Empress Restaurant — Restaurant in Adelaide

I would’ve no real issue with this restaurant if it weren’t for the fact that they have s* customer service.

A family friend made a reservation for a large group of us to eat for her baby shower. However, 4 of the invitees were unable to make it at the last minute and she kindly told the staff that they could take the empty seats away for other tables since we had guests who couldn’t arrive. However, due to the size of the group, we still had to occupy two tables. When we went to pay, the owner chastised us for not ordering enough to make up for the people who did not attend and that we had to leave as we were not ordering any more food and yet still seated at the tables. Firstly, it is plain rude to get aggressive at a paying customer over the fact that we didn’t order as much as you wished we did. It’s ridiculous that because 3 people didn’t show up, you expect us to order 3 more people’s worth of dishes. Last minute cancellations exist and especially in a world where we live with covid, if the invitees weren’t able to attend due to health related issues, you should be more understanding lest you wish to have another lockdown from another outbreak. Secondly, if you had wished for us to order more food and eat quicker, you should bring out your dishes in a timely manner. We ordered a vegetarian rice roll that took nearly half an hour to arrive at our table. Moreover, it took 15 minutes for tea to be served and any other dishes we ordered through the menu took approximately 20 minutes to arrive. As someone who has worked as a kitchen hand previously, kitchens are always expected to prep many servings worth of ingredients and food before service starts so that service can be more efficient. It’s not a matter of cooking and reheating, it’s a matter of knowing what ingredients you can prepare before freshly cooking the dishes. It is ridiculous for an owner to not realise this yet blame their customers for eating slowly, perhaps being an “award winning restaurant” has blinded you to your restaurants blaring imperfections. Lastly, it’s not as if the bill wasn’t expensive. It’s PRICEY. The food at this restaurant isn’t cheap but even so, we paid in full and tried our best to eat as much as we could. You should NEVER get angry at a paying customer! It’s basic courtesy and honestly, respect. This is a RESTAURANT. The most important people in a restaurant are IT’S GUESTS. I think many of the staff and even the owner should really go back to school and learn some BASIC RESPECT. Maybe even take a class in TAFE for hospitality since it really seems like the staff in the restaurant needs some severe retraining.

In sum, food is decent but customer service is s*. I sincerely hope you learn from this and actually consider taking a step back, stop being so prideful in your “award” and actually fix your customer service issues before it pulls your...

I celebrated my 21st birthday at this restaurant last night, and unfortunately, it turned out to be an incredibly disappointing experience.

From the very beginning, things went downhill. We were greeted with the wrong name and seated in a dimly lit corner on a small table. Despite informing our server that additional guests would be joining us, she rushed us to place our orders before anyone else arrived, completely neglecting our drink orders.

To make matters worse, our dinner and drink orders weren't taken until 45 minutes after our scheduled booking time. This delay left us hungry and frustrated.

Our server, a young girl, seemed utterly unfamiliar with the menu and offered no assistance when we had questions. Her confusion added to the overall sense of chaos.

When our mains finally arrived, we were shocked to find that we were expected to clear our own table of entree dishes to make space. The dim and gloomy corner we were seated in only added to the unpleasantness of this ordeal.

The dessert, cupcakes, my mum bought took an agonizing 20 minutes to arrive after we indicated that we were ready. But that was the least of our concerns—when the small plates for dessert were brought out, one of them had a cockroach on it. This was beyond unacceptable and truly disturbing.

It's worth noting that we had mentioned the occasion was my 21st birthday when making the reservation, but the restaurant's complete disregard for our special celebration and the string of unfortunate events made the entire evening a disaster. I am deeply disappointed and will certainly not be recommending this restaurant to anyone.

I feel compelled to share my experience on your review pages as a caution to others. The lack of proper staff training and the overall quality of service have left me with no choice but to contact food safety authorities. Thank you for turning what should have been a memorable birthday celebration into an unforgettable and...

I was disappointed with our Dining experience yesterday. I understand that you've got a Busy day because it was Father's Day. Im one of the regular Customer who's always happy with our dining at Empress. Yesterday was a Different story. Ive booked from 1130 to 1250. I came in 5 minutes early and ordered ahead for the whole group as the rest of my group was late a bit. I told them they can Served all the food Ive ordered as soon as they are ready, But yesterday did not happened our order came in one by one and the interval of each order was long as in 10 minutes each order. Most of our order was served around 12 30 and around 1244 we are warned that we need to leave our table at 1250 (I was reminded too as soon as I was seated) as the table is book for 1300 seating. Some of our orders that Ive ordered at 1130 was sill not served and How you gonna eat your proper meal for 20 minutes. The serves yesterday was horrible and slow. If you asked for drink you will end up choking as server forget it. You need to ask them twice, thrice for you to have it. Please next time you should anticipate occasion like father's day/mother's Day are really busy and Please only accomodate what you can so you will not have a Bad service. I'm a regular customer since then but It was my first time that you really decrement my expectation. But Food wise still the best Yum...