Almond Bar - Darlinghurst

Delicious! Great service. Phenomenal flavors. We had the tasting menu - the meat menu. The beef was fantastic. The chicken was wonderful with the heavenly

This is a locals place in Sydney, and for good reason.

A friend of mine LOVES this place, for me it was just "not bad".

Ok, so this just happened. My friend and I went out for dinner here, and were really looking forward to the Syrian cuisine, the ambiance, seeing each other again and having a great night out. We were booked in for the 7 - 8.30 PM slot. So we arrived, sat down, ordered food, just chatted the night away and were friendly to the waiter. Nothing special there. The food was disappointing, I'm sad to say; extremely bland, no special Syrian flavours at all, clearly overpriced for both the quality and quantity. But alright, that happens sometimes, maybe we ordered just the wrong things. We weren't going to complain about it, were just enjoying our catch up, and were minding our own business. When the waiter asked us if we cared for a dessert we decided to give it a shot, seeing as the dessert menu looked promising. We just needed one more minute after being asked about our dessert choice and in fact asked the waiter to come over within 20 seconds after he had turned away, to take our order. We then waited about 20 minutes for the desserts and coffee/tea to arrive, but that was no problem for us as we were having a lovely evening between the two of us. Then the desserts were brought out by who I assume is the manager. He threw the bill at the table, stating that it was 8.45 PM and he needed the table 15 minutes ago. That abruptly bursted our pleasant bubble, after which I told him friendly and patiently that we had no idea what time it was and that we would of course happily had vacated the table at 8.30 if our waited would have told us that there was not enough time for desserts. In fact, we had waited for about 20 minutes for the desserts to arrive (and earlier for the food, when our waiter came back to tell us that he forgot what we had ordered). The man then went on and told us twice that when we got the dessert menu there was still enough time (meaning: "it took you too long to order something", while in fact it took us 1 minute and 20 seconds), and that we should be grateful to him because he had now swopped around the tables so we could stay 15 minutes longer. We then turned to our desserts, both being very surprised about what had just happened, which were, again, just as the rest of the food and the Middle Eastern coffee, tasteless. We left the desserts and coffee/tea for what they were, paid the bill, and left the restaurant silently. I'm very positive that we'll never go back to Almond Bar, and it makes me sad that someone working in hospitality can be so heartless and unnecessarily rude to his clients who have been nothing but well behaved and friendly all evening. Makes me wonder what stress the people working there are under, really.

Ok, so this just happened. My friend and I went out for dinner here, and were really looking forward to the Syrian cuisine, the ambiance, seeing each other again and having a great night out. We were booked in for the 7 - 8.30 PM slot. So we arrived, sat down, ordered food, just chatted the night away and were friendly to the waiter. Nothing special there. The food was disappointing, I'm sad to say; extremely bland, no special Syrian flavours at all, clearly overpriced for both the quality and quantity. But alright, that happens sometimes, maybe we ordered just the wrong things. We weren't going to complain about it, were just enjoying our catch up, and were minding our own business. When the waiter asked us if we cared for a dessert we decided to give it a shot, seeing as the dessert menu looked promising. We just needed one more minute after being asked about our dessert choice and in fact asked the waiter to come over within 20 seconds after he had turned... read more