Mountain Ridges - Katoomba

I love the fact that the ambience is not pretentious at all and it looks cozy and welcoming. It looks like a café, but I'd say the food is a high quality restaurant. The lamb was super good and delicious and the sweet potato and pumpkin soup was perfect for the rainy day. I was very pleasantly surprised. Yummy

Great staff, really good food. Beautiful ambience with a talented singer and guitarist who sings some great songs but not too loud. Really nice place, we're going up the mountain this week to eat in Mountain Ridges.

The food was amazing. The bacon-wrapped asparagus, 300g steak, and large salad were all delicious. The waitress was friendly and helpful. However, there were two drawbacks: the restaurant only offered cow or soy milk, and there was an employee smoking a cigarette at a table near the front door. It was off-putting and made me want to leave, especially with children around. They should consider adding almond milk to their menu and enforcing better rules about smoking near the entrance.

We ordered two salads and two ice cream coffees at the restaurant. The restaurant was not very busy, with maybe two other customers, but it took a while for our food and drinks to be served. We requested a Caesar salad with chicken from the menu and a Caesar salad with shrimp and sauce (not on the menu, but our server said it could be prepared). Unfortunately, instead of receiving the requested Caesar salad, we were given another shrimp salad from the menu. It appears that the staff does not pay close attention to customer orders, as we noticed similar issues with other customers. Despite the poor service, the food was delicious, and we thoroughly enjoyed both salads and the coffee.

Went here recently for some takeaway food and although they advised they didn't offer any, I suggested they might be able to and asked if the chef could use their coffee cups as an alternative. This is a tricky review. My personal experience was 5/5, I was so impressed by the chefs effort to flex and we managed to enjoy a lovely local movie with yummy food as a result. Looking through the reviews though, I would agree. I think they serve delicious food, have a great selection and fantastic little origami creatures in the walls, however I would possibly look to get staff with more initiative, who love customer service (I'm surrounded by them in Sydney). Other folks waited ages to be served when I was there and the waitress staff just seemed to be wanting for time to pass. Maybe good staff are hard to get in the area, I'm not sure. However business seems to be slower here as a result and so I do suggest priority be given to chirpy, happy to help customer service oriented staff.