Lebanese Gourmet & Grill / House Of Paella — Restaurant in Launceston

Overpriced, an unsatisfactory meal and substandard service. The experience we had there was not far off from an episode of Kitchen’s Nightmare.

Upon arrival we were greeted by the staff and told we could go through to the outside area for additional seating. After settling down outside and grabbing some menus from the counter, we went to order and were immediately met with poor service from an older gentleman. He advised that dining outside we could not be served on actual crockery due to not having appropriate council approval to serve in this area. To work around this, he would instead serve us on paper picnic plates. He also seemed unaware of his own menu and was asking us prices of each item as we read out our selections from the menu we were holding. To add to this, he lacked any sort of professionalism speaking to his casual staff, publicly berating and openly speaking down to one particular young staff member. Quite frankly, he was obviously trying his best.

As our food arrived, we noted immediately that despite us having to eat with paper plate and plastic cutlery, our dishes were served in crockery serving ware. Each individual dish came out in staggered arrival, which is fine, however was very inconvenient. The mixed grill platter and salad came out quickly but after that, each element of our order took a long time to arrive. The Lebanese bread came out half way through our meal, after we had finished eating the mixed grill platter that it should have been included with. The “toum”, hand cut fries and tabouli arrived at the end of our meal which is not an ideal way to eat a Lebanese mezze feast. They did not appear to be busy and we had to constantly remind the staff of each item we were waiting on.

The actual meal itself is a poor representation of an authentic Lebanese meal. The patata and hand cut fries were very oily, limp, and under seasoned. The grill skewers were dry and average at best, and seemed to be pre-grilled and reheated. The “toum” is a poor example of a true garlic sauce - it tasted like jarred mayo mixed with lemon, with no garlic kick that I would normally expect from toum. The Lebanese bread was wholemeal, dry and very stale. The tabouli was not finely chopped with the wrong parsley used and the bulgar wheat was too toothsome in texture, almost gritty. When the owner came out and asked us how it was, we mentioned we were not used to it being this texture or consistency but insisted this is how tabouli should be. But in reality, it was a sad excuse for a tabouli. The paella, which feels like a strange inclusion on the menu, was terrible. The Lebanese sodas (which also arrived at the end of the meal and exorbitant at $10 a pop), came out in Kmart mason jars were not fizzy and tasted like lemon Cottees cordial with no taste of the rose water and leatherwood honey that the owner stated is included in these sodas.

Above all else, this meal was overpriced. The sodas were $10 each, the hand cut fries were $12 each for a small basket full. The toum was $10 each. Overall not great value.

In summary, the quality of the meal was poor. The service was abysmal and it’s not worth your time or money. Save yourself the heartache and give this...

EDIT TO JOSEPH'S REPLY : Unfortunately, the long wait was at lunch time and not dinner time. The dinner time wait was for my burnt takeaway manoosh as the first customer for that evening too, but that's fine. Just reiterating that it's okay to refuse table service if you are by yourself. You had 3 large groups that day for lunch as a one man show, all parties left angry and dissatisfied, i personally would have preferred you to say "Sorry guys, I'm fully slammed, no dine in." as opposed to "it's coming, food's coming" every 5 minutes for almost an hour...

Must have came on a bad week - Did two visits (well multiple, but it was not open/opening later than times advertised). Heads up, food comes out SLOW, which is fine if disclosed to the customer, but on the Saturday we went we waited 55 minutes from when we ordered to when food came out. We said there would be a 20 minute wait when we ordered the paella, but it was definitely not... we kept getting told "its coming out in 5" again and again every time he passed us. There were two other tables with similar wait times (longer than an hour), another table arrived 5 minutes after us for seafood paella, but after we finished our meals, they were still waiting for theres (well over 80 mins wait by this stage), he kept repeating to them "just an extra 8 mins on the seafood" about 4 times. Again, happy to wait if told honestly about the wait times.

The paella itself was on the saltier side and the mixed grilled we got was burnt... couldnt even flag him down to let him know. If you're a one man show, I get it's hard, but maybe just open for take away on those days as opposed to having customers wait. All groups that were there when we were left dissatisfied.

Similar to this behaviour, I went in a few days earlier to the above experience for a takeaway manoosh (after i arrived at the time advertised on the door of opening, but he still was not in/open) - i was told everything was ready and it'd only be 15 mins for him to make. He took 35 minutes from when i ordered to when he handed it to me. Manoosh...

We arrived 1hr before close. Ordered and thought we paid, but unknown to us EFPOS declined. When requested to use the rest rooms, we were directed to public toilets that are out in the rain, and were closed. We were directed to a second lot of public toilets through the rain, although we found a route on the return that was more sheltered from the rain.

Before ordering we asked if they had Coca-cola and advised they did. We ordered, re-paid after attending both punloc toilets and after paying was advised they had Pepsi and not Coke.

After waiting an hour from the time of our original order, we were asked to move because the building was being closed and security would soon be around. We moved inside, where two round tables of different sizes and heights were pushed together to accomodate our group. This wouldn't normally be much of a complaint by itself, but given the overall level of service, speaks volumes to how this business cares for it's customers.

After receiving our food, approx 1hr after paying the second time, I was advised they did not have any Mango's for the Mango Smoothie.

The food was nice, and the owner gave us some kebabs after some confusion of our order where the staff did not take what flavour Kebabs (on a stick) we wanted.

We paid approx $130 for 6 fairly small Kebabs (on a stick) a Coca-Cola (aka Pepsi) and Mango Smoothy (Aka Mised Berry Smoothy).

Besides not wanting Pepsi or a mixed Berry Smoothy, the smoothy had an okay in flavour but was served in a small teddybear jar and not at all what I expected for $11.5 ($10 plus weekend surcharge of 15%).

Being suprised with a 15% surcharge because it was suprise enough as it was.

The meal was an adequate size, but for $130 for dinner for two, at a resturant will no atmosphere, no restrooms, no service, unable to take the correct order (for food) and unable to fill either of our order for drinks, and to sneak in a surchage for a weekend was memorable for all the...