Sydney Winter Holiday 2014 (Day 5+7): Pancakes on The Rocks (Darling Harbour) ~ Review

After an afternoon at Bondi, we decided to head to Darling Harbour to get a glimpse of the Vivid show and head off to Pancakes on the Rocks. My brother was obsessed with it that we actually came back a few days later, right before he head off back to SG. This is not their original branch but the location and the view of the Darling Harbour is pretty awesome so we keep coming back to this one.

The menu of course consist of pancakes (both sweet and savoury ones) but they also have pizza and other savoury snacks like nachos and even savoury main dishes like steak. We came on a Friday evening and Sunday afternoon and the restaurant were bustling with people and queues were forming outside too. 

We can see the staff was having some chaotic moments and it is quite hard to get their attention for stuff like to add more orders or ask for miscellaneous like extra tissue or more water. They usually take your order, bring your food and never come back to check up on you until you ask for the bill.

A summary and verdict based on my experience at the Darling Harbour branch before I go a bit more in-depth on the dishes we got:

1. If it's your first time in Australia, Sydney, do visit one of the branch. It's one of the more popular chains over there, besides Hurricane's Grill.

2. It's really hard to go wrong with pancakes. Their buttermilk pancake is awesome when done right.* Their chocolate pancake though is a bit too sweet for my taste. 

3. When I say done right* on top, this is because on the 2 days I came, the consistency of the food is not there. On the first day, the buttermilk pancake was great: hint of sweetness and fluffy. On the second day though, the sweetness wasn't there, the buttermilk was just bland. They really need to work on this consistency thing.

4. When you're in a pancake restaurant, just get the pancakes. The other stuff like the mains and pizza is not that bad, but not great as well. The savoury pancakes and crepes are pretty so-so for me too. For me the star of the show are the buttermilk pancakes paired with the sweet stuff. Full stop. 

5. The pancake I would recommend is the Bananarama. If you're craving savoury ones, I guess the Monte Cristo or the Farmer's Delight (I didn't get this this time, but I had a few years back and I remembered to be pretty good). 

6. Customer service is also something they can work on. There needs to be more hospitality and more attention paid to customers. I have to admit it's hard though due to the many customers they have to attend, but they have gotta try working on this.

Below are the dishes we got on Day 1:

The Nachos is pretty decent. It comes complete with sour cream, guacamole, salsa, jalapeno, chilli and cheese on top. All of them may not be made from scratch and it does not taste wow or anything but if you're craving Nachos and stuck inside Pancakes on The Rocks, it's not a bad thing to order.

The Ultimate. Described as crepes filled with cream cheese and sultanas, served with raspberry coulis and vanilla ice cream.

The combination of the sourness of the raspberry and the sweetness from the crepes and ice cream. The cream cheese filling is not overly rich as the hint of sultanas tones it down. The buttermilk crepe is thinly made and you can taste the hint sweetness it it.

Smoked Ham Pizza. Double smoked ham, fetta cheese, cherry tomato and spicy pineapple salsa on a basil pesto base, topped with snow pea sprouts.

The pizza is pretty decent I guess. The crust is in between thin crisp and regular pan crust and they're quite crispy. The pineapple adds juice and freshness to complement the feta cheese, ham and pesto. However, I would have preferred a more moist base, like tomato base, since I find the dish still quite dry.

Bananarama. Buttermilk pancakes with grilled banana and homemade butterscotch sauce topped with cream and vanilla ice cream. This is MY FAVOURITE from everything on the menu. Cut a chunk of the buttermilk pancake, coat it with the sweet butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream, and a slice of the banan on top and you're good to go. The dish is so sweet but the banana taste balance everything out. Maybe I'm a little bias because I love bananas, especially grilled one that made it rather caramelised.

Black Forest Cherry. Described as chocolate pancakes with cherries in cherry brandy sauce topped with cream, chocolate ice cream, sprinkles of chocolate chips and chocolate sauce. Look at that glorious messiness. It is definitely a very rich dessert with all the chocolate elements from pancake to toppings and lets not forget the sweet cherry brandy sauce with chewy sweet cheery. All of these combine does reminds you of black forest, a VERY rich chocolate sweet black forest. The sweetness is too much for, I think if they swap the chocolate pancake with buttermilk ones, it would've been a better balance. 

On the second visit we got:

Hot and Troppo. Described as buttermilk pancakes with grilled banana, walnut, cream, chocolate ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce. This is when the buttermilk pancake taste bland :( The whole thing does not work well for me probably because I do not like the walnut as it's too overpowering. Had they cut then into smaller pieces, the dish would've been better. And I prefer the butterscotch-grilled banana combination any day. The dish is just a meh for me. 

Fried Calamari. Skip this. It's not worth the money. The calamari is not fresh; in fact, they probably bought it from the supermarket, fry it and serve it. I think you can do better at home. Only order this if you are really really REALLY desperate for a calamari. But then again, I think you would fare better if you jump to any other restaurant next door.

Blueberry Heaven. Described as buttermilk pancakes with blueberry sauce served with cream and vanilla ice cream. This does sounds and looks like a classic. The sweet-sour play from the blueberry bits and sauce could've play better with the ice cream and buttermilk pancake had the pancakes were as good as we had it on the first day. Again, I still prefer Bananarama to this.

Fisherman's Catch. Crumbed fillets of flatheads served with chips, mixed salad, tartare sauce. The small tin can in here is actually gravy. The lady mixed our request of aioli with gravy. Okay this dish is really bad. You can definitely taste how not fresh the flatheads are; it has a fishy smelly taste to it. The fries are just so-so as it's not crispy and salty enough. Oh and the gravy? Bleh. It does not taste like gravy. It taste like a watery, salty, brown sauce which I cannot understand.

Here is the Monte Cristo, which is chicken with smoked ham and cheese inside a crepe and topped with chilli sour cream. I can taste a hint of the spiciness in the sour cream which blends well with the rich smoked ham and cheese. The crepe is also pretty well made, it's thin enough and contains the filling well. I think they could've do better with the presentation - putting it on top of a bed of lettuce just makes the dish look messy.

Chicken and Mushroom Crepe is basically creamy chicken, mushroom and onion filling (which is inside these 2 crepe pockets). One layer of the crepe here is topped with coating of parmesan cheese and served with (special?) tomato sauce and sour cream. 

The reason I put question mark on the tomato sauce is because I don't find the tomato sauce special at all, they probably just dump it out from a can or something.

As for the filling, I have to admit that it's kinda hard to go wrong with chicken and mushroom. It's okay I guess, I find this filling to be pretty so-so, it's not salty and savoury enough in my opinion. The chicken chunks is pretty tender which is a good thing and the parmesan layer helped a bit in the saltiness department. The sour cream is a pretty good topping to add a contrast of sourness to the dish. 

I will not put this restaurant on my blacklist but I sure will order better next time. Thinking of trying out just their buttermilk pancake next time around.