Our experience at Dimitrys at Wandandian. First of all Merrin is not making these comments her husband Colin is. Its our wedding anniversary and I thought I would take my wife to a nice restaurant for dinner to celebrate. My first option was to book a dinner cruise on Sydney harbour and have a relaxing evening cruising and dining the night away. I instead, on recommendation of a few others I tried this new place out. It has only been open a month and had had some good reviews. I was seriously mistaken and it turned out to be a bad decision. We arrived on time for our booking at 7pm and we were impressed by what we saw driving up to the restaurant. It was an attractive building with a European style to it. It went down hill from there. We walked from the car park to the restaurant to see the kitchen staff huddled around the gas tanks trying to get the gas flowing. Not a good sign but these things can happen. In the kitchen we could see through the open access door, a rather attractive young lady working there in very shot shorts and thongs, Hmmm, a work cover issue for sure! but there was also much to my surprise a young fellow dressed in beach attire with and apron and wearing thongs, I think this is pushing the Work Health safety barriers little too far. Not to mention not a professional look, especially when you have an open kitchen plan. The Restaurant itself was a concoction of conflicts not really knowing what they were trying to achieve with it. There were some really nice aspects about it but some bad ones as well. I am guessing that some of these things were not properly thought through e.g. Some nice decor, but with two huge televisions mounted on the walls, showing two different programs, (MTV being one) and images reflecting off the glass panel interiors which became very distracting. Anyway, we were greeted pleasantly and taken to our table. The table placement was poor as I needed to move my chair so I didnt bump the fire extinguisher on the wall. When the waitress came to serve our table we were greeted with the following statement, Ill get you some drink menus (one which was a crumpled piece of A4 paper, but the wine list was laminated. The next waitress greeted us pleasantly by informing us that tonight we dont have a menu as we are transitioning between chefs and the menus are being printed at the moment What we were presented with was a hand written menu on an order docket and it was left with us. There six, options on it and the menu was very difficult to read, as there were items crossed out. In any case we settled on the Angus fillet. We ordered our drinks and my wife ordered the Kladdis Estate Merlot. The waitress went away, only to come back and tell us that they had run out of the Merlot, this is there own estate wine mind you!!!! My wife ordered something else which they had and some water. Then we ordered our meals after which our drinks came, and no water. Some ten minutes later the waitress came back and explained that they had run out of the Angus fillet so we ordered something else and asked for some water. The waitress apologised and came back with a hand written docket of desserts, saying we could have a complimentary dessert to make up the inconvenience and this was left with us to make our decision . 20 minutes later our herb bread arrived and still no water, we asked again. I might point out that this was not a busy night, all up there were 30 people in the dinning room that sat an estimate 110 people, three floor staff and four or five kitchen staff as far as I could tell. I ask you Who would open there doors for business and not have menus?? Not professional, these are inexcusable screw ups. If they have a new chef, that person should be skilled enough to be able to work with someone elses menu until a new one is ready to go. I spent 30 years as a chef so I know what I am talking about. 1 hour after being seated our mains finally arrived. By now I was getting annoyed, but I held my tongue as the waitress was clearly inexperienced and it was not her fault but the chefs. All this time I was watching what was going on and spying out what was coming out of the kitchen. What I observed was disorganised staff and desserts that were factory made. I am starting to have some serious question marks about this new chef, the 2nd one in four weeks??? When we did get our meals, both steaks, cooked perfectly to order and Merrin said that her sauce was quite nice, my steak was nice too but the pepper sauce?? What ever it was tasted quite strange, there were a few peppercorns in it but seriously it had no flavour of sorts. How on earth can you screw up a pepper sauce, and finally the water arrived. Well done!!! But with there is more. When we had finished our meals we sat and chatted for a while , 5 minutes went by and staff walked by and our plates stayed, 10 minutes went by and staff walked by and our plates were still there. There were now only 14 people in the restaurant and most of the kitchen staff were sitting at a table a little further on. 15minutes went by and staff walked by, and our empty plates were still there, we chatted a little more and 20 minutes had gone by and yes our plates were still there. By this time I had had enough and said lets go, I was feeling an intense surge of rudeness welling up from inside. It was time for me to leave. As we left the waitress chased after us to ask us how our meals were, my response was polite and said our steaks were cooked nicely, I can tell you the relieved look on her face spoke volumes. What really annoyed me was not just the fact that they were unprepared and unprofessional, disorganised and did not know what they were doing, but I had to go to the counter to get my bill and pay. If I were to rate this place fairly out of ten I would give it a generous minus 8. I wont be back, I will go elsewhere instead. By the way we DID NOT get our complementary dessert, clearly they FORGOT!
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 11:34:50 +0000
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