Pretentious food, bad service
Imagine this: a slice of hot Halloumi cheese nicely topped with macadamia nuts, honey, and dukkah. Sounds good, right? Now imagine it being the size of half of your palm and a waitress convincing you it's a plate to share in order to justify paying a ridiculous $19 for it.
It was my boyfriend's birthday, and he wanted to try the food of "my people", and a friend has suggested that we try Thievery in Glebe (trust me we won't be getting advice or recommendations from that friend again). We started with two cocktails that were so incredibly week it felt like we were drinking virgin cocktails. These took some serious time to arrive, and then the waiter took yet additional time to come and take our orders, where she showed very little knowledge about the actual dishes, overusing the adjective "good" to describe almost every dish we asked about - which immediately took our expectations to a new low.
To be honest the lowered expectations were a blessing, as almost all the dishes (apart from the Babghanoush) were massive disappointments. The bread was microwaved, one pita roll cut into two, you take out of the bag and its sweaty and already tired. This is in a Middle Eastern restaurant with plates meant for sharing! The babaghanoush was buttery and nice, and was honestly the only slight high in an evening filled with lows.
The falafel salad had two, maximum three falafels (the place is so dark I had to use my camera flash to actually see what I was scoping). Yep. That's a $16 falafel salad. 20 minutes later, the third dish arrived, a beef-tartare dish called "Thievery Neyyeh" (why not, right, sounds cool, not really, just tell me what it is, I'm bored with your pretentiousness already). The actual tartare was brilliant, but it was plated as a cow has actually vomited its own flesh on the plate, so badly and poorly done, as if it were scooped from a barrel of ready made tartare.
10 minutes later, my boyfriend's second cocktail arrived after I begged him to get one more as he was not impressed with the food or the drinks, and I felt like an idiot who disappointed his man on his birthday.
The halloumi dish arrived after that (see opening paragraph that I articulated earlier for maximum suspense / intrigue).
The last dish to arrive was chicken that was fried beyond recognition. I promise you, the actual chicken meat must've been only 15% of the dish's content, the rest was lots of fat and crumbs that might have been either left in the oil for 10 minutes too long or were basically fried earlier as part of prep and refried when ordered. Either way, even a tub of that black garlic sauce could not have saved that dish - I'd take KFC over that crap any time.
I'm here because I'm food, but I never cared about complaining before, especially in Sydney where food is not usually bad. But I just created my Yelp account to post this. Thievery is disappointing. It's pretentious. The plates are meant to be shared but they would hardly satisfy one customer, and they are therefore incredibly expensive.
Middle Eastern food is layered, humble and approachable, it's the kind of food that makes you want to start a conversation with your fellow meal sharers and still ask for more, anticipating the next dish that is served with a generosity and a smile. Thievery, with its awful staff, its kitchen that could only be manned by a self-indulgent wanna-be, and its ridiculous trying-too-hard bar and interiors has no right to call itself Lebanese/Middle-Eastern.
Save you money, save your time, and most importantly, save your occasion for the other beautiful restaurants in Sydney.
Alex. read more
