The Walnut Restaurant - Brisbane

We came before going to see the bodyguard musical and what a night it became!! The musical was awesome and we got in the theme of it and went to the walnut restaurant for their pre theatre menu which was delicious across the board (11 guests). Two courses at 49 was an absolute steal considering great food, service and the beautiful wood finish interior.....quite fancy

Gorgeous crystal chandeliers, polished walnut wood, beautiful leather chairs, peaceful botanic garden view, love this atmosphere, so elegant.We had "twice-cooked blue cheese souffle" which was fluffy, tasty and melting in the mouth. "Market fish" today was Barramundi. Crispy skin, tender fish meat coming with broccolini, creamy mashed potatoes and salsa verde. Beautiful dish. "Wild mushroom ravioli" was very tasty and lots of mushrooms.All waiters and waitress were polite and friendly, especially our waitress Ayumi, made our lunch extra special. We enjoyed very much.

My friends and I had an average experience here, we enjoyed some dishes and some dishes were below average. Luckily, we booked through dimmi and received 50% off food bill. We felt that all the dishes were quite under seasoned for our palate, we ordered the duck salad, salmon salad and blue cheese soufflé for entree. The salmon was delicious and probably the highlight dish for me. Mains we ordered the lamb rump, spatchcock and crab spaghettini. Unfortunately again all quite under seasoned, I ordered the lamb which was quite dry and didn't really hit the mark for me On a positive note the service was excellent and very attentive!

We quite enjoyed our meals and the atmosphere of the restaurant, however we did find that we waited 1 hour for our entrees and even 40 minutes for a drink to arrive. It was probably an hour between entrée and main, and luckily we didn't want to order anything else because no one was coming to ask us. We definitely felt like we were not the favoured customers, since others were getting service much more frequently than us. Service was probably the worst we've experienced, we had 1 top up of water the whole night, and it took us 20 minutes just to flag down someone for the bill. It is unclear that once you get the bill you should go to the front of the restaurant to pay (since we did see someone else pay at the table). In the end we chose to leave rather than order dessert in hope that we wouldn't spend the whole night waiting for food and no service.

The only thing I can say about dinner tonight is nothing excited about the food which is such a shame for a nice atmosphere like this. service was quite average and nothing is screaming fine dining from this restaurant.Let's start with the foods! For starter, we got the natural and Kirkpatrick oysters to share. They are NOT fresh at all and definitely cannot be shucked out. Entrees were the pan seared scallops and smoked duck salad. Scallops is great with a beautiful caramelised colour outside and well cooked inside ( indeed it is the best dish of the night) . About the tea smoked duck, the duck itself is great but when combine with the other components of this dish being the beetroot and lettuce , it becomes tasteless. For mains, we got the eye fillet and spanner crab spaghettini . We ordered medium rare but it was over cooked . Probably the best element in this dish was the mashed potato which has quite a smooth and creamy buttery texture . The spaghettini doesn't have any flavour and quite ordinary , so much worse than a homemade dish. I were very excited to try the bomb Alaskan but it is such a let down , frozen berry ice cream and we cannot even finish 1/3 of it. Latte panama cotta is ok but the biscuit came with it was such a confusing element.Besides food, service was not up to standard for a fine dining restaurant. We ordered kid meal for our little boy but it came around 5 mins later than our mains after I asked couple of people where it was. I also questioned which type of fish they used for the kids fish and chips and the answer was some type of white fish. She was quite unhappy when I asked if she could go ask the chef . Well, the answer was they thought it was a flathead.For our whole time there, not once we were asked how the food were so we could let them know the feedback.Well, after tonight I don't think I will go back here again!