Balsamic

I am a local, so I come here a fair bit, and I never find it too bad. The food is tasty, and they are usually fairly prompt on account of serving clients that are seeing movies. I don't believe that I have ever had a bad meal here. Greek lamb salad is to die for. The restaurant is quite large, so if it is busy, I have found that some things can go by the wayside such as bottles of water and offers for desert, but this is not uncommon, and if you put your hand up, they will come straight over. What matters for me are the food, the wine, and the staff attitude. Staff have always been friendly, the wine selection broad, and the food flavorsome.

I have been three times in the last few months and it was terrible. The food has gone downhill in a big way. The third and last time (two weeks ago) I couldn't even eat my meal. The food is now basically tasteless and unpalatable. I gave them three chances but that's it - I won't be back.

Extremely disappointed. Came to Balsamic on Monday the 22nd of April, around 6.30. We were seated very quickly and served straight away. We ordered a coke each. Anyways, the coke arrives promptly and we then order our meals. The meals came amazingly fast and tasted sensational. The coke tasted of basically water with very little flavouring. It then went downhill from there. We sat at our table with empty plates for around 15 minutes, no big deal. Finally, a girl comes and clears the table. She does not say a word to us, just quickly grabs the plates and walks away. We now have two empty glasses on our table. For 40 minutes we sat there, waiting to be offered a drink, a bottle of water maybe (like every other table had but ours) I wanted a dessert, nothing. Nobody came to our table. Finally after the clock ticked 45 minutes after we had finished eating I had enough, got up and asked to pay my bill. The girl pointed to the exit and I walked to pay. THe girl behind the counter gave me the total, to which I expressed my disappointment. What reply did I get? she looked away, said the faintest "sorry"I have ever heard in my life and swiped my card. Not even a token gesture of taking the awful tasting coke off my bill, nothing. Its pretty pathetic that in this day and age, I cant even be offered the basic right of a bottle of water. Every other table around us was served except for us. I am amazed at the awful treatment we were given. We were well dressed, not loud and I always said thankyou the few times we actually spoke with staff. I was not rude, obnoxious or one that deserved to be avoided by staff. I am very quick to praise via email and do so on regular occasion. On this instance, I offer my biggest criticism to a restaurant that clearly dropped the ball for us tonight. Worst $79 I have ever spent. I will never attend you establishment again, and will do my best to warn everybody that I know about the appalling treatment we were given.

I usually have ok experiences here, however last weekend the service was slow, the pizza base wasn't cooked, my Thai beef salad had no dressing and 1 other order was incorrect and had to be re-ordered. I proceeded to let them know that we were disappointed and the manager just continued doing his work and said 'that's unfortunate'.. did not apologise (that's all I was looking for). I also was disgusted in the toilets about 3 lights in the ladies toilets were out and they looked like they had not been cleaned for about 7 days. This place used to be good, disappointing!!

Not bad for a shopping centre restautant