The Ageing Frog Fish Bar — Restaurant in Beechworth

Arrived at 1.05pm. It was brusquely pointed out to us that eating in, i.e.sittiing at one of the two interior tables provided, was not really satisfactory since they "close soon "(2:30).....anyway she took our order but was surly about doing so.....we sat down, it was hot and the interior stank of old cooking oil. There was no aircon, but there was a cheap pedestal fan which I turned toward us to provide some relief from the oppressive atmosphere in the shop. I was quickly told not to touch it because it "doesn't work very well"....indeed it did stop, but I got it to work with a small adjustment of the switch.....Imagine our shock when after about five minutes the rude woman came out from behind the counter and turned the fan away from us!........The food arrived after some fifteen minutes or so. Octopus tentacle (singular) turned out to be the tentacles of those small frozen octopus from Asia. There were several of them, and they were crumbed and deep fired to very dark brown. They were virtually inedible being overcooked to the point they were stiff. Disgusting! The potato cakes were battered and a little under-cooked. The batter had sealed on the outside making them the perfect vessel to contain the large amount of oil on the inside. They mostly went into the bin at the front of the shop. The 'house made' beef spring roll was basically a sheet of pastry with nothing but mince in the centre and deep fried. It wasn't as inedible as the octopus and the potato cakes, but it was a long way from what a spring roll should be. The addition of some cabbage and carrot would improve that item greatly. My partner had whitebait, and said they were OK, but greasy. Prices were not too high and acceptable. ADVICE TO SERVER :- It cost nothing to be courteous to customers, but being discourteous costs your business repeat custom. If you are courteous customers can usually forgive a few food fails. Fortunately for you, Beechworth lives on visiting clientele, and so there will be always new customers will attend your shop, albeit only once if your rude...

Food tasted it was deep friedx3 re heated. blanched in oil , re blanched in oil then again in oil to serve it gave me a stomoch ace.chips was pretty much fried batter and potato cakes fried to many times . I needed to ask a question to the lady taking orders about nearest public toilet while we ate( we had young kids ) , but as I asked her the phone rang and she left me mid conversation and started talking on the phone . Then as I thought wow that’s rude , the cook came out from the back and bent over to grab somthing from behind the counter and his butt ( bottom) crack was hanging out infront of me and my kids ! This isn’t even to mention the dirty look we got arfter receiving our food as they were closing in 20 min and we wanted to sit in the dining seat to eat. Bad experience The food was really bad , refried over and over . Think the kicker was ignoring me to answer a phone, I was a allready payed customer, once we paid we felt like you just wanted us to...

After reading some great reviews on Facebook on how good these homemade potato cakes were we decided to head over to try for ourselves (we live in a neighbouring town). Upon entry we were greeted with “we close in 10 mins so if your going to order you can’t eat in” maybe an hello or a smile would have been a better way to greet? Then once the order was taken the owner repeated herself again saying “you can’t eat here” to which I responded we were never going to eat here anyway we are heading to the lake” around 2 mins after we ordered we realised we forgot to order the spring roll so we just called out “hello” to which the male owner out the back said to the wife “go and see what all the fuss was about” after she came out and we asked for a spring roll it seemed as though the female owner may of had an issue with her eye as it seemed to be rolling in our request. Now the chicken nuggets 10/10, spring roll 10/10, chips 15/10, potato cakes 6/10 (far too oily)...