23/05/2010 Update

A couple of things, firstly i apologize for the terrible writing of the bishamon entry, first go's eh?
secondly i have been talking to some (all) friends about this blog and some of them are keen on guest reviews, and seeing how a lack of money (credit) has stopped me from getting out to review establishments worth eating at there hasn't been a review in a while. Which brings us to today's scathing review of James st Bistro in the valley. Yesterday i went out to James st to have lunch for my cousins birthday. Personally i would not have chosen the place after about 5 seconds of perusing their menu (i'm pretty sure they classify themselves as modern australian gah!) but everyone knows family events. i won't deny that family events are hard to cater for, christ you need to cater for all tastes, because in all family's there is guarenteed to be at least one vegetarian, one person who only eats red meat, and at least one person who doesn't eat red meat and prefers not to have the vegetarian option (its sad but most places only have one or two vegetarian options unless they are a designated vegetarian place). heres the rating for people who don't won't to read a page of text.
James St Bistro
unrated

if you're curious why i didn't rate, only restaurants of a reasonable level get 1 /5 , and service at this place would have been 0 on a regular reviewers scale, i can remember waiting up to 20mins for a drink and then informed that they didn't have that bottle of wine and waiting another 15 mins for the wine to arrive, on top of that there was at least 10-15mins where there was no water on the table, and i can remember quite vividly the look that our somewhat deshevelled party incurred upon entrance to the establishment.

onto the food, whilst the tapas tasting plates that we started with we're of passable quality a lack of oysters ruined the anticipation of such a plate to arrive, with its lack of stand out members to show any value for the 40 dollars it cost for 8 of the tiny plates, but somehow the tasting plate turned out to be the highlight of the day, for the mains (they only do mains at lunch and are still somehow a bistro?) i ordered the wagyu beef burger, and the people around me ordered steak sandwiches and one the vegetarian option which amounted to parsnip and carrot and almost nothing else. the wagyu burger was somehow tough and tasted dry even though the centre of the burger was appropriately pink, the duck egg being the only redeeming feature of the burger(the duck egg on the burger was the highlight of my dining experience). the people who had steak sandwiches suffered from the problem too many brisbane steak sandwiches suffer from, steak so tough (overcooked as well) that the provided steak knife has as much trouble as it would through a piece of fried blade. all in all the food was not of the necessary standard to even consider eating at.