Food review at Watervue Steaks & Fresh Seafood, Manly

Manly beach - nice and quiet at this time of the year

Tony Abbott's (PM of Australia) constituency office

Recently, we took a drive to Manly, a northern suburb of Sydney famous for its beach to get some fresh air and to recharge ourselves. Since we are coming close to winter, there were not many people on the beach. Nevertheless, the stroll along the beach was nice and refreshing for us. We took a walk down to the shops and noticed that amongst the shops  is the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott’s constituency office. It is really cool to have an office close to the beach. We also noticed that there were quite a number of restaurants selling seafood. The perception that most people have is that whenever you have a place next to the beach, the seafood would be really fresh and relatively cheap. However, in reality, the seafood could be “imported” from other states and for all you know, you may even get fresher seafood from your local market.

While checking out the shops, we noticed a seafood restaurant which appeared to be quite popular with the locals called “Watervue Steaks & Fresh Seafood”. It could either be the food, the price or perhaps even both that attracted the crowd. The prices were quite reasonable with a list of orders going for AUD10.00 if takeaway and AUD15.00 or higher if eaten in the restaurant itself. We decided to do a takeaway order of grilled barramundi with chips and salt & pepper calamari with chips. The lady who served us told us it would take 10 minutes for our takeaway orders to be ready. In fact, we noticed the “10 minutes”  was the standard advice given to anyone who ordered a takeaway from this restaurant. We paid up and decided that we would come back later to collect our takeaway. After about 20 minutes or so, our orders were still not ready. We had to repeatedly asked the staff to follow up our on orders for us. Finally we got our order after quite a long wait. There wasn’t any apology given, it was just “Here’s your order, thank you”.

Grilled Barramundi with chips

Salt & Pepper calamari with chips

We took our food to the picnic table and bench along the beach to enjoy them. As many of us would have experienced, the sea breeze and air tend to make one feel hungry. The grilled Barramundi was fresh but unfortunately didn’t have much flavour. Even after sprinkling some pepper salt and a dash of lemon, the flavour of the fresh Barramundi just didn’t come out. It  would have been better, if they have given some tartar sauce to go with the grilled Barramundi. The Salt and Pepper Calamari fared much better than the grilled Barramundi. The calamari was fresh and chewy and sufficiently seasoned. As for the chips (french fries), it was quite tasteless and not soft. It would have been better if the chips were cooked a little longer.

In conclusion and based on our experience, we would rate the grilled Barramundi 5/10, the Salt and Pepper Calamari 6/10 and the chips 4/10. As for the service, even though it was only takeaway for us, we would rate it only 3/10. It would have been better if the waitress or waiter would have given us a more realistic waiting time so that we can do some planning. Also, it would help greatly if an apology is given for the delay. This is a construction opinion and hopefully the next time when we visit Watervue, the restaurant would fare better in our ratings.