Cresta Shopping Centre Dimi’s Fail

Well this post is a double post on our late night shopping excursion to Cresta Shopping Centre for the remainder of our Christmas gifts and a Date Night dinner which turned into a disaster. Okay this is a long post but in summary Cresta Shopping Centre and a restaurant in the centre are the last place that I would send even my worst enemy, they are that bad.

I heard about Cresta converting their free parking into paid parking and I wasn't keen on going there anymore but Lynda wanted to go as she still had a few gifts to buy and with the late night shopping hours on offer out of the heat of the day, it became a little appealing.

The late hours must be a killer for the retail staff working extra long hours but the straw that broke the camel's back was that most of the stores didn't even have adequate air conditioning. Take for example Woolworths, a top of the range retail store, was so unbearable that we couldn't even shop there for long.

Interesting find at Cresta was this Telodex that was packaged as a Retro Phone Directory in what seemed to be the only air conditioned store, Big Blue. We probably stayed the longest in this store than any other due to it's aircon.

With shopping nearly a failure, we looked around to find a suitable restaurant for dinner. Some places had long queues, others more fast food like but settled on a restaurant called Dimi's which seemed to offer everything that we were looking for at reasonable prices. The first thing that hit us was the heat. On a balmy summer evening, even the restaurants at Cresta were like ovens.

I ordered a 500g t-bone steak and Lynda a burger as our main course. When ordering our food, the waiter spelled out all the options that came with my steak. I went with chips and vegetables but the waiter didn't ask how I wanted my steak and just rushed off. I then popped outside and while out the waiter came back to our table to ask us to remind him what did we order for starters. Uhmmm first signs that there was going to be problems.

When I got back to my table, I called the waiter over and told him that I wanted my steak medium, it was then that I found out that the waiter assumed I wanted it well done, sigh. I also asked him for ice for the second time. Our starters came but not the cutlery. I had to call for another waiter to please bring some eating utensils as I tend not to eat with my hands. Not long later our mains arrived but like the starters with no cutlery again. This was starting to annoy us.

Lynda's burger looked okay but mine was just a steak and a few chips. No vegetables nor garnish. It was just one ugly presentation. Where is Gordon Ramsay when we need him? I asked the waiter when he is going to bring my vegetables that I ordered, he answered "sorry" for the umpteen time, this time round was "sorry there is no vegetables". When the cutlery arrived there was no steak knife and I had to ask 4 times for a steak knife, once was the manager, while I proceeded to hack at one tough steak as this steak must have died a natural death. At the end of my constant asking, the waiter replied that I already had the sharpest knife in the restaurant and offered to cut my steak for me. Eish!

After my ordeal and a blister or two from hacking into the meat with a blunt knife, I reminded the waiter that I was still waiting for my second rock shandy that I had ordered when I was eating my starters way back, oh I am forgetting as it was so long ago.

When I got the bill, I noticed that they charged me two different prices for the same drink. The waiter said that he made a mistake and I must just take off the difference as the manager was too busy to correct it. What? Ohh and talk about the manager or maybe it was the owner, this evening in this sweaty hellhole called Dimi's, I saw what I believe is the manager stand one side and shout across the restaurant to a waiter if table the waiter was preparing ready to bring the next group of unexpecting diners in. Was this Faulty Towers? I must say the most spoken word spoken to us in the entire traumatic dinner experience was "sorry". That's it sorry and nothing else but sorry.

Dimi’s is one place I am never going to recommend to anyone and if I could give minus stars I would. Cresta Shopping Centre and Dimi’s Restaurant both are a no go area. Two big FAILs.