The Beach House @ SQ — Restaurant in Hillarys

Incredibly disappointing experience!! We saw the 4kg Cajun boil and thought we would book a reservation for Father’s Day to try it. Come to find out you have to pre book the 4kg boil days in advance, there was nothing on the website or any social media that indicated this!! So we opted to go with Cajun for two only to be told they do not have any, and then proceeded to list other items on the menu they do not have in stock. For Father’s Day that’s pretty disappointing to not have a good chunk of your menu!

Feeling deflated but wanting to try still we decide to go with the TBH burger, Chilli mussels and Seafood sizzle and for desert the affogato and meringue. The staff told us how they were going to be fully booked by 6pm and to order as quick as possible so we did within ten minutes of our arrival. Within five minutes of ordering they delivered the burger. This was impressive but upon eating it the burger was barely passable. The patty was rubbery and didn’t taste right, tasting more like lamb with something else disgustingly awful! I would rather go to Hungry Jacks or Maccas for a burger especially considering we paid over $30 for that burger. The chips were half hot and half cold!!??? No salt or anything, and we didn’t get served any sauce or offered an option to go with. We decided to wait for the seafood thinking maybe this would be our saving grace but oh no it’s gets worse.

It would be another 40 mins of waiting until the chilli mussels would arrive. They. Were. Disgusting!!! A small bowl of mussels, with barely any sauce and they were lukewarm. Opening the mussels revealed these rubbery dry with not an ounce of sauce chunks of meat. We thought for a second we were being punked and that these were completely fake! Within a minute of it being at a table a sever came by and asked if we were done with the meal?!?! What the hell?!? We informed him it had just arrived and we had waited for forty minutes and had only received the burger and these awful mussels. And we asked if he could check on our seafood sizzle. Minutes later he drops it off and oh boy was it hot!! Too hot!! It was absolutely inedibly hot, you were seconds away from a third degree burn on our lips! The single crab on there was anaemic and completely tiny with no pinchers! The prawns were the size of 10c piece and the rest of the seafood on there was disgustingly small or rubbery. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

Very quickly we decided enough was enough! We decided there was no point in even staying or complaining to the staff because clearly the poor severs already receive enough negative energy. We walked out. Didn’t even stay to get a refund or our deserts which I’m sure would have taken an extra hour to be delivered.

If I could give zero stars I would! We are not the type to ever complain but with the amount of social media posts advertising this place we felt it was more than justifiable to help warn others. If we knew how to report to health department we would. It seriously needs an inspection. We even went to our local fish and chips shop and got seasoned, hot food afterwards to save our palates and hunger. Heed our warning fellow foodies, avoid this place and save your hard...

unfortunately I originally emailed my response of our experience to the beach house directly waiting to hear a response from them, guess what I'm still waiting so here is my email to save you going to this awful place... Yesterday the 12th of May 2024 my family and I went to the beach house Sorento to enjoy Mother's Day breakfast we had pre reserved a table for 10. We placed an order at around 10.07 am, we were told there would be about a 30 min wait for orders, (no worries at all its Mother’s Day and the restaurant is pretty booked). Some of the food items we ordered were a Big Breakfast, eggs my way with extra bacon, 2 serves of kids pancakes, we ordered eggs Benedict, and we also ordered a pastry platter (sorry I forget the exact name, but it was $59 really freaking excited about ham and cheese croissants). All the food except what was on the platter was great. The platter however was atrocious, the platter said it had ham and cheese croissants (the only real part of the platter that was really wanted) but the ham and cheese portion was missing (picture attached) , it had cream cheese salmon and caper bagels, the bagel portion was a bit on the solid side and may possibly break teeth, it has assorted pastries and muffins(pastries yes muffins no) the waffles on the top of the platter were apparently good according to the pregnant one in our group . We ordered mimosas they were fabulous and arrived at our table straight away. We ordered two flat white coffees, 2 long macchiatos’, a cappuccino, and an apple juice. Did I mention that we placed our order at 10.07am? so we were happy to wait the 30mins ish to get food and drinks (drinks usually are faster to make) at 11.30 after half of the food had arrived we might have still been waiting on coffees to come to the table and asked how much longer they would be, the “deli” staff insisted that the coffee had been made already but we did not have coffee at our table yet so just asked for that to be looked into we did get 3 coffee’s delivered to our table that were apparently a cappuccino and 2 long Macs (A traditional long macchiato is a double shot of espresso with a dash of textured milk and most of the glass left empty.) the long macs looked like confused flat whites, we waited a further 15mins to see where the other 2 coffees were… no love. The amazing Ollie from the bar then followed up for us to be told we had gotten our coffee, but he could see by the dishes at our table we were correct, and the correct coffee had not bed distributed he was amazing and at almost 12.30 or coffee order finally arrived. The glasses at the Water Station have a good amount of other people’s lipstick on them so if you forgot lippy that day just have a look through the glasses to pick your favourite shade, also maybe use your hands to eat like my beautiful Indian neighbors do as it will be cleaner than using the cutlery that was provided. the staff clearly working thier backsides off we fabulous and really were doing their best unfortunately they were let down by what looked like poor management and...

1st experience at this place: my friend took me here for my birthday. I had the beer-battered fish and chips along with the Pina colada mocktail. The food was okay, but for $20 +, it was not worth it. The mocktail, which cost $14 or $15, was filled with 70% of ice. But overall, it was okay. 5.5/10 rating

2nd time: I pre-booked the 4kg cajun seafood boil for a family dinner. We waited more than 45 minutes for the food; we tried to be understanding towards the staff and did not say anything until they gave our seafood boil to the table next to us, who only waited 10-15 minutes. When I asked them politely about the food, I was told that the waitress had mistakenly given them our order. Then, we had to wait 10-15 minutes more on top of the 45 minutes. The two bowls of rice we ordered were uncooked, so we had to throw them out. Being an Asian, good rice is very important to me. The cajun seafood boil was okay for its price of $99, but the seafood did not taste very fresh—overall rating 4/10.This is a very generous rating by the way.

3rd and last time for me, never again: my friends invited me to the place again, saying they had pre-ordered the 4kg cajun seafood boil. I hoped the experience would be better this time than it was the last two times I went there. But oh boy, we were given the seafood platter instead of the 4kg cajun seafood boil, and when asked the waiter who served the food if that was " the cajun seafood boil", he said yes. The gaslighting was crazy fr- I even asked to double-check again, and he said it was what we had pre-ordered. I honestly thought maybe that ''seafood platter'' was now named the cajun seafood boil since it was completely different things on the plate. Later, we realised that they had given us the wrong order, and the waitress made it seem like it was our fault that they messed up our order. My friend clearly ordered "the 4kg cajun seafood boil" and prepaid it before we went to the restaurant. She also had a confirmation email and showed them as we first sat at the restaurant. The seafood platter was very mid (not good at all for $99- remarkably lacking in flavour), and the mussels need to be washed properly as we chewed on rocks multiple times. So, we barely touched any of the mussels. It was so very disappointing- never coming here again, and not that the restaurant would even care about this. But I hope they listen better and work towards quality improvement in the future to enhance customer satisfaction. As of now, it's a 2/10 overall...