Hail Mary — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

Was really excited to go but when we got there the service was so woeful that it was hard to stay and eat. Had a late sitting but still waited 30 mins to have anyone ask us for drink or food order, even though there were staff galore wandering behind the bar for a chat or rearranging water bottles on the bar. The two bar tenders were churning out drinks and seemed to be the only ones working, even the manager walked past us twice with no interaction, I thought the menus and hungry eyes would have been a giveaway. Food was average and then they overcharged us on the bill, had a “3 tacos for $24” but still charged us individually. Can’t even go back to argue it as the service made me so mad I don’t want to step in the doors again. If it was possible to rate the service lower I would.

Edit in response to Simon the owner: Thank you Simon for your response, I feel that I need to clarify a few things just so that you take my feedback a bit more seriously than the “we were busy” excuse. I would not usually respond but your response has would me up as you have not listened or checked properly. If you are going to come back to a customer with excuses, you might want to make sure you have checked thoroughly enough

I can confirm that after we arrived at 830, by no means were your staff run off their feet, otherwise we would have been served and the blonde guy would not have been moving water bottles around. Yes we did order 16 mins after arriving but if you were to look closer, it was us ordering drinks through the QR code on the table as we were sick of waiting for service. We would have also ordered the food but you don’t have that functionality. If you were to look at the food order time stamp, it would confirm that none of your staff had approached us sooner than 30 mins. We also had to ask for cutlery and sauces as your staff member was too busy setting up empty tables that were not going to be used, as you stop taking food orders at 9. We were aware of the $1 surcharge for the pork belly, so that is fine, what you haven’t explained is how we were charged $79 for an order that should have been: Chilli lime squid $19 3 tacos (with the pork belly) $25 3 tacos $24 That...

The place looks great and the servers are friendly (especially the the gentleman with the tied back hair that served us). But looks is all it is and better left on intasgram.

First in the door and first to order but third to get our meals, Luke warm and blannnnnnnd. I can assume our meals were sitting to the side while we saw our kids quesadilla dying on the pass for 5 minutes.

Both my Cajun Taco and Chipotle Burrito had no heat or spice to them at all and were a struggle to get through.

This place has so much Hype but that's all it is.

Edit in response to owners response.: It's a chefs responsibility to serve all food items ready at similar times. If one item takes 10mins and another 5mins you don't start them at the same time otherwise one will be sitting on the pass dying for 5 minutes which according to you is what happened tonight.

The amount of time didn't matter as the food was not hot at all, as you could see from your cameras I was able to eat my Burrito straight away. We touched all our food to see the temperature as we knew after watching it on the pass it was probably cold. Not what you'd expect from a full service mexican.

Mentioning it to anyone would of achieved nothing As I highly doubt your manager would refund the order and we were not intrested in waiting for remake. Your servers knew we weren't happy but they clearly weren't intrested.

Mr Oxley if you took some of that salty attitude and added it to the food maybe it wouldn't be so bland.

Edit in addition to Simon's edit.

I think we established your cliente is white girls. When I say bland I mean bland. Chipotle and Cajun are not super spicy seasoning at all. I went searching in the chicken hoping for some paprika to pop up sometime. Maybe I just got a bad one who knows but that piece of chicken had less...

They say to approach the staff if you have issues so they can help, and I’m a firm believer in this too…. BUT my experience from the staff at Hail Mary failed to deliver.

Two of the people in our group, who ordered first, failed to receive their food. We waved down a server after an hour of waiting only for her to notify us that their orders had not gone through on their system (this is actually not the first time that this has happened to me while eating at Hail Mary) she checked their confirmations and then asked if they still wanted their meals. After confirming that they would still like to eat, we were told it would be an additional 10 minute wait time. I asked if we could possibly arrange for something to make up for the inconvenience of the wait. We were told that she would have to speak with the manager.

A plate of corn chips arrived, along with simply being told that they were for us to eat while we waited.

Once everyone had finally eaten, we went up to finalise our bill. I asked if we could have one of the jugs waived; and was offered a discount of 10% on a single jug, a saving of $3. I was then told that the chips were complimentary, but there was no mention of that, nor an apology, when they were delivered to our table.

This place is decorated for the perfect Instagram photo, but that’s about it. If you want some excellent Mexican food, I suggest heading into Palmy, or even down to Brunswick Heads.

The management team only care about making money. I have given this venue more than a couple of chances and they have failed to deliver, which is disappointing.

I look forward to their generic, passive aggressive response apologising…. sometimes actions speak...