Why I'm never going to Hyatt The Rocks again.

There we were again, two weeks in a row at Hyatt The Rocks. Our experience dining there the last time was reasonable so we decided to give it another go last night.

My hopes were a bit low when we walked in. The huge “expansiveness” of the place lead me to feel that perhaps dining in a hotel wasn’t really the best place for the ultimate dining experience.

After being seated, it took 10 minutes for our waitress to take our orders. I was also annoyed at the fact that none of the waitresses offered to inform us on the specials they were having. 

The fact that we were seated at the back with a very narrow table setting didn’t help things either. Fine, I was still blessed with a perfect view of the Oprah House but it was really cramped.  On top of this, almost an hour passed between when were seated till our mains arrived. Even the simplest take of bread service was not performed. 

For entrees John had a lightly grilled tuna served with green beans, olives and crisp potato and I decided to try the toasted fregola cooked as a risotto with scallops, asparagus and pork floss. Honestly, I was really impressed with our entrée dishes. We didn’t wait too long for the entrees to arrive and it was surprisingly filled with beautiful flavours. They must have a different entrée chef with the main.

 

45 minutes after finishing our entrees, our main meals with our side dishes finally decided to appear on our table. For the sides we ordered, wood roasted potatoes with rosemary, pancetta and garlic and sautéed spinach. And for the mains, I ordered a murray cod fillet with fried sourdough crumbs, capers, golden enoki. John, being a typical red meat eater ordered his 'Rangers Valley' 300 day grain fed beef sirloin 250g. My murray cod fillet was fine, insignificant at best. John’s comment on his sirloin was that it was OK but would have preferred that it came with a big dollop of sauce.

The sides were a huge let down. I know it’s just a mere $9 a plate, but for an establishment like Hyatt I expected a lot more. The wood roasted potatoes were uncooked, raw and burnt. The spinach was mooshy and difficult to swallow. Not to mention that both side dishes had no flavours in them.

Desserts…the last time we were there, I had a Black Forest- 70% valrhona 'organic' chocolate, kirsch flavoured cream and John had The Hazzlenut - Dacquoise with chocolate ganache and milk gelato. And both the desserts tasted a lot better than the ones we had last night.

This time I decided to try the Mont Blanc with chestnut, dulce de leche cream, meringue and green tea gelato. The presentation was to die for, but the eating experience well..not so much. The chocolate ganache was too crunchy and hard for my liking and the green tea gelato was too bitter. John had the Gavotte withm andarin cream, crisp buckwheat crepes, gingerbread. Looks absolutely amazing, again taste was a let down.

The service was poor and unattentive. We had to wait for our table, long waits for dishes especially the mains and staff were more concern on cleaning up and setting up tables instead of taking care of the current dining customers.

Well I can honestly say that I won't be visiting Hyatt The Rocks for a long long time.