After a day of sight-seeing the other day we met a friend who happened to be in Cairns and went out for dinner. Not being from the area we thought we’d wing it and walked along the Esplanade for some inspiration.
We came to one place – a middle eastern restaurant – looked at the menu, thought we’d stay and asked for a table for three. The waiter said that they were quite busy at the moment and we could sit outside and wait for 20 minutes until we could be seated.
My friend looked inside and noticed that there were quite a few tables vacant and mentioned this to him. He said that it was a really busy time and we’d still have to wait for 20 minutes.
It was getting on a bit and I wanted to eat and head back to Port Douglas before I got too tired so we moved on.
We ended up at a cafe and ordered our meals. My friend and I ordered the same dish – an oriental chicken salad. JJ ordered the usual fish and chips.
The meals came out and our salads didn’t look that great and when my friend tasted the fried noodles she said they were stale. I tasted mine and they were definitely stale. I had a bit of the chicken and it had been bathed in balsamic vinegar and wasn’t that tasty either. Neither of us are in the habit of sending things back but we had to with these meals.
We ordered something different and had to wait for quite some time. We finally got our replacement meals after JJ had finished eating his and the meals were a lot better this time.
In the meantime we’d been offered nothing while we waited – even a drink would have been good.
As soon as we finished eating I asked for the bill and when we received it our sent back meals were on it in addition to our replacement meals.
Of course we mentioned this and the waitress said that she’d made up a new bill for us without those meals. Why we weren’t given that in the first place I don’t know.
As we walked out we said that we’d never be back and after having a look at their reviews on Trip Advisor others haven’t given them good reviews either. I’ve now added my own review.
If I was the waiter in the first restaurant I would have seated us and mentioned that the meals might take a little bit longer than normal due to them being busy. As it was we probably would have gotten out sooner if we’d stayed there. The fact that he couldn’t seat us for dinner just yet was a bit strange.
In the second place I would have offered us at least a drink for giving us stale food. I think we should have been compensated in some way for the inconvenience. They obviously don’t care about maintaining any sort of standards maybe due to the high number of drop-in tourists? But surely if they took more care with their food they’d have better reviews on Trip Advisor etc and be more popular.
The photo at the top has nothing to do with our food, but it was serene in the rain forest earlier that day.
