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Attended for dinner last night (Saturday 30/9/17). We are locals and family from overseas. So wanted to impress, but came away very disappointed with …
Lynne Ingram
Barefoot Art Food Wine
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Definitely go to this place. Food is curated, tasty, well presented and their terrace is quiet, nice and romantic. All the experience there was great.…
Ralena
Barefoot Art Food Wine
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Easily the best option for food in Horseshoe Bay. We ate here three times in four days, including both our first and last meals. Our middle meal inclu…
Gotham
Barefoot Art Food Wine
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10 Reviews on “Barefoot Art Food Wine”
I was just raving about this place to my friends who are visiting Maggie soon- and saw that the reviews portray a very different experience to mine.We went to barefoot for a late lunch in April 2016. The ambience was lovely in the back courtyard. The coffee was pretty good.We ordered a main each- I ordered a fish dish and a burger (can’t remember exact details unfortunately) and both were absolutely delicious. My friend highly recommended this place and I’ve done the same to others- hopefully the experience we had is a common one!
Entrees were not bad however they where nothing special either, the bugs on the reef and beef where overcooked and all you could taste was the garlic sauce we where then Offered dessert however they had no ice cream, they didn’t mention that until after we had ordered, all desserts contained ice cream. Drinks where ordinary with only house wines coming by the glass making it a shock they where referring to themselves as a wine bar. The service was very ordinary with the waitresses more interested in socializing with the other backpackers then serving our table overall really disappointing for a restaurant that had won so many awards should have had the $15 Parma at the pub next door and saved $100.
The bruschetta was very average, and the dumplings weren’t amazing. They had maybe a little too much meat in them, and were a little hard. The seafood platter was good, it would have been better if the prawns were already peeled though. Pannacotta was nice itself, but the pistachios were unnecessary. Would haven been nice with the passionfruit and cream. Okay service.
Well done. Great place to eat my bug pasta was delicious . Atmosphere is superb sitting on the back deck is paradise. Good friendly service. We love going here
A real letdown. Our party of four found Barefoot Art Food Wine disappointing. It wasn’t a disastrous evening but it wasn’t a particularly good one either. Our $250 bill at this restaurant should have had seen us wandering off into the balmy Magnetic Island night both happy and contented. Instead, we left in a flat mood as a result of our evening at this restaurant, an unfortunate way to finish off an otherwise joyous holiday on this very lovely island.We had been so looking forward to our visit to Barefoot AFW after discovering the place on our first day on Magnetic Island. It is a nicely appointed establishment right across from Horseshoe Bay and has been thoughtfully renovated. The combination of art and food at the establishment felt right at the time. As such, we asked for a table on the balcony overlooking the water and reserved that very spot. This request was handled politely and efficiently by the restaurant staff. So far so good.In the days since making our booking we had visited a range of eating establishments on the island including Man Friday, Bluelephant, the Picnic Bay Hotel and Boardwalk at Peppers and we had been seriously impressed by each one of them. These places had been very good and truly excellent in some cases. The food was generally outstanding, the service had been friendly and warm and the prices reasonable. Up until this evening at Barefoot AFW, Magnetic Island had seemed to us to be an unexpected gourmet paradise.Perhaps we caught Barefoot AFW on an off night. Maybe its management has unconsciously let the game slip a little now that peak season has passed on the island for another year. Whatever the reason we collectively thought this to be the weakest of the restaurants we visited on the island while at the same time managing to be the most expensive. If you went by price we had every right to think that Barefoot AFW would be exceptional. Sadly, it isn’t and instead it struck us as a place that was well short of where it wanted to be or where it thought it was.To be more particular, here below are the problems we encountered on the night of our visit.First, and most critically, the food didn’t meet the standards of any of the other restaurants we visited on the island during our stay. As an example, the beer battered fish at Barefoot AFW that one of our party had was demonstrably inferior to the one I had had at Boardwalk at Peppers earlier that day at lunch. My bruschetta entree was sort of tasty but nonetheless fell flat for strange and quite avoidable reasons. Bruschetta is usually served on firm bread whereas the bread served here was soft and crumbly. This essentially made the dish irritatingly hard to gather on a fork and eat. Next, my rib eye was a little overcooked (I had wanted medium rare) but also too fatty and grisly in parts. Bottom line: this was not a top steak but rather just an ok steak. This is not what you want for a $35 outlay. My companions also found their meals to be generally just ok rather than great or excellent. Accordingly, there was simply no wow factor with the food at all and the meals were best described as pedestrian and disappointing. We also felt that the dishes were a tad embellished and made unnecessarily complex.Second, the place was clearly short staffed for the night. There appeared to be only one waitress on duty and the poor girl was simply run off her feet. It wasn’t just a case of her having a hard night either. It is highly likely that having to rush around so much looking after everyone upstairs and down led her to get one of our party’s main course wrong. Our friend was eventually forced to accept the wrong dish lest he have to begin his meal about 10 minutes after his three companions had finished theirs. Put another way, he’d come come to eat with us not to watch us eat then eat himself, so he effectively had no choice but to accept and eat a meal that he didn’t order. Other fundamentals were also missed. The table behind us didn’t have salt. Then again, we didn’t have salt either. The people from the other table cleverly swiped one from another table. We, however, had to ask for one. These are simple restaurant basics and they weren’t managed well here.Third, the restaurant’s wine list is much too short. A couple of wines on a page is not a wine list. A decent sized list of wines is a wine list. If a place has pretensions as a serious restaurant as Barefoot AFW seems to have and charges hefty prices as a result, one should be able to choose from a reasonable selection of wines. However, this was not the case here. Three Sauvignon Blancs and a couple of other random whites (eg one riesling) is not a proper list as it gives you almost no choice of decent wine. On the plus side the wine we were able to choose from the very small list was good, ie a Windy Peak Pinot Gris and my single glass of Shiraz (Fifth Leg I think).Fourth, the restaurant is simply too expensive at this point for what you get. Our bill was over $250 for four. Call us old fashioned, but you’d reasonably expect very good food at more than $80 a head. However, the meal simply didn’t justify the high price tag particularly when there is much better food and hospitality on the island at significantly lower prices, or so it seemed to us.To conclude, this was an unfortunate and somewhat deflating experience. I very rarely give bad reviews but I have to give one here. Barefoot AFW is not a good restaurant, or not yet anyway. It had desires beyond its station and the concept and its execution need significantly further thought, planning and work if it is to improve.
This is one of my favourite places on the island because it encompasses everything a restaurant should be. and that is a place that stimulates all the senses and not just you’re taste buds. Fabulous art displayed by local Painters, very talented local Musicians and sometimes touring musicians perform on the deck out the back. fantastic food and all round vibe – 5 stars!
Was a little hesitant about dining here tonight. There was a large function on but service was faultless and the food was amazing. Paying the bill was a pleasure.22 Aug, 2013Had lunch deal which was beautiful food. Staff were very attentive, friendly and cheerful. Going back for dinner.