Watermark Restaurant @ Silverwater Resort

Post

Subscribe

Silverwater is an impressive resort, with accommodation which come at a suitably breathtaking price. As one might expect for such a resort, the attached restaurant, Watermark, aspires to fine dining. For this diner, the aspiration overreached reality.

Guests at Silverwater are told to book for the restaurant by 6pm. I was a little dubious, as it seemed unlikely the place would be booked out in the off-season, but we obeyed. They were a little taken aback at our request to seat ten people. This should have been a sign. Nevertheless, our 8pm booking time arrived and we showed up. We were informed we had a bit of a wait.

A 'wait' is such a loose concept. It's generally applied to a short time, one that's too uncertain to define but brief enough not to need an estimate. In our case, it was the time needed for the kitchen, serving a restaurant approximately one-third full with two hours of forewarning, to be ready for us. We weren't sure what that meant – was there meditation required for dealing with such a big party? – but we settled in for our wait.

A half-hour later we requested that we be allowed to sit down, as surely the kitchen could cope with us meekly sipping drinks there instead of herding increasingly bored children around the lobby. The wait staff showed us mercy. They even took our order, feeding unwarranted optimism on our part. Some time later, when the adults had almost polished off two bottles of wine and the children were gnawing at the chairs, the kids' meals came out.

Our meals were served at around 9.45pm.

The meals themselves were almost all good. Those eating steak and fish expressed delight with what they were served. It was my mistake to order the vegetable parcel, which was a mix of perfectly acceptable cous cous and leafy greens wrapped in something excruciatingly salty with the texture of a used condom. Don't ask me how I know how to make these comparisons. The potato gratin was also obviously from a job lot that had been cut up and reheated many times, because it had that 'I've been sitting in a bain marie' crunchiness that really didn't do it any favours. In writing this I feel I may be being slightly harsh, but for $27 I felt more than a little ripped off.My niece next to me felt similarly ripped off when her 'Lickety Split Banana Split' arrived with a five-centimetre sliver of banana sitting under two scoops of ice cream. I'm not against feeding children small desserts, but I feel that to do so after giving them exciting names is a little cruel, although to be fair perhaps the 'lickety split' part of the name was a warning about how swiftly the small serve could be consumed.

On the plus side, the stressed-out waiters were very polite (apart from reminding us that we had been told there would be a wait) and did give us a 20% discount (after offering free desserts – we felt that life was simply too short).

The final verdict: Watermark, get your act together. A restaurant charging your prices and demanding bookings has absolutely no excuse delivering such shoddy service.

#accommodation
#australian_restaurants
#dinner
#fine_dining
#near_gippsland
#restaurants
%wngippsland