New Brisbane

Cha Cha Char - Come for the food, leave for the service

It’s the annual work Christmas party and, after a year of not participating in Friday drinks due to its limitation to beer and wine, I’m looking forward to generously partaking of the one night of the year where the company employs an open-bar policy - the plan is to get drunk as a preacher and tell my co-workers what I REALLY think of them, while enjoying a meal at Brisbane’s award-winning Cha Cha Char.

cuvée lounge
Sofitel Hotel
249 Turbot Street, Brisbane
+61 7 3835 3535

Cha Cha Char
Shop 5, Plaza Level
Eagle Street Pier BRISBANE
+61 07 3211 9944
Monday - Friday 11.30am till late (last orders 11pm)
Saturday - Sunday 5.30pm till late (last orders 11pm)

Five o’clock rolls around and we all scamper home to make ourselves look pretty, for people we wouldn’t normally piss on to put out a fire, reassembling around 7pm at the Sofitel’s cuvée lounge for a few pre-dinner drinks. After getting accused of drinking straight orange juice for my first drink, on the second drink I trade my screwdriver in for a look at the cocktail menu and instantly start a scandal as several co-workers follow my lead. I always was the rebel leader.

The cocktail list at the cuvée lounge contains a range of pleasant twists on a number of classic recipes, as well as a few of their own flavour concoctions that we were all impressed by. I myself sampled the Dijon Daiquiri, which added a delicious raspberry detour to Hemingway’s classic that I quite enjoyed. In fact, I would have encouraged the rest to stay there all night had management not shut down the bar tab the instant they saw a tray of colourful drinks head to our table. A mere coincidence, I was reassured, as we had a restaurant reservation to make.

Having heard great things about Cha Cha Char, I was quite looking forward to my meal at what was described to me by one friend as a “fine-dining steakhouse”, or “shit hot awesome” by one of my less cultured friends. Sadly, while the meal was superb, the service was absolutely terrible - the most telling sign being that after two and a half hours there, drinking as much as I could on the company’s tab, I left the restaurant sober.

As we entered the restaurant, we were ushered past the standing-room bar (which was literally bursting at the seams) to our reserved table, and were promptly seated and presented with menus. Fast forward to 20 minutes later and we’re still waiting to even be asked if we would like anything to drink. Another 20 minutes later and we’ve got our first drink, but we’re yet to be asked if we’d like an entree. Finally, after an hour we’ve ordered our entree - and I’m waiting on my second drink.

It’s around 9:30 and we’re all starting to get a bit hungry by this point, so they serve us a bread roll each - which we paid $3.50 for and which was quite stale. Not only that, but the ‘helpful’ waiter has been around to top up everyone’s wine… mixing merlot into some people’s cab sav in the process. I’m not the world’s greatest wine connoisseur, but I do know that when you’re paying $50-100 per bottle of wine, that you don’t want them mixed together.

Shortly before the arrival of our entree, Mr Helpful comes around and takes all our knives away, presumably to replace them with steak knives. In doing so, he drops my knife on the floor and, not trusting him to reach between my legs to retrieve a knife, I helpfully pick it up for him - but he’s already vanished from site.

Out come the entrees and I dig into my wagyu beef spring rolls. Cooked to perfection, the spring rolls are delicious, and the dipping sauce served on the side is just sweet enough to be the perfect complement. Across from me, a very hungry co-worker is wolfing down his Wagyu fillet and gnocchi, raving between bites about how delicious it is and how perfect the size is. Next to me, another co-worker digs into his strip of lamb with Moreton Bay Bugs - as someone who lives on the NSW coast and is known to eat a variety of extremely fresh seafood, he’s not disappointed in the quality. In fact, all around the table, I see happy faces showing each other what they’re eating, and telling each other how delicious it is - all but one, that is.

It seems that no matter how far technology progresses, it will never be fool-proof, as an order does not “instantly transmit wirelessly to the kitchen” until you actually put it in the PDA. Mr Helpful apologises for his lapse, and as we’re all finishing our entree, our co-worker receives his. All this, and my second drink has sat empty for far too long, as I await the chance to get it refilled.

Sometime later (yet still only on my third drink), the main course arrives. Noticing I’m without a fork since it was whisked away with my entree, Mr Helpful’s companion asks if I need a fork. Dodging the obvious sex joke, I jollily reply “No thanks, I’ll just eat it with my hands”, which he thankfully understood as a joke, as a fork miraculously appears mere seconds later. I didn’t ask where he pulled it from.

Despite this, everybody gets what they ordered at the same time this time around and amazingly nobody is forgotten. While cooked a little closer to blue than medium-rare, my rib fillet is rather delicious - it is quite obvious that prime cuts of beef are used at Cha Cha Char and I am rather disappointed now that I didn’t get the Wagyu fillet, which I am assured was delicious and melt-in-your-mouth tender. My only complaint with the main was that the “double cream mash” was rather dry - and Gianni’s in Venice, Italy retains my much-coveted “best mash ever” award.

As the night is wearing on, and the kitchen wants to close, dessert menus are presented and dessert is delivered rather speedily. My white chocolate mousse was delicious, though it would have been made better had they not used such a sparing portion of the raspberry coulis and accompanying fresh berries (if I can get strawberries at $3.00 a punnet, surely they can spare more than half a strabwerry on my expensive dessert). Others also had great things to say about the desserts that they had ordered.

The one saving grace of Mr Helpful is that at the end of the night, when someone ordered one last scotch and coke to round out the night, he intuitively brought three of them, one for myself and one for the other drinker at our end of the table. Although he claimed “This one is out of my tips” (a fact I find highly dubious, as you would have to do something that earnt you tips first), what I really appreciated was the fact that he brought me a drink without me asking. Unfortunately, it did not make up for the standard of service throughout the rest of the night - he really didn’t want to be there, doing that job.

All up, the food at Cha Cha Char was top-notch fantastic, even if the service was more on par with a prison cafeteria. Being the generous sort that I am, I would definitely give the place another try, because I believe you have to try a place twice before you get a good feel for what it’s ‘normally’ like. Then again, with a city full of restaurants that serve great food, you may not be as forgiving.

Follow-up: A few weeks later, my father was in town for work and since he was paying for the meal, I once again got to eat at Cha Cha Char. Thankfully, while Mr Helpful was still around, we had a different (better) server that night. Unfortunately, my beloved Wagyu Spring Rolls were no longer on the menu, I convinced my dad that the Wagyu rump was worth a try, winning over his initial argument that “a rump is not a choice cut of meat”. We could not have made a better choice and once again I found the food to be delicious with the service the only thing bringing it down. In the words of my father, “if I’m paying $45 for a steak, I shouldn’t have to spend another $3.50 on a bread roll”. I’m sure that if they jacked up their prices by $5 and gave the bread roll away for free, that people would be talking about the cool dipping sauce and jus they got with their roll, and not that the steak was $5 more expensive. Some more entrées on the menu would also be nice.