My best friend and I were lucky enough to be offered a booking a Nobu recently. We decided to take the opportunity to explore the new hotel and its offerings and make it a girls night out.
We started at TWR – The Waiting Room. It’s the bar on the ground floor that can be seen from the front. It is as you can guess, for people who are dining at the hotel later in the evening, to have a drink or 2 at prior to dinner.
We started with a sweet and light cocktail – called Fairy Floss (for obvious reasons). The bar had a singer in residence, singing classic songs from the 90’s, accompanied by a live pianist.
We then moved on to the Tropical Thunder cocktail. This one was slightly more bitter and heavy. Definitely not suitable for an aperitif – but not awful.
Now for the main event. Follow me to the 2nd floor as we arrive at Nobu.
Customer service here is nothing if not dedicated. There is an abundance of people milling about just looking to be helpful. Our waitress for the night was the lovely Jin. The surprising note was that she was not the first waitress allocated to us. Our first waitress actually spilled part of the Rose Champagne that we had ordered. After our bottle was replaced, we were given a new waitress. This tells me more about Crown’s dedication to customer service. At even the first hint of disappointment, they removed the person who made an error and gave us a fresh face for the rest of the evening, to ensure that our experience would be positive.
Also, important to note (ladies), the restrooms are up a fairly steep staircase. So if, like me, you favour high heels when dining out, you might find the trip back down the stairs a bit daunting – especially after a glass or two.
The food:
We started with chili Edamame for the table. This was nice and fresh and crunchy and sad to say the most flavourful part of the evening.
We then ordered an assortment of vegetarian and meat based dishes and were stunned to realise that they were all lacking in flavour and spices.
Also, this might be just me, but when I east at Japanese restaurants, my table is usually filled with Soy sauce, wasabi and ginger fairly quickly. This was not the case at Nobu. We had to specifically ask for it and actual spices as well.
When we questioned the lack of flavour and spice, we were told that early reviews told them the food was too spicy. But it seems that they overcorrected for this with a bland menu instead.
I’m also a bit disappointed by the lack of spice, as Nobu is partially owned by Robert De Niro, who is known to have quite a love for spice and heat.
There is another item that I could not bring myself to take an image of. It was the eggplant. I like my eggplant served crunchy, zingy, slightly salty…..It was serviced mushy and had the consistency of (I’m sorry to sensitive readers) snot. When we told our waitress our thoughts and asked for it to be removed, they at least had the decency to remove it from our bill.
We did however end on a high. You remember the dedication to customer experience I noted earlier?
Our waitress was so keen to make sure we went away on a positive note that she organised a complimentary dessert for us that was custom made – rather than from the menu. Just a simple choc lava cake and vanilla bean ice-cream. But it was a lovely gesture.
Now if you please, follow me to level 3 for our final destination – The Tea House.
A beautiful room (walk-ins only (no bookings) for after dinner drinks, desserts and teas.
We finished our night with white chocolate Panna Cotta Easter bunnies, lychee and pomegranate cocktails and a couple of pots of green tea.
All in all, my final findings are as follows: Crown Sydney has amazing customer service. They really do aim to and succeed at pleasing.
I recommend The Waiting Room and The Tea House. I do not recommend Nobu. After dinner, we walked round and looked at the other options for restaurants. The buffet looked very nice and so did a couple of other restaurants, which looked liked they had an outside chance of offering flavour and some sort of spices with their food.
We had a lovely ladies night out…shame about the main course.
Leave a Reply