The East, Macquarie St, Sydney

The East, Macquarie St, Sydney
Friday 19 January, 2007

Tonight we were on our way to see' Kiss of Life' as part of the Sydney Festival at the Opera House. This is one of their about an hour offerings and a great way to experience the festival without seeing a long, drawn out performance.

The East is a Chinese restaurant located along the east Circular Quay strip of shops & restaurants. They offer indoor & outdoor seating and on this spectacularly warm evening we couldn't help but sit outside (in the shade) and take in the amazing views. Tonight it felt like all of Sydney was out - it was great people watching and we had prime seats.

The East has usually offered us a great night out but tonight the food was incredibly disappointing. I'm not sure if this was because we ordered badly or the service was just shocking.

We decided to kick off with salt & pepper tofu and a couple of beers. Our tofu was delivered promptly and was steaming hot but the salt & pepper flavour that we craved was completely lacking. Next up we ordered wasabi beef (extra wasabi) and what we received was satay beef. Our waiter had already served up our bowls of steamed rice and just left them there going cold as he laughed and disappeared back to the kitchen.

As we waited we decided to order the Eggplant supreme - big mistake. When it arrived, along with our correct order of wasabi beef (that was not served with extra wasabi) it tasted like sweet & sour eggplant. I was really disappointed and it didn't help matters that the wasabi beef was served in large pieces that we couldn't cut with chopsticks so had to chew apart.

The staff tonight were shocking - they looked jaded and uninterested. We won't be back.

The East - 8/ 1 Macquarie St, Sydney - (02) 9252 6868