Story Bridge Hotel — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Firstly, this is not a review of the waiters who assisted us on the day of Melbourne Cup 2012. They were working in a stressful environment and tried to allocate time to each customer. This posting notes that there were way too many booking customers and insufficient staff.

On arrival for our Melbourne Cup 2012 booking, the party of 4 people were ushered to a corner table. This event was pre-paid. There was a set-menu, and we did note the presence of one vegetarian in the group. We got our nominated table quickly, and there was insufficient airflow. The weather was humid and the crowd numbers did not assist. To that end, one person in our group was quickly unimpressed.

The order for our drinks was taken quickly, and arrived fast. We nominated one vegetarian meal (which was raised again with the Vegetarian Chef). And that was when our luncheon just did not come together. Our table of 4 waited for the entrees, and after many persistent reminders, that first dish came out.

At about 2pm, the Melbourne Cup race occurred.

At about 3pm, the mains were served at about 3pm. Or a good three hours after we have arrived. At this point, the staff were still overwhelmed with the orders, and could not keep up with the orders. This is probably a matter of the kitchen being understaffed, for a major event where bookings have been prepaid, poor planning by management, and poor consideration for return customers.

The Manageress came out and offered to a complimentary wine and fussed over our group at about 330pm but the lunch has clearly soured at that point. Perhaps future customers might want to only visit this locale if it...

We pre-booked a couple of tables for our group and prior to our booking time these tables were occupied - which as it was prior to the booking time was obviously fine.

When it came time for our tables to be used for our event, one table had some lovely ladies who moved straight away but the other table had a bunch of (mostly) nice people on it - unfortunately, one of the blokes at this table were was actually very verbally abusive towards me and called me some really disgusting names when I tried to as nicely as possible "touch base" with his group to let them know that our booking was just about to start....

One of the people in our group went straight to Story Bridge staff members to let them know that we were having some issues...

Enter "Jo from Scotland" a wee lass (not trying to insult short girls .... I, myself am a short-girly as well) who works at The Story Bridge Hotel - she came out, took no-nonsense from anyone and cleared the remaining table we had booked!

She didn't stop with just that - she arrange for our tables to be joined, thoroughly cleaned the tables, made sure we had enough chairs, grabbed us drinks and food menus, along with assuring we had cutlery, napkins and condiments.

We then saw her here and there throughout the night and she always had a huge smile, was absolutely lovely and continued to check on her way passed that we were happy and enjoying our night 😊

So thanks for having us Story Bridge Hotel and thank you so much Jo from Scotland for all of...

Went for a catch up dinner with the inlaws After being ignored by majority of the staff, a girl came over to take our order after about 10mins. As soon as she finished writing down our drinks, she ran off! I was under the impression that an order consisted of food and drinks. Waited another while for our drinks before we could submit our food order. Some place pride themselves on fast service. Our service was so fast that the mains came before the entrée. I had the steak, which was cooked really well. My partner had the salmon which was also cooked well, however the skin was extremely salty and almost inedible. Onto the entrée as it was the order that it had come out. The crispy duck pancakes are under the 'to share' section of the menu. The duck meat was just one drumstick whole, which was so dry it may as well have been deep fried and left out for a few hours. When we inquired as to how are we meant to share it, it was suggested that we use our hands to pull it apart. I wasn't expecting fine dining, but for the price that we paid, we got a below par pub grub experience. Some of the staff seemed clueless, but the place had a friendly enough atmosphere. Would be great for after work drinks or a catch up with friends, just...