolies and buy some fruit and ice cream???

Tossolini’s in Civic: We have now nicknamed this place as “Tosser-lini’s”… One Friday my partner and I decided to have an early dinner after work and decided to try this new establishment. We waited over 45 minutes for someone to come and take our order. The counters were abandonned, and the only waiter in sight was too busy to notice us waving our hands at him as he was kneeling down next to an old couple’s table and having a good old chat with them in Itallian. We got fed up and left without ordering and went downstairs to the APK for a fast and cheap alternative. As soon as we left the manager/owner Mr Tosserlini himself gave us appeared out of nowhere and gave us greasy looks and then ran inside to tell the waiter off… bloody amusing to watch while we were happily munching on our fast garlic bread sitting at the outdoor APK table… on another occasion I though I would give them another shot… an extemely rude waitress and we also had to wait over 1.5 hours for our mains (finishing up our 3 BYO bottles of wine between 5 of us since we had nothing else to do whilst waiting and then had nothing to drink with our meals). Then the guy at
the counter where you pay tried bulliing us into giving them a tip – F OFF TOSSER!!
La Porchetta in Tugg: Yummy food but extremely rude staff.

Schmerica, this topic was not aimed at individuals, just places in general, its best not to take it personally , why not use it as constructive criticism

I work at Hogs Breath Podfink… and I don’t understand how your salad could have possibly been under the heat lamp seeing as though salads arn’t even put under them.

And Absent Diane, I work in Woden and I highly doubt any of the guys were rude… But the whole ‘ginger beer’ thing, yeah, it gets confusing because sometimes we have it, sometimes we don’t, But didnt have to pay for those drinks though did you? (You shouldn’t have) Had a few new staff start recently and you can sure tell. Anyone who has had a dodgy time at Hogs Breath – come down and see me in Woden. I’ll fix you up! haha

I agree Carlos in Watson is definitely on my “DON’T GO THERE!!!” list.

I have to disagree about Musica e in Belco, I have been there for dinner (and my better half has been there at least one or two more times) an we both rate it highly – especially the singing by the staff!

Zeffs in Belco has always been flawless, for what they do that is, that being cheap, quick and tasty.

But to stay on topic, Cafe Momo has a captive audience, a inner city cafe sensibility with a truck stop level of finesse. Figure it out.

Agree JB. As long as you don’t touch the pasta, Zeff salad and pizza for takeaway are ok…

I like Zeffs in Belconnen…..

I’ve got a mate who went to Tilleys for B’fast, and was told that they were out of pancakes (!). They were still serving eggs and coffee…you do the maths…

My guess is that some of the cooks there just don’t give a f*ck – which is the primary reason pretty much any restaurant sucks IMO. Floor staff not giving a f*ck are a VERY close second.

i dont count tilleys as a restaraunt. any place where i have to line up in a queue to order food is a cafeteria.

as a cafeteria, tilleys is overpriced and the service is woeful.

best way to experience Zeff’s:

1) Walk in, order large chicken caesar to take away.

2) Walk across road to O’Neils for a pint.

3) Walk back and collect caesar

4) Drive home.

Under those circumstances I’m quite a fan.

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Zeffirelli. Quick and nasty italian “inspired” food with the added bonus of sharing your culinary experience with the cellar-dwellers of society and their umpteen screaming children.

If we’re publically shaming eateries then I’ll gladly share a few others:

– Southern Cross Club. One of a few places that can make styrofoam seem more appealing than any meal on the menu. Ditto for the Lakes at Gungahlin.
– Family Food Court in Chinatown. Needs no explanation, completely infamous.
– Luigi’s at Watson. Totally underwhelming.
– Central Cafe in struggletown. First and last experience was earlier this year, my schnitzel tasted like it had been soaked in motor oil and burned within an inch of becoming ash. Quality over quantity is obviously not a phrase they are familiar with.

Oh, yeah…AD reminded me of Montezuma’s. That is terrible stuff. There was a time 4 or 5 years ago when they had Musos to play for their food. Let’s just say we played only once…

Cafe Pronto sucks badly – had dinner there once, never again.

Carlos seemed OK for breakfast, but bloody slow.

Gotta agree with Slinky and Big Al. There was a very good reason Habit went out of business (well, beyond the fact that it was serving a 200 seat restaurant and a pub out of a kitchen set up for neither).

The food was dire (overcooked, underseasoned and just plain ol’ boring) the coffee tasted like (and may actually have been) dishwater; and the staff seemed much more interested in flirting and having witty conversations with each other than doing anything degrading like, say, serving customers.

AD – don’t give up on red meat on the strength of Hog’s Breath (it’s not meat. It’s pap). Try the Charcoal Restaurant. The steaks are cooked perfectly and the service is delightfully old school (“Would sir care for some sour cream and chives with his baked potato” – I’m not kidding, either). They’re also the only restaurant in Canberra with the balls to serve something as dinosaur-like as deep-fried camebert. And they do it well.

Montezumas for lame tasting mexican.. I have never had such bland food in my life (drinks are very fine though)….

And podfink I have to agree with hogs breath… Took my parents and GF to the one in woden, first the front dude (excuse my lack of dining class).. was exceedingly rude and condescending… then we had a waitress who couldn’t make up her mind if they had ginger beer or not resulting in my mother being served 2 ginger ales as opposed to one ginger beer… then another waitress who giggled incessantly.. then I was told that I should go for the medium and not well done…. only to be served what tasted like meat jelly/paste… I have only just started eating steak in the last two or so years so this sent me right back into my no red meat dark age

Hog’s Breath for me. Hyatt prices for canteen quality food, service and decor. They even managed to screw up my Ceasar Salad by leaving under the heat lamp until it was goo.

To go to the toilet at Three Mother’s Thai you have to head out the back, through the kitchen and down a lane between it and Chairman and Yip. I’ll never forget seeing dozens of braised lamb shanks sitting on an old bread tray in this manky dirty laneway, then the chef from Yip coming to collect them, presumably ready to serve. Can’t go there now.

West Belconnen fucked up a chicken schnitzel which is pretty hard to do. I can’t eat there now.

Magpies at Belconnen is exceptionally good at giving you your entree for dessert. They do it so often they’ve got it down to an art form now.

I 2nd Cafe Gaudi, they suck

Cafe Lido at Belconnen Mall could manage to burn a glass of water if left unattended, however since nobody else goes there either I’m sure the message has already gotten out.

Wests in Jameison had the nerve to try and tell me that oysters kilpatrick involved raw oysters, uncooked bacon and bbq sauce one night, when I insisted they cook it for me, they came back as if they had only been put on top of the oven, rather than in it.

I almost agreed with Thumper of not ever really having had a bad meal, however I remembered Three Mothers Thai in Garema Place. My Fish Curry was not only microwaved (bad enough), but also undermicrowaved, so I was chewing on cold curried fish.

$27 for a dozen oysters at the Ainslie footy club. Bloody rip off 5 star restaurant price in a footy club pokie joint.

cafe gaudi in woden plaza. everything tastes like its been in the freezer for 6 months. ew. better when it was tosolinis. dont try the chicken

I have to say I’ve always enjoyed a feed at Tilleys.

One evening we had dinner at Cafe Pronto and the service was shocking. It took forever to get our meals to the point where I had to ask for one of them take-away as one of our group had to leave (we waited about 2 hours for the main!).

It will forever be known as Cafe Slow-Mo (or Cafe No-Go) amongst us after that shocker. They do seem to do an OK trade so maybe it was a once-off – who knows.

I also have to add a Shogun in Civic, I could find fresher fish at the back of my freezer

La Capanna in Kingston served us mouldy garlic bread and then their staff argued the point with us when we refused to pay for it. Carlo’s in Watson seem to be able to take a wide variety of italian inspired dishes like pasta and risotto and fuck them up completely, Whatever “The Habit” has become is adept at trying to charge restaurant prices for what is essentially a short order menu.

I had a 3 hour wait for very ordinary food at the Habit (O’Connor) once. I can’t believe the f***ers had kicked the little Mexican out.
And although I had been a vego for quite a good chunk of my time in Canberra, I always found Bernadette’s small expensive portions to leave me with the desire to get a serve of chips at Edgar’s on the way home.

every night dude

Isn’t Tuesday lezzo night?

tilleys. last time i was there we waited an hour for a very ordinary chicken burger and a burnt-around-the-crust pizza. an hour for a burger and pizza?! it was a tuesday night and not busy at all. no apoligies for lateness of meal whatsoever. god forbid the staff actually crack a smile as you line up in disorganised counter to order your food and drinks. last time ever that i eat there.

Don’t order a steak at Gungahlin Lakes. The medium is charcoal (they had 3 chances…they are out!)

better not open a restaurant then TAD.

Musica e +1 terrible service!!! haven’t eaten there though, saw what a mockery they made of our coffees…scared me off

does woolworths servo in belco count… everytime I go there I want to punch someone and yesterday it very nearly happened..

Liar!!!

Carlo called me a liar, to my face, in front of my friends.

He was wrong, he has yet to apologise.

For me it was some little French Joint in Bungendore. Great food, shame the waitress kept wiping her runny nose with the back of her hand whilst prepping food, drinks etc, then when the food was on approach to the table, it was noted that there was more dirt under said waitress’ fingernails than what marilyn munroe had on the Kennedy family.

Belucci’s at Woden has decent food, but stunningly woeful service (except for those pubes who seem to be lunchtime regulars).

Haha… I didn’t realise that this is what happened at Carlo’s…I always liked the place.

Musica e in Belconnen. Shit food and worse service.

Carlo’s in Watson still carries the curse of RiotACT.