Dolce Ristorante

I'd been quite taken by this newish food destination near work, so I was looking forward to this farewell lunch.

Food

We started off with some Bruschetta ($8.90) - Served on wood fired sourdough bread, which had fresh summary tomatoes and a good olive oil, even though the bread was a bit hard and obviously not the freshest. The orange, carrot and ginger juice ($4.50) was great, but it was made at the trusty juice bar next door, not at the restaurant.

The menu is Italian, with several appealing sounding things I wanted to try. I decided on the Ravioli di astice, pesce bianco e rucola con salsa bisque ($24.90) - Ravioli of lobster, blue eyed cod and rocket with bisque sauce - about 5 big raviolo, with a firm lobster meet filling. I couldn't really taste any lobster so I wonder how much of this was in the ravioli. The bisque was heavenly but unfortunately I couldn't scoop it up as I wasn't provided with a spoon (see Service for my rant on that matter).

The food took a long time to arrive...was it worth waiting for? Not quite. They do quite appealing food, but not that appealing!

Rating - 6.5

Atmosphere

As mentioned, I really like the location of this place. They sat us on a long table, away from the crowd, so it definitely felt like we had the place to ourselves. It was also easier for the staff to ignore us this way...

Rating - 2

Service

Weird comes to mind when I try to describe this. All the staff were friendly and "cool", with immaculate hair and attitude to spare. They came repeatedly to ask us for drink orders, but they had to be asked numerous times to fill our water. I asked the waiter to bring a juice for me with ginger, and he did exceedingly well.

Our bruschetta was ordered to share, but they didn't bring any individual plates for us, so we all made a mess eating on our hands. The same thing happened with my pasta, they didn't give me a spoon and I couldn't get anyone's attention so I couldn't spoon up the bisque in my pasta, and I splashed sauce everywhere. Plus, it's the standard to serve pasta with a spoon and fork, and not a knife!

We waited for over an hour for our food, and when we complained, we only got a non-sincere apology and reassurance that it won't be long. This was unacceptable as we had PRE-ORDERED everything. I think it defects the purpose really if you pre-order and everything still takes forever. There weren't that many of us, about 15 in total, so it's a very reasonable size to handle.

Rating - 1

C-factor

The prices are comparable to Bond Cafe across the road, and I think the food is actually better, but their appalling service is nothing compared to Bond. The food is priced on the expensive size for the portions that you get, so it's more of a special occasions place.

Rating - 0.5

Brownie Points - 10

Info

Shop 4,
126 Phillip St
Sydney
NSW 2000
Phone (02) 9232 3487
Website