Spice Market - Fremantle — Restaurant in Fremantle

A really disappointing experience. We went pretty much entirely to see Jasmine the robot waitress - which is cool to see in action and the robot is surprisingly speedy yet precise in its movements. It’s slightly annoying watching it go to serve several other tables first with your food sat there too, going cold (when they load it up with multiple tables of food, they put table numbers in each tray).

Unfortunately all our food arrived tepid/cold (including a pork belly dish) making us wonder if it had all been pre-prepared as it wasn’t hot at all and clearly hadn’t come straight from a pan. We asked a (real) waitress if the pork dish was supposed to be cold, she took it back to microwave only to return it just marginally warmer (still no where near ‘hot’). It was very bizarre (other places would absolutely nuke your food if you said it was cold!).

We were sat at the back of the restaurant, and whilst the design and decor is lovely, we were right under a massive draught coming through the roof so we were sat in our coats for the whole time.

We struggled to order from the menu not only because of the sheer size of the menu, but there are 5 pork belly dishes all with pretty much the same ingredients yet the photos look completely different. Ordering is done by scanning a QR code and ordering through a web browser, but it lacked detail so you needed to refer to the paper menu first, before searching for the dish name on the web page. A bit clunky, and you have to order everything in one go rather than some drinks and starters first, and see how you go. The drink I ordered arrived as we were finishing our meal (whilst my friend’s drink arrived shortly after placing our order).

It was a shame because the food presentation is excellent, as is the range of dishes and drinks, and I genuinely enjoyed the food flavours - though it all needed to have been actually heated up. The bao buns and peanut rice were delicious (despite both being served cold); though the duck pancakes were another let-down as you’re served three small, floppy pre-wrapped duck pancakes and they very quickly just fell apart as you tried to dip them into the hoisin sauce.

Nice to get a video of the robot waitress but I...

We went for dinner this evening (18/02/2024) at 7pm Table 4. When we walked in, I asked one of the waitresses if we are allow to choose the table. They started to talk in their own language aggressively and said to me “no”, and then she grabbed the menu, and brought us to a table where we can sit, I then asked the waitress, if we can move to the other table, to table no. 4 because the table that she chose for us was next to a window that was very hot. The waitress looked annoyed and did not say anything but just suddenly move our water to table no 4. We then carry on to order our foods. When our food arrived, I asked the waitress if we could have more cutlery, she didn’t respond, but just walk away and gave us the cutlery we needed, her customer service interaction was very inappropriate as she just thrown the cutlery into the table, no eye contact and no words and left. Very rude. We then carry on to finished our food, and when we’re about to leave, I’ve asked one of the waiter if we could have a paper bag for our takeaway food, he seems really busy at the time so he told me to grab the paper bag from the front counter, so I went to the front counter and grab the paper bag, however, another waitress that served us before come up to me and said “you can’t take this paper bag as you should pay 30 cent for it” so I replied that “I’ve been told by the other waiter that it is ok to grab the paper bag from the front counter.” The waitress said, “you can have the plastic bag as its free” I haven’t had a chance to reply and she rudely snatched the paper bag off my hand and switch it with the plastic bag and left to the counter. I was looking for the manager at that time when this happened but couldn’t find the manager so we decided to leave.

What just happened this evening at Spice Market Fremantle with the customers service was very very poor and uncalled for. It is a shame as I really like this place and always recommend it to my friends and family. Hopefully the management can reflect on the poor service and hope that this can...

Just had my third visit to Spice Market. I thought it worth going a few times to see if it was just a bad night for staff. After going three times on different nights of the week, I can say the food is delicious - though they do not adequately train their staff and have no clear management.

Having started working in restaurants when I was thirteen, I understand the stress of the job - though each time I've been to Spice Market, it's been relatively quiet. Nonetheless, the staff just keep getting too much wrong, too often (leaving plates and empty bottles, bringing the mains out before the entree, not knowing the names of dishes, leaning over the whole table, no eye contact and mumbling, etc.). A few times I asked them for service - to bring us water, take away empty bowls from the over crowded table etc., and was met with vacant disinterest (the water never came, an empty dish eas take and thr rest left due to failure to actually look at the whole table). It feels like they have not been encouraged to take pride in their work and their restaurant. The resulting experience is more fastfood than restaurant.

It sucks, because you don't want to pull the staff up on it - they're young and clearly not aqequately trained and managed. Though this is not simply a matter of age - similarly young staff up and down the cappucino strip do their restaurants proud and are delightful. Whatever the cause of the issue, the result is offputting and demoralising - Why risk returning and regretting your restaurant choice?

Again, the food is very nice. I hope the service and accountability seriously improve, and wish Spice Market all the best as it continues to develop. Food-wise, it is great contribution to the...