We visited the new Fish & Co venue at the Tramsheds over the weekend, great new layout with a buzzing atmosphere but my first time experience was disappointing to say the least.
To start, no indication if you wait to be seated or just grab a table. We asked one of the workers that was passing by, she grabbed a gentleman from around the corner who pointed us towards a table. No food menu was given to us, no drink menu either. I had to get up, walk back to where we entered and grab a menu myself.
They were very busy, so I completely understand that it took a while to attend to us. The girl that served us was very pleasant, in fact I'd give the place a one star rating if not for her. She took our food orders and brought us a drink menu upon the realisation that nothing had been provided to us.
I decided on the brown butter lobster roll with sweet potato fries for $26 and the gf grabbed the fish of the day with sweet potato fries approx $24 (no idea what the fish was...no one mentioned it by name). Sadly when it came to our drinks, they had to come out to us on two separate occasions to tell us they were out of what we ordered...probably best to communicate this to your serving staff earlier.
There was quite a wait for the food but again, they were quite busy. When the food did arrive though, you could see right away by the food's presentation that the kitchen was under pressure. Unfortunately, this pressure also translated to the taste as well. The fish of the day was swimming in liquid, was spongy and lacklustre, and the liquid made some of the sweet potato fries soggy. There wasn't much flavour to the fish at all and had me thinking that it was most likely frozen and not fresh. Now on to the the brown butter lobster roll...I was gob smacked! I couldn't believe they messed this up so bad, seriously?! A medium sized toasted roll with an overpowering char taste, a teeny portion of overcooked, springy, shrunken lobster minus any butter flavour of course and placed directly on top of shredded wilted lettuce (guessing it was the heat from the lobster that caused the lettuce to wilt). Thankfully there was no liquid in sight to turn my few, sweet potato fries into a soggy heap.
For my very first experience at Fish & Co, I don't think I'll be coming back unless I hear of some major changes. I found it to be overpriced, small, poorly prepared portions that doesn't do the ingredients any justice. Perhaps it was due to opening weekend at the Tramsheds? I get it, I honestly do. Running out of particular a style of beer or wine makes sense for a place that was opened to much fanfare! However, allowing substandard food to leave the kitchen and make its way out to a paying customer is not acceptable. read more