Frank Restaurant — Restaurant in Hobart

Having had a fantastic experience at Porteño in Sydney, another Australian/Argentinian fusion restaurant, I had high hopes of this restaurant in Hobart harbour. Sadly it failed on many counts. I'll list just three for brevity's sake.

The service: they're understaffed, and the stress levels are immediately apparent as soon as you enter, from the greeter to the server. Nobody has any time to spend with you, unlike Porteño, and most other good restaurants I've been to in Oz, where the servers will take time to build some rapport by having a chat. I wasn't even offered any water and had to ask for it after my first course had arrived. The young inexperienced server went through the motions when made to, but her impatience was tangible. Getting her attention was hard as she seemed to have blinkers on and didn't look around her tables, most likely due to the stress levels caused by being overworked by management. Towards the end of the meal, she asked me three times if I'd finished, when I clearly hadn't.

The hanger steak: it arrived virtually cold, on a cold plate, as others have commented in other reviews. I appreciate steaks need to rest a while after being cooked but the kitchen needs to invest in a plate warmer, and cover the steak while it's resting. Seasoning was also sub par. To their credit, they replaced it when I was asked if it was okay, but the substitute wasn't much different.

The cutlery: in terms of shape, the steak knives are imitations of what you'd get in Argentina but they are serrated, rather than clean edged, so they tear the meat rather than slicing it, another complaint in the Google comments that hasn't been acted on.

My conclusion from this is, don't eat in the harbour area. Due to the location and the high rents involved, the owners are cutting their overheads by understaffing and cutting corners wherever they can. I could go on, but being negative really isn't my thing, unless driven to it.

If you want to read about a real steak restaurant, search for 'Gannet39 Buenos Aires' or even 'Gannet39 Surry Hills'. Yes it's my travel blog, but it's an unpaid and impartial diary, so you can get my honest opinions. I'll happily incorporate the management's response, if any, and will reply to it on there.

Hope the management will finally listen to the repeated criticisims from myelf and many others, but I think that's very unlikely as they're obviously all about the money and couldn't give a fig about their customers.

Hope that you have a better experience...

It was just terrible everywhere. It was ridiculous to start with a waiter. We asked the soft drink list, and the waiter didn’t know what the restaurant sells. That was just a start. Any simple Q we had he couldn’t give us an answer, basically, he wasn’t ready on the floor, not trained to serve the customers who came to Frank for delight eat out experience.

How bad it was, We had Feed me for our lunch. When I booked I added ‘30th birthday lunch for an Octopus lover’ It seemed no one read my reservation note.

Also he didn’t know what he is serving, Didn’t know what the fish was, didn’t know what sauce he is serving, didn’t know if the restaurant serves seperate bowl of dessert in the Feed me option or not. Once we got the dessert, there were two bowls. We asked are they the same thing, so we can have one per person. and He Didn’t know!

Start to finish, there was not one simple/essential Qs that a Restaurant server should know he could give us answers without running back and forth between kitchen and table.

And. The pork belly was just full of fat. The steak was very chewy. The seafood menu was pretty good, then the land dishes were very unpleasant.

The worst part was the waiting. There was only one more table beside us. Our lunch was booked 12:30pm We ordered by 12:45pm. We got out 3.:39pm The park around the restaurant has 2hour limit. We had to go out and fiddled with parking during lunch. It was kinda lucky that waiting time for the foods was so long and we had time to go out to do that;;;? Ridiculous!

We both didn’t expect the lunch would dragging for that long, so both had another appointment at 3pm. The next appointments had to be cancelled.

It was 30th birthday present for my colleague, I paid over $240 for two people for lunch, we expected high quality lunch out that suits the milestone birthday. And it turned to a very awkward, annoying afternoon.

We thought it would’ve been much delightful if we went to takeaway fish and chips.

I’ve been to Frank before, I know it is not like this bad all the time. But this time experience made both of us not wanting to visit Frank again in future, and tell people to never order the Feed Me option if they have to go to Frank.

And, again, they seriously need to train their staff before let them work on the floor. The serving staff wasn’t for the good quality reputable restaurant in Hobart. It was lucky we are the Tasmanian locals, but He could damage Tasmanian eating experience badly for...

TL;DR - wouldn't recommend the waygu, the chicken empanadas were very good, lemon squish was made in-house and was fantastic, pricing was expensive for the portions, service was fast and waitresses were on top of things, atmosphere was great with low to moderate noise levels. Decor was pleasant and didn't seem out of place.

I was quite disappointed at poorly "cooked" the waygu flank was. It was rare on the inside, to the point where it seened to only be lightly seared on the outside. The flavour of the waygu flank, where it had been cooked, was amazing. My round up of the waygu flank is, of the parts that were cooked, it was very nice and had amazing flavour, but as most of it was rare, it was more like a chew toy that started with amazing flavour and ended up getting more and more bland as you chewed it. Portion was tiny and the price was quite alot for the serving. I also tried the chicken empanadas, which were amazing. The pastry was flaky but held together when I cut into it. The flavour was also very nice and the spiciness warmed up the mouth.

For a beverage, I had the in-house made lemon squash, which was a pleasant surprise when I first tried it. Props to them for making a good in-house lemon squash. If I was to now define a perfect lemon squash, it would be that. Not too sweet with a perfect balance of the lemon citrus.

The service was also amazing. All the waitresses that night were very tentative and ploite. This also added to the amazing atmosphere and the relative low to moderate noise levels. I had a large group of people, of about 5 to 6, directly behind me, which I could barely hear. I would recommend comng here for a quite dinner. The decor was pleasant and nothing felt out of place.

I would recommend this place if you don't mind spending some money and if you were looking for a fine dining restaurant. Would not recommend the waygu and if you were to have it, I would recommend asking for it to be cooked for a...