Taking the bad with the good.

No reviewer can be taken seriously if they only ever spout about the great restaurants. I post today (not happily) about a rather crap experience we had on Wednesday night.

Seeing as we didn't have to work on the Thursday (Australia Day...woohoo!) we decided to splurge and go for a good restaurant to kick back and relax. Well...that's what we thought. Feeling like seafood we headed for Jordan's at Darling Harbour. This should have been the first tip off...Darling Harbour! Never expect greatness there...It is for the tourists and boy to we rip them off!

From outside this establishment, things looked promising. Stepping inside, however, revealed another story. We should have turned around then and walked out, but we didn't. Firstly we couldn't eat outside as it was closed (so much for the spectacular views they tout in their write ups), the floor inside was a spackled blue and white faux granite, which looked about as faux as you can get. The seats were plastic and would look more at home out the front of the local pizza takeaway shop. The tables were brown wood laminate, totally at odds with the chairs and way too low to be comfortable. And I've only started on the furniture!!!

The service started out ok and any criticisms I had about the furniture were dismissed as superficial. That was until the food came! It looked rather impressive, a two-tiered mass of seafood topped with "fresh" prawns. I must say, it looked a hell of a lot better than it tasted. The prawns were muddy, the mussels unwashed and furry, the oysters bland. While Flit enjoyed the lobster I found it tasteless...but then again I'm not a huge lobster fan. We both agreed the crab and the south coast bugs were tasty. Oh and the chips were those good fat ones! That was about the extent of the praise I wish to give this place. The wine list was overpriced (Evans & Tate classic was about $40 a bottle), and the service went seriously downhill after they took our order. Not only did they not give us crab eating utensils, but it took me about 10 minutes to attempt to catch a waiter to get us some, eventually I gave up and went and got them myself!

The bill arrived and we were very deliberate in not giving them a single cent in tip. Never eat here, it is crap and expensive. Now I have to take extra care when choosing our next venue so I can erase this one!