Ballistic Beer Springfield — Restaurant in Ipswich City

This place has the potential to be amazing with just a few tweaks. What we love: the outdoor seating is beautiful, my husband loves the selection of sour beers and I enjoy the gin cocktails. The locked in playground is excellent for our young kids too.

What needs work: We sat inside with friends last Friday and could barely speak to one another because of the guy on guitar. Live music is great, as long as an ordinary conversation is possible on your table. I suggest putting the live music outside so the sound isn't bouncing off the walls inside, or adding more soft furnishings to soften it.

Now the biggest reason we won't be back at this time is.... The menu. Omg. It's recently been changed since our last visit maybe 6 months ago? (Wasn't great then either). Our family is vegetarian, and our 6yr old has a dairy allergy. Not only are there NO vegan options at all.... Oh the arancini 'can' be vegan if you remove the aioli which is a huge pet peeve of mine. Like sure, lets offer it vegan by removing all the essential elements in a meal and of course not discounting it for customers. There's a plant based burger, but it has dairy cheese and aioli on it. There's a salad, but you have to remove the feta etc.

There are easily accessible vegan versions of all of these things. For me to return I'd need to see at least one stand alone (no modifications needed) vegan appetizer, main, AND kids option.

You obviously acknowledge the need for vegetarian adult meals forgetting that adult vegetarians usually raise vegetarian children too. So our kids can only eat chips, which, contrary to most families, is not their favourite. They want a burger or a pizza, pasta or roast veggies and at this point, our home cooking is far more flavourful that we wouldn't bother returning to spend over $100 for a nice drink with a bland meal and hot chips in a place that's too loud to even catch up with friends.

It's 2023. Give your chefs a copy of Zachary Birds "vegan junk food" for inspiration. Or Gaz Oakley's cookbooks. Hell, he's even got a free YouTube channel to share incredible recipes.

More than 2% of the population is vegan, and many more have dairy allergies or are vegetarian. Add in religious reasons for not eating certain meats on some days, and the fact that the sunny coast (not too far away) is one of Australia's highest concentration of veggie and vegan folks.... You're missing out on a lot of business by not...

45 minute wait for food, no communication , 10-15 minute wait in-line for the bar nearly all night, constantly 15 deep with what you would expect is average trade. Had to ask to get empty glasses cleared from table- that annoys me , you can see there are glasses everywhere why do I need to tell you this? I wonder how long they would of let it go when a table of 6 people have 10 empty glasses plus a full round in front of them- food is dropped off around it and wait persons walk back empty handed, also unwelcoming bar service. Pork belly had gelatinous skin- disgusting, dry flesh, yellow broccolini (takes a while to do that to broccolini) and almost inedible all round. Calamari bland , greasy and not drained properly and served on the most redundant bit of mixed lettuce ever - nothing seasoned with salt which was offensive. Charging premium pub prices with below par service and quality. Menu extremely limited in mains and no pizzas available for whatever reason - 2 steaks, a schnitzel and parmy making up 50% of the main offerings- Parmy soggy from having Napoli on top of the schnitzel instead of the ham first, Napoli second. The bar service was so shambolic they didn’t even charge me for a beer as I stood there waiting to be charged- that summed it up for me. Inattentive service all round, sub par quality food and an effort to have a good food and beverage experience- how was it that busy on that night when the industry is this critical and consumers expecting much higher than that? Maybe not in Springfield? On the plus sides , kids had reasonable fun on a huge patch of green grass and the beer was exceptional - Pilsner and Hawaiian hazy pale ale were excellent drops. Clearly good brewers that can’t operate a good food and beverage offering as that’s the hardest bit in running a restaurant/pub. Very disappointing as I wanted it to be good but was so so offended- and then I checked my bank…….if your paying higher tier pub prices I would expect so much...

Food and service lovely. There are 3 seating areas: outside front; inside bar area; outside back. Maybe I just went on a bad night….but the noise of the kids on the jumping castles outside front was horrendous (screaming, yelling, blowing party whistles). Definitely too distributive and noisy to enjoy a drink and a meal out front! I tried to sit outside at the back to escape the screaming kids, but it was filthy with rubbish scattered everywhere around the ground and chairs from a previous party (with the “reserved” sign still on the tables for that area booked for 1200pm and I was there at 6pm and it was still filthy!). Not wanting to be surrounded by rubbish, I moved to the inside dining area…but the (nightclub dancing style) music was so loud that the bar staff struggled to communicate with customers! To their credit, they did turn the music down to a slightly less invasive level when requested. The food was prompt and delicious, and the staff were friendly and working hard….but definitely not a place to go for a relaxing night of conversation!!!! Not the night I was there anyway. I guess if you want to let your kids go wild and don’t care about the impact their screaming has on other diners; or you like to shout at your friends so they can hear you over the nightclub music, it’s the...