Fiasco's Steakhouse at the Morrison Hotel

Please see the update on this restaurant as well!!

We went to dinner at Fiasco's Steakhouse at the Morrison Hotel last night, after a recommendation from a friend. DD likes Hog's Breath Cafe and A couldn't believe that he would choose Hog's Breath over another steakhouse. This made us admit that we've never been to another steakhouse, so this visit was arranged.

Fiasco's takes up almost half of the downstairs part of the Morrison Hotel in Woolloongabba. It's split into two dining rooms and an outdoor area, this does mean that the service is sometimes lacking. I know that it isn't an excuse, but it must be difficult to cover three areas that are so segregated. They could probably fix this by assigning wait staff to a particular area, but who I am to tell them what to do?

As it is a steakhouse, the menu is predominantly made up of steak. They have some impressive looking entrees, including oysters and calamari, but we didn't order entrees this time. Fiasco's recommended dish is the premium eye fillet. It's 180 or 300g of rib eye fillet steak wrapped in bacon and served with your choice of sauce, salad and chips/potato. Five out of the six of us went that route, and the picture of my dish is above. DD was the only one that chose otherwise, and he had the rib fillet, which was just a nice piece of steak.

With your steaks you can choose from a variety of sauces, including a pepper sauce, mushroom sauce and a herb and garlic butter. The side salads are a choice of a garden salad or caesar salad and you can choose between chips or a baked potato. A had told us that one of the reasons you come here was because when they give you a plate, you can enjoy eating everything on your plate. There's not a garnish that's masquerading as a salad which you push aside. I have to agree with him here, the caesar salad was really lovely (except slightly heavy on the dressing) and the chips were light and crunchy and everything was generously served.

I ordered my steak medium rare, and the steak was cooked to perfection. My only complaint was that the bacon surrounding it was cooked until it was crispy, almost blackened. This also happened to some of the outside of the fillet, and I'm not sure how they managed to do that without ruining the inside. I didn't like the dry, crusty feel of the outside at all, and I will not order the premium eye fillet again for this reason. The inside of the fillet was fantastic though - really juicy and it tasted wonderful.

Everyone enjoyed their meals and they were all quite reasonably priced, with the bill only $160 for the 6 of us (although there were only 3 drinks included). The thing that let Fiasco's down was its service. While its food was good enough to ensure that we will return, the service did make the night not run as smoothly as it could. We had booked a table for 8pm and when we arrived we were advised that they were running late and to check back in 10 minutes. We had some drinks in the bar while we waited. We were finally shown to our table at 8:30 and while we did receive our meals by 9:00pm, we really didn't see any staff at our table after that. DD and A had to go the bar to order more drinks. Our bill was delivered by a wait person who walked up to a point where she was as far from the table as she could be and still reach over and slide the bill onto the table and then she went away. She didn't even say anything to us. We had not even been given the opportunity to have dessert because no one had come back to our table since the meals were delivered. In fact, she was so quiet when she delivered the bill, that when someone came back to collect it quite a few of us hadn't noticed it was even there.

It was a little disappointing, but nothing that would ruin the night, which was good because of good food and good company. If there wasn't good food, nothing would entice me to return, because I really feel that regardless of the layout of your dining areas or how busy you are, you need to provide service beyond taking orders and dumping plates.

Overall, Fiasco's saving grace was that it did cook a good steak at a reasonable price.

After dinner we still felt that dessert would be a nice palate cleanser after the heavy meal and since we weren't given the opportunity at the restaurant we hunted down a gelato store. We stopped at Re Del Gelato in New Farm. I had tiramisu and burnt sugar and DD had chocolate and mint. It was lovely and creamy and everything gelato should be. It finished off the night nicely.


Fiasco's Steakhouse
Morrison Hotel
640 Stanley St
Woolloongabba
Ph: 07 3391 1413
(bookings highly recommended)

Re Del Gelato
706 Brunswick St
New Farm
Ph 07 3358 2177