Botanica Bar Salamanca — Restaurant in Hobart

Had the most awful experience!! My friends and I had booked early in the week for saturday night to have dinner and drinks. We thought it was a great opportunity to catch up and support a local business in such a difficult time. We have been to Botanica quite a few times but after our experience Saturday night we will never be returning. We had arrived for our booking and three of us ordered a drink to start while we were waiting for our other friends. These drinks took half an hour to arrive at our table. From the time we got there, we were not offered any menus or any type of service. Our friends ended up ordering some drinks when they arrived. One of our friends had turned to the table behind and was talking to the people at the table. All of a sudden, the manager who told us his name was Jonathan Lloyd, came over and told us we had to leave. He could not give us a straight answer as to why he was doing this, just kept saying we were being aggressive and made the comment that we had too many people on our table anyway. This comment baffled us as we had originally booked for nine of us but only 8 of us ended up going so we ended up having less people on our table than what we had booked. We had done nothing wrong, we were just enjoying a quiet drink. We still had full drinks at our table and our friends were still waiting on their drinks as we were at the restaurant for a whole 40 minutes. The manager refused to give my friends their money back for the drinks that had not arrived but then ended up letting them. Before the manager kicked us out for no apparent reason, I saw one other staff member counting the people in the restaurant which makes me think that they have let too many people into the restaurant and have kicked us out to fix the numbers. This is not at all fair as we had booked far in advance!! My friends and I are all professional people, one is a teacher, one is a professional BMX rider, one works for the radio, just to name a few of their occupations. Myself, I am a university student and work for the owner of Botanica at another business they own. I am appalled at the way we were treated and will not be recommending this place to anyone! I would suggest rethinking your staff and the manager in particular. He was arrogant and rude and clearly is not capable of running a business. At such a difficult time with the pandemic, you would think businesses would be trying their hardest to give good service and encourage people into their business. Hobart is small and word of mouth is a very powerful thing. I have also emailed Botanica but have had no response from...

Last night we came out with some business clients to discuss a important matter, we walked in around 7:30pm and ordered around of drinks and when we were ready to order the food the server at the counter said the kitchen is closed and they would recommend we go somewhere else if we wanted food. Having travelled to many parts of the world and experienced good hospitality and customer care, I can most certainly say that this the worst experience I've had. I mentioned to the server that if the kitchen is closing at 800pm she should have told us in advance so we could have ordered our food, she in turn replies that we should have asked what time the kitchen was closing, and its best that we leave and go somewhere else very rudely and embarrassed my family and guest and asked them to leave. We live in Tasmania where multiculturalism is bested practiced and racism is not tolerated at any time, clearly the two staff members were very racist, rude and arrogant and displayed pure racism towards our guest, my family and me. Tasmania being a tourist destination we accommodate so many cultures from diverse backgrounds, supporting and welcoming people from all walks of life, clearly the actions of these two servers displayed how hateful and arrogant they were to us which clearly is not the Tasmanian sprit.

I request the management evaluate and investigate the attitudes of these staff members instead of defending them.

We walked into Brick restaurant few doors down and we were immediately welcomed and served very professionally.

As an active member of the community I will most certainly take this up with the department of communities for racism and will also peruse to communicate to the Hobart City Council about our experience make sure corrective action is taken to ensure these types of situations will not be faced by anyone in the future.

I will never recommend this place,...

It was my birthday and we planned to go to their country music event that was advertised on Facebook. Door was advertised as being open at 9pm. We watched the social media photos of the. Setting up a country atmosphere. When we arrived there was one hay bale and it was not allowed to be sat on and it was their only attempt at a country atmosphere. I spoke to the manager and she was excellent and acknowledged my disappointment, HOWEVER, she did not mention that we needed to have a stamp to be able to enter later without paying despite being there well before the door charge time of 11pm. The manager promised me a cowboy hat when the DJ started at midnight. When I retuned to the venue the security guards said they contacted her to come down to me but that she refused as she didn’t have time. Reneged on her promise to me OR the security guards never bothered to actually check in with her as the response from her was totally incongruent to her response earlier in the evening. To say we were disappointed is an understatement. Do better please!

Photos are from the following evening where we attended venues around Botanica and had a fabulous time. Shame we didn’t have a positive experience at this venue.

To say I am not impressed with your response is an understatement. I was NOT refused entry under the RSA Laws, I was refused entry because I did not pay the entry fee, as mentioned before. Your mishandling of this situation speaks for itself and to say you investigated and yet did not bother to contact me again confirms the poor management and systems currently in place. Good luck with future events but I certainly will not attend and I encourage others...