The Island Rooftop — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

I booked to celebrate my 21st with 7 friends. We had the $99/ea grazy days lunch. I am easy to please and never write bad reviews but this was terrible and I was really let down from start to finish. When I arrived, my partner and I were confused as to where to go on the rooftop. The venue was empty and no one was there to show us to our spot. We approached the one worker behind the bar, he wasn’t too confident in how to attend us and proceeded with payment in advance. He mistakenly went to charge me $100 extra! We finally were shown our table. No one bothered to ask us if we’d like any drinks to start.. after all my guests showed up it took 20 min before any staff took a drinks order, then they took half an hour to come out! That was each time we ordered drinks!! It was not busy at all. So should be no issue. We had limited time for ‘Bottomless’ drinks and definitely were not able to make our money’s worth. And when I say the first sight of food took a good hour to show.. I kid you not, it was ridiculous and a little embarrassing for me even because my guests were so hungry by then. They were willing to pay for their own but in the end I didn’t expect them to pay me back. The next platter took another 40 minutes! And the third meal, Pizza, came after the two hour time we had for drinks. None of the meals provided enough food. For instance, There were 8 of us, however, only 6 prawns came out and this was the case for each meal! They did not prepare them for 8 people. The food was also not good; there was not a great selection on each platter and was very plain and poor quality for what we paid. With that wait time, you expect something a little better. It was boring waiting so long, the drinks seemed so watered down, and the only thing that ended up making it a good experience was the fact I had my friends there. We spent majority of the time shocked at the experience and agreeing how bad it was rather than getting to catch up and have a good time. The lady serving us didn’t look very happy, didn’t ask what celebration it was for, didn’t get to know us. I work in hospitality and can not imagine providing such poor service. What’s the point of selecting a celebration online for you to just be ignored and treated that way. It’s not that hard to provide just decent service at least.. I don’t want a message response from The Island Rooftop with the same response they give everyone who gives a low rating (most are for the same ongoing issues I’ve listed!) i wish I read the reviews before booking but have been wanting to try if for a while. Big regrets. I feel like I have been so ripped off and just a ‘sorry for your experience’ isn’t going to do anything for me. I want my money back. It’s only a grazing platter but you’d think for over lunch time, the platters would be big enough to fill you up. NO, we literally all went to a restaurant down the road after and all bought late late lunch bc we were all still so so hungry. It was ridiculous, I didn’t want to spend more money but I did and chipped in more for my friends too. I will not only not recommend this place to anyone, I will tell them the experience we had. So disappointed. I’m not sure who is running the shop but you need to know of the terrible service and that this is the standard of service your workers are providing. There are multiple reviews stating the same issues, clearly something...

Myself plus my 4 girl friends had decided to book the Grazy Days lunch event from 12-2pm which was $69pp all inclusive. The way that it was explained online was that it was bottomless selected cocktails, beers & wines and that various “Grazing style” plates of food would come out regularly within our 2 hour slot. What we thought was going to be a nice girls lunch quickly turned to disaster!! Upon arrival we were seated outside and given our menus, not explained how the actual layout of the lunch would work. When we tried to ask the waiter she would just walk off and not give us any answers and not at all was she friendly or helpful. That was unfortunately the first of many problems. We then approached the bar to get a couple of jugs of sangria, we were rudely told by one of the bar tenders that we were only allowed one at a time. So much for “bottomless”. As it started to rain we very politely asked the same waiter that originally seated us if we could be moved to a different table, one that had shelter so that we wouldn’t continue to get wet. This particular staff member replied with “No, there’s no spare tables available”. There very clearly were multiple tables available throughout the rooftop restaurant that were under cover. We sat there proceeding to get wet as the rain wasn’t easing off. 10 minutes later we asked another one of the wait staff and she was able to move us straight away without hesitation. So as to why we couldn’t be moved the first time I’m not sure. We then waited over an hour for our first platter to come out. The time was running out on our booking and we had only been given one little trio of dips within the first hour. Then came the second plate of food which we waited another 40 minutes for. We were awkwardly handed 1 plate of 3 very small lamb chops garnished with one RAW cherry tomato on it. Somehow we were supposed to split this between 5 people? We asked if there was another plate of lamb coming out to our table and we were very bluntly told no by the manager. We all got half a lamb chop each and then the 3rd plate came out, 2 very small bowls of fries, again not nearly enough to feed 5 people, these bowls were more like ramekins. We’re all starving so by this point we were just taking what we could get. As we all bit into the fries we very quickly realised that they were STONE COLD. This was getting to be a joke. The 4th plate came out which was calamari, which thankfully wasn’t bad, but nothing special. Just your average salt and pepper squid that you could have just gotten from the local tavern. By no means was it restaurant quality or up to standard. The overall dining experience was extremely unenjoyable from start to finish. All of the staff were incredibly rude, ignorant and made us all feel like us being there was a big inconvenience to them, it was extremely uncomfortable. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone and we definitely will not...

I already emailed this after my birthday on 22nd Feb. Hopefully service is much better since.

I came in yesterday to celebrate my birthday after hearing great reviews from friends, but unfortunately, my experience wasn’t the best.

From the moment we arrived, a blonde staff member in a long black dress was quite rude. At 2:13 PM, she told us we’d be charged $40 per person (3 people) for any no-shows by 2:45 PM, which we understood. But then at 2:30 PM, she came back insisting we pay, even though all but two guests had arrived. Also insisting we pay for the third guest that didn't show, which she incorrectly counted and there were only two guests remaining. Those two weren’t even given wristbands and had to go through their bank transaction history to prove they had paid—really frustrating.

On top of that, drinks took forever to come out, and the same staff member kept hovering over us with a really unpleasant expression, which honestly ruined the mood.

I had high hopes for my birthday celebration, but after this experience, I’m not sure I’d come back. Just wanted to share my feedback in case this is something you’d want to address.

Edit: there were more disappointing things that happened but this was the email sent at the time. Such a shame as it has a really...