With Maddi off on another Scout camp, this one down in Sydney, and Molly out at her grandparents for the weekend, it was time for us to have another date night. On a recommendation from one of Sharon's workmates we decided to try The Rustic Table in Woolgoolga. The Rustic Table is a Greek style restaurant located at 54 Bech St in Woolgoolga, about 15 - 20 minutes drive north of Coffs Harbour.
When we arrived the restaurant wan't very busy at all and we were offered the table directly in front of the open door, and you could feel the cold breeze. When I questioned the waitress as to why she was giving us the table in the doorway in the cold, her response was condescending stating that she was about to shut the door to keep the cold out.
The menu itself was only one page and one would assume that it changed on a regular basis. For our entree we ordered the crushed garlic and rosemary bread and the red chilli and mozarella bread. both of these arrived on wooden cheesboard. The garlic and rosemary bread was really full of flavour and the red chilli and mozzarella had a delicious bite to it.
For our main course I ordered the black angus sirloin, well done, with roasted vegetables, crushed chat potatoes and a garlic aioli sauce, and Sharon had the king prawns with lemon basil pesto and olive oil spaghetti. My steak was cooked to perfection, even if id did start to be a little under done at one end I didn't really worry about that too much. It was a nice thick peice of sirloin, about an inch thick. The vegetables were oven roasted in olive oil and tasted fantastic.
Sharons meal was just as good. The king prawns were huge and there were at least half a dozen of them on the plate. The spghetti was perfectly cooked and you could taste the lemon and the basil as well as another flavour that we just couldn't place. It is possible that the pasta is freshly made at the restaurant.
While our meals were fantastic at The Rustic Table, and it makes me sad to say this, but it was let down by it's wait staff and the service that they provided. Now I understand and am well aware that in the hour that we were there the restaurant went from only having a few guests to being full to almost capacity. But we were put off by our waitress from the start as she was very condescnding towards us and when she came to take our plates away after we finished our main meal, she never even asked if we wanted any desserts or tea or coffeee. we waited for a full 15 minutes and still no offer of a dessert menu. Not one of the wait staff even looked in our direction after our table was cleared. It felt as though that since we were done eating we had to leave straight away, that we were no longer welcome. And when I was paying the bill the waitress aked how our evening there was. Sharon replied that it would have been nice if we had been offered some tea and the waitress thought that we hadn't received our main meal.
In conclusion, while the food at the Rustic Table was excellent, our complete dining experience there was let down by the wait staff and their attitude.
Our rating: 2 and a half stars.
