The New Embers Restaurant

191 Charlotte Street, Sydney

Not expected to be in business much longer

In the old Fred's Creamery Location

The UAG made its way to downtown Sydney this evening for our September outing. Traffic was extremely busy, but there was lots of parking on Charlotte Street; in fact, we should have known there was a problem when even the member who arrived late was able to park right in front of the restaurant.

Ah yes, if only we had known what awaited us.

Let me take you through our dining experience, which was one of the most bizarre in our two-year history of dining-out.






This new Embers restaurant is designed to resemble a jazz bar, with tables placed at the front of the restaurant and the bar, kitchen and restrooms at the back. We know it's jazz because one of the television screens has a static notice telling us that jazz is playing. The other television screens all show weather data, which never changes and which appears to be someone's computer screen. Sometimes the music is soft, but just when you think you can talk to the person beside you, the sound level very slowly increases. While the music is adjusting itself, the lights tend to blink. We kept asking each other "is the music louder?" "did the lights just blink again?" throughout the evening.

There was a large group of us, so we ordered quite a variety of items! This is not an expensive restaurant - the selections are more than reasonable in price and the portions are a good size. In fact, this is one of the cheapest meals that we've had in all of our travels. So what did we order?

Kettle Chips

Since there were so many of us this evening, we thought it would be fun to try two of the appetizers.

These are seasoned kettle chips and they were served with a spicy ranch sauce.

We all enjoyed them tremendously.

Pickle Chips

This photo is a bit blurry, but that's because the platter was moving by me at quite a pace.

Some people like pickles, some don't.

Yes, these are deep-fried battered pickles! They are served with a different sauce that is actually quite nice.

While we were enjoying these treats, we began to notice that there seemed to be a steady stream of people coming in the door and people leaving. We didn't pay too much attention - we realized later what was actually happening.

We had quite a long wait for our main meal, but we busied ourselves talking about jazz and the weather.

Our main meal choices were as follows:

Rib Combo with Sausage

This UAG member chose potato salad and Mama's Boy Chili for her side dishes.

Everyone who ordered the ribs agreed that they were wonderful. They also agreed that the ribs and the chicken were the only food selections that were not spicy.

Yes, everything except the ribs and the chicken is spicy. It's spicy enough that we had several refills of our water pitcher, but not spicy enough to put down the fork.

Smoked Spicy Sausage

There's that word again...spicy. But again, this was a delicious sausage on a bun with coleslaw.

This coleslaw is made with pineapple, which not only is tasty, but helps to put the fire out in one's mouth.

Rave reviews again for the sausage.

She also ordered a baked potato once she saw how good they were. This turned out to be a lovely combination of spicy foods.

Shredded Chicken Pizza

Several of us ordered the small pizzas and as you can see, they are just a nice size for dinner.

The flavour was quite lovely. In fact, we all enjoyed our choice of pizza.

Everything arrives in these metal cake pans with a waxy paper insert. There is no spillage and very little mess for the waitresses to tidy up, so a good plan for this type of restaurant.

Big Smoke Pizza

This is the same small pizza as above, but this one has sausage on top instead of the chicken.

It was great!

Again, it's spicy - not as spicy as the Shredded Chicken Pizza, but spicy enough to warrant a mug of water.

Quarter Chicken, White Meat with Fries

Looks good, doesn't it? This chicken was not spicy, the fries were well done and the side was that same cooling coleslaw.

Notice the corn bread - if you are a fan of cornbread, you will enjoy it here. The consistency is good and the flavour is mild.

Not many people at our table seemed to enjoy this type of bread, however.

Ribs with Sausage and Baked Potato

Again, the ribs were very tasty, as was the baked potato.

What you do need to know is that the salad dressing that is put on this lovely little garden salad is, you know what's coming, don't you...spicy!

You may wish to ask for the dressing on the side until you make up your mind about just how spicy you want your meal to be.

Rack of Ribs with Mac 'N Cheese

This was another successful dinner - all the items, spicy as they were, were enjoyed.

The Mac 'N Cheese was especially good.





So, I bet you are wondering, if the food was so good, what could possibly be the problem with this restaurant? Yes, we had to wait awhile to order and yes, one of the orders took much longer than it really should have. But let's look at what happened next.

It was time to order tea.

Are you ready for this?  It's a shocker.

Embers Restaurant does not serve tea. Nor does it serve coffee.

Tim Horton's Tea

Our waitress actually told us to go next door to Tim Hortons to buy our teas. This was made even more appalling by the fact that the Tim Hortons next door closed at 6:00 pm.

So what did we do? Two members of the group left the restaurant and drove to the Tim Hortons on George Street so that we could have tea after our meal.

This begins to explain why so many people were coming and going - they were leaving the restaurant to buy their tea elsewhere.

Imagine going out of the restaurant to buy tea and then returning for your dessert and to pay the bill!  It truly boggles the mind.
.

Ice Cream Dessert

So now that we had our tea, or rather our Timmies, it was time to order dessert.

There is only one dessert at Embers: vanilla ice cream over a warmed slice of cornbread, topped with Jack Daniels caramel sauce.

I must say that this dessert is heavenly - you can taste the Jack Daniels in the caramel sauce.

If you are not a cornbread fan, you can order just the ice cream with the sauce.




Now we come to the most bizarre and frustrating part of the evening. Even though we saw our waitress write down what we had each ordered, her slips did not matter when it came time to pay the bill. We had to walk to the bar at the back of the restaurant and tell her what we had ordered. She then punched a series of blue squares on a computer screen to tally each of our meals. Because the music was so loud and because she had to turn her back to us to enter the information, there were mistakes made on each and every bill. Each of us, in turn, ended up yelling across the bar to tell her what we had ordered. One bill had to be redone three times. It was a complete and utter circus - it took us as long to pay the bill as it did to eat the meal. While we were trying to pay our bills, people gave up waiting to be served and left.

To add insult to injury...

If you duck into either of the bathrooms (yes, we checked), you will find this same sign hanging on the wall next to the sink.

I assume that this is because you are supposedly in a Southern US bourbon joint and well, you've probably had too much to drink and you need directions as to how to use the facilities.

It's a shame you couldn't have ordered coffee and sobered up before trying to use the bathroom.

And then the owners of this restaurant would not have to put these rude signs in the bathrooms.  Again, boggles the mind.



We stood outside of the restaurant after our meal and we discussed what had just happened. The consensus was that this restaurant suffers from "cheap" management - no one was in charge of the floor to direct the waitresses and to handle the cash. It may even be the franchise model that is at fault. However, we all agreed that the days are numbered for this eating establishment. The last Embers closed within a few months of opening and the same will most likely happen to this Embers.

If you like ribs, you best get there fast.