Classy upgrade--but how's the food? Don't know about other locals but I always thought it would be a) expensive, b) poor quality and c) marketed at tourists. After wondering past daily though-- at least the tourist part seems to be false as I do see a lot of what appears to be locals having food/drinks there--ALOT--good luck getting a table on Friday night when it coincides with CBD late night shopping.
Anyhooo hubby's always wanted to go--sucker for presentation this guy and I wanted a cold beer so somewhere around the frantic hot 2 days before Christmas when we were doing some shopping we had dinner there.
Promptly seated-downstairs-quite busy and noisy-- live music upstairs but seems to be more of a drinking rather than eating scene so downstairs suited us fine. Menu is typical 'Australian' or in otherwords--disjointed mulit-cultural mix of everything--burgers, chips, Fish and Chips, pasta and a few Asian influenced or Asian dishes--FYI the owner is Asian so that's no surprise. Waitress pushed the specials (Moreton bay bugs with noodles, rice, sweet chilli sauce) but no thanks-- screams tourist.
Settled on the Salt and Pepper calamari for entree, with chips before I ordered the spaghetti with mussels and hubby had some mexican steak dish.
When the food came out we knew for sure it definitely fulfilled criteria a) above--For what it is, it is expensive. Scanty salt and pepper on limpid , semi cold (possibly microwaved) salt and pepper calamari. Chips were ok--but it's chips you can't mess that up even with something more mayonnaise rather than 'aioli'.
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| Chips, salt and pepper calamari |
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| Seafood Angelhair pasta |
Some mussels on my angel hair spaghetti wasn't opened --feeling a bit ripped off especially since wasn't much on there in the first place. Flavour of pasta was ok, spaghetti slightly over cooked but still acceptable.
Don't bother with the steak dish--- tough as nails beef and funny sauce reminiscent of tinned mexican chilli soup and possibly frozen veg. So there we go--criteria B--poor quality food ticked.
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| Steak forgot what it's called don't bother |
While the food may be sub par-- there's definitely a plus to the atmosphere eating semi al fresco in the middle of the mall. Tourist trap? Maybe, for those willing to pay the price. So definitely not a place for regular eating, but if you want to sample the ambience then consider ordering maybe some of the Asian menu items (minus the salt and pepper calamari) and stick to more typical, takeaway fare e.g. fish and chips, burgers--those looked half decent as they sailed by to other tables.
