annoyedfirst time poster, long time lurker :)
(i'll cut if this is too long!)
&i have a story about my dinner outing on saturday night, in which my fiance &i, only with two of my girlfriends, went to a restaurant in north adelaide called the pink pig.
my friend had rung up a few days prior to make a booking for 7.30. so we all arrive at 7.24pm &are told 'take a seat at the bar and we'll not be long' by the waiter who was running around looking pissed off &run off his feet.
at this time, there was about a dozen other people in the little waiting area, obviously waiting for a table as well. &the place was packed, with two spare tables of 4 that i could see..
so at 7.50pm, and having asked a waitress twice for a table, we were finally seated &handed our menu's.
two girls were seated nearby not five minutes later (this is important).
the waiter came &asked us if we wanted drinks.. we ordered drinks &continued looking at the menu, which took a total of 5 minutes to decide. but it was another 10 minutes later, when a waitress came &took the drinks AND food order for the two girls seated nearby, that we snagged her down &she obviously saw the menu's on our table still &said (surprisingly) "oh!! would you like to order now?"
...
so by the time we'd ordered it was about (guessing) 8.10pm.
&for the record, the order was - trio of dips with pitta for entree, two house roasts, one pork steak, one chicken schnitzel, bowl of fries for the table. NOT HARD RIGHT?
the girls next nearby got their entree (garlic bread) within a few minutes.. we'd already been asked our second drinks orders &still had no entree.. &i should add the original waiter who was running around at the start came &cleared our first drinks orders without asking if we'd like more.. we had to actually say "um yeah we'd like blah blah drinks too. &do you know how long our entree will be?"
at this stage it was 8.30pm.
he rushed off without a word &returned with our 2nd drinks order. i asked for two bottles of diet cokes for my fiance &i..
A few minutes later he returned with our dips &pitta.. which is NOT hard to put together &says to me, it was either forgotten &they slung it together then &there, or it'd been sitting waiting to be brought out for ages.
the girls nearby got their meals at this time as well.
so we hungrily ate (srsly.. 8.30pm = PAST dinner time!) &chatted.. hoping perhaps the sooner we cleared the entree, they'd bring out our mains. he brought our second drinks orders (does it really take THAT long?) &the first sip i took told me it was full strength coke.
the night so far was pissing me off, the way we were treated, as opposed to the tables around us.. so we flagged the waiter down (finally) &i said 'hi i asked for diet coke, this is full strength..' so he yanked it and stormed off without a word. no 'oh sorry' or 'i'll get you a new one' or ANYTHING.
&our entree dishes were not cleared.. we ended up stacking them in the middle with our side dishes &glasses on them to give us some elbow room.
&i'll not give a minute-by-minute run down, but we waited over half an hour for our mains.. the girls nearby had finished theirs &were simply chatting by now.. the waiter had come to clear our dishes &because i had a clear view of the kitchen ( the section where they put the food up &hit DING! so the waiters come &collect the food) i said loudly 'i hope THOSE are our meals. this is getting ridiculous.'
to which the waiter ignored me!! what does it TAKE?
so when a waitress came &collect the dishes on the other table, we asked her to check.. who knows if she did. when she came back around to check on our drinks situation, a friend said 'no. we just want OUR MEALS.'
it was about 9.10pm by this stage &most of the crowd had thinned out.. in fact, i could only see about two tables who were still waiting for food, or were eating entrees.
FINALLY another waiter came &brought out our meals.. i assume our regular waiter didnt want to hear it from us anymore.. &the food was fairly shit anyway. it's meant to be some sort of gourmet restaurant (nothing fine dining, but always gets rave reviews.. like hogs breath cafe i suppose) but it was pub meal fare.. thats it. my chicken was dry &i could have done better myself.
they never came &cleared our plates.. we managed to flag a waitress down for the bill, but after waiting 10 minutes, we just got up &went to the bar to pay. i had an entertainment voucher that entitled us to 25% off the total bill, but srsly. i was expecting some sort of compensation.. make one round of drinks free! make our side order of fries free! i was even willing to accept a 'sorry about the delay in your food' apology.
but nope; nothing. the same waiter who'd been serving us did our bill.. he said nothing to us. if he had of asked 'how was it all' my friend &i were going to let rip.
it was ridiculous. he just gave us our receipt &didn't even do the normal 'enjoy the rest of your night / have a good one / thanks guys / etc' farewell.
&thus concludes my NEVER DINE AT THE PINK PIG in north adelaide review.
i am SO glad tipping in australia is not in fashion.. i would have stolen from his tip jar, rather than give any, thats for sure!