The Centrepoint tower is the tallest freestanding structure in Sydney. For a while there, I am sure it was the highest thing in Australia, or even the southern hemisphere.
Regardless of how high it is, the tower has a feature common to all these tall things - a revolving restaurant. I prefer to call them revolting restaurants, since I have never been to one that has served up the kind of food that I would go back for. They're all about the view and that allows them to get away with a fairly miserable standard of nosh. Don't get me wrong - it's buffet food that is better than boarding school and military buffet food... but that's not saying a lot.
I blame these people for the root of the problem.
We went to the buffet restaurant again last night. The in laws were in town and the idea was to give the kids a treat - and as far as kids with their undiscerning palates are concerned, it's a great idea. Pity that some of the adults have to suffer by going along. I think a better idea would be for the adults to go to the very flash restaurant one floor down, and leave the buffet as a kids zone. Then everyone would be happy.
What gets me about the buffet is the price. It was over $220 for 3 adults and a kid. They really sting you on this deal. Even if you eat nothing but prawns and oysters (which is what I set out to do), I reckon you'll consume no more than $30 worth of food at market rates. And we're talking about cold seafood here - food that requires zero preparation by the kitchen staff.
The buffet had a couple of zones. One was doing salads and seafood (small, cold, farmed prawns, oysters natural, mussels in something, baby octopus in something), another did roasted meats and spuds and things, and the last was doing Indian and Italian - butter chicken and ravioli essentially.
The desserts were beyond the pale. Really. Jelly with no icecream? That is a new low.
They do their best to get you through the place in 90 minutes. We would have been out of there in about that time, if the lifts weren't such a disaster. I think they can only have a certain number of lifts moving at any one time, so one of the four lifts arrives, the doors open, you enter, the doors close and then you stand there for 2 minutes wondering when you will start moving.
My mood was not enhanced when at the start of the whole saga, the security guard at the bottom of the tower bundled us into a lift and then sent us to the wrong floor at the top of the tower. The lift then refused to take us to another floor, and simply returned us to the ground. We then had to go up again. I wasted a good 5 minutes of my life in that lift.
The view was obscured a bit by windows that seem well past their prime. They didn't look clear at all, so the view appeared to be perpetually shrouded in a light mist.
Essentially, it is a big feeding barn for Asian tourists who don't know any better. It's nice to do it once, but after that, the locals should not be allowed back. Given the number of sophisticated and wonderful entertainments and eating places in this state, it's a bit of an embarrasment.
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