Vintners Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Angaston

WARNING FOR WEDDING PLANNERS. I normally don’t waste my time writing bad reviews, but my recent experience with Vintners management has been absolutely deplorable and I felt the need to warn others. I recently enquired about hosting our relax wedding lunch for 60 guests next year. After a week-long wait, the manager/co-owner finally called me. They mentioned over the phone that the average takings for a Sunday would be around $12k so that would be the minimum spend, but they would need to double check. I said that was perfectly fine. Coming from hospitality backgrounds ourselves and with guests who love to indulge in quality wine and food, we knew we would well exceed this spend. About 4 hours later, the manager emails me the “wedding package”, not functions package, this was specifically for weddings. The package indicated a $5,000 venue charge, (which was not mentioned over the phone) and a $190 pp food menu including 3 canapés and 3 courses (an odd price considering it costs $89 pp for three courses in the restaurant and three canapés cost $15 - $5 each). I emailed my confusion over the obvious “wedding taxes”, when the manager immediately called. Over the phone they said they would wave the venue hire fee because they assumed we would want to stay until late, which we weren’t - it was a lunch. Then she said they couldn’t budge on the $190 pp. I questioned why it was so high, and after much hesitation, she said it was the “set-up costs” because weddings require a lot of set up. I worked in hospitality for a fine dinning restaurant for years and I couldn’t understand how there could possibly be so much set-up, especially when we had plan for nothing other than place tags for our set-up. She said it was for the linen, glassware, plates etc because “we would have to hire that if we went somewhere else”. After great hesitation, she told me that if it were not a wedding, the cost would be $125 pp, but that these disgusting wedding taxes were charged by every venue and that I should just get over it! These wedding taxes would add up to about $8,500 for absolutely nothing! As mentioned, we both worked in hospitality and so are very well aware that this completely untrue, as many high end restaurants don’t charge these absurd fees (ie 2KW, Star of Greece and Lenzerheide… just to name a few). We both thoroughly enjoy indulgent long meals in high-end restaurants (which we have done around the world), so not only will we be taking of $20,000 wedding lunch somewhere else, but we also not step foot in this establishment while these individuals are...

My friend and I both got the 4 course meal option with wines. We were seated for about 45 minutes before our first courses were served. We waited a good hour before our second courses were served, then probably another 45 minutes to an hour before the mains were ready. We had to ask the wait staff where our meals were, and when we did they magically appeared 10 or so minutes after that. After we’d finished the 3rd course, we were asked if we would like dessert, to which we informed them we’d already ordered the cheese plates at the beginning of the meals when our orders were taken. I’m not sure if our order got lost? But we thought being a Monday evening the restaurant wasn’t that busy and there seemed to be enough wait staff on, so we weren’t sure what the hold up was. When the waitress bought out the cheeses, she semi apologised by way of saying ‘can we get you anything else while we apologise?’ Which was a really strange way of passing them blame?? We were quite disappointed with dinner there, as quite a lot of the vineyards we visited recommended it and after an amazing meal at bar musque the night before, we had high hopes. The food was nice apart from my friends dumplings which were dry and horrible. So far I’ve told a few people not to bother visiting Vintners, unless they have a good 3 hours spare and aren’t...

My partner and I were looking for some local produce and fine dining while in the Barossa Valley and going off other reviews chose Vintners, on arrival we were pleasantly surprised with the setting, once seated we had great service offering drinks and food, after we ordered it seemed things dropped off, the food was quality and fresh although service dropped off, we were asked if we wanted another drink once throughout the night after ordering a 3 course meal plus little bites so 4 courses, so we had no choice but to stick with the water we had rather than ordering more drinks as no one seemed to come near us after first orders, it seemed all attention was on a large booking outside. All courses were great and the steak we had was great also although my girlfriend had a very fatty and undercooked piece of steak which there was no offer to rectify once mentioned to the staff member. We ordered a dessert which took 30 Minutes to come out so we went up to pay and then they realised we hadn’t had it yet so brought it out straight away.

All in all it was a pleasant night but pretty disappointing service and could have been better for the money and the expectations for this type...