Rupert & Hound — Restaurant in Launceston

I usually have a great experience at Rupert and hound however tonight was appalling.

We had friends visit from interstate so we took them to one of our favourite restaurants here . Being coeliac also a great option for dinner as well.

Friends have a 4 year old boy and we have a 3 year old boy, made this clear on the booking. Our waiter was fantastic. No issues. After the boys finished their dinner and we had just been served our mains they were a bit difficult , wanting to get down from the chair , trying to play with their toy cars on the floor , and we were all attempting to control the situation however as anyone with kids will know it can take a few minutes to figure out what is going to work tonight to get them to settle which we were working on. Got the kids settled, my son was on the lap of my wife with the phone volume turned down watching some videos , and the 4 year old was on the floor by the chair , plenty of room around playing quietly with his cars, could not hear them over the general noise at the restaurant at this point.

The issue as follows, table behind us had a young couple, unsure if they were reviewing the restaurant or something as they had a decent sized camera taking photos of food etc , they were sitting at a table for two against the window near the water. Their waiter came to them and informed them he had organised a new table for them in another area, not to worry it was still by a window and near the water if they would like to be shown to their new table. The couple was visibly confused, they asked why they needed to move and the waiter confirmed ‘if you’re going to enjoy your dinner you’d want to do that somewhere that isn’t so loud and distracting because of where you are sitting ‘ again couple confused asked what he meant, and he confirmed that ‘obviously the family behind is being quite loud and the children were misbehaving’ , they said it wasn’t an issue and were happy with their seating, the waiter confirmed ‘when it becomes a problem just let me know and I’ll sort you out okay’. The whole conversation was riddled with tone from the waiter. The kids at this point at mentioned were not making any noise.

Firstly totally killed the atmosphere in the section immediately. Secondly if you have an issue with the kids let us know, we were attempting to get them under control earlier and there is no issue in popping over if the kids are being disruptive and say ‘hey are we doing okay over here, noticed things seem to be getting a did you want to order some dessert for the boys etc’ Finally the couple clearly didn’t have an issue with what the waiter considered loud and disruptive and by the time he had offered to move them which they didn’t request the kids were fine.

Our guests were quite upset and while we went to pay the mother of the 4 year old took him out the front , and needless to say left in tears.

I won’t be going here...

to preface this, our mains and the service were both excellent. loved the ambiance and overall had a lovely time. HOWEVER, they had a peanut butter semifreddo as a dessert special and I have some thoughts.

so, I’ve had semifreddo before. it tastes more or less like ice cream because it has the same ingredients as a basic ice cream and it melts pretty fast because it’s not frozen hard, it’s semi frozen. I knew what I was in for.

this semifreddo:

did not melt AT ALL in the time in the time I was eating it. not even a splotch of ice cream where it had been sitting on the plate.

when I stuck a fork in it, it cracked and crumbled in a very un-ice cream-like way and smeared on the plate.

was not freezer-cold

did not hurt my teeth to chew despite my usual tooth sensitivity for ice creamy sorts of things.

had a distinct butter taste. I KNOW it was peanut butter flavoured but I can taste the difference between peanut butter and butter. it was peanut butter WITH butter.

was the texture and mouthfeel of buttercream right out of the fridge.

in summary, I paid ~$20 for an ice cream scoop of what tasted like, acted like and had the mouthfeel of buttercream frosting. was it buttercream? I don’t know for sure but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. I wish I had taken a photo of the inside to illustrate how it looked but it wasn’t until I was walking back to the car that I started putting together the pieces of this dessert experience. I don’t know, it just left me with a figurative bad taste in my mouth (plus the literal taste of butter). it you want to sell a chilled peanut butter dessert that is not dissimilar to buttercream, go for it. just don’t call it semifreddo when that’s a specific thing that people are familiar with and will expect. was a disappointing end to an otherwise...

I would give a minus star if I could, terrible customer service. One of my favorite thing to do is to visit different restaurant when I travel，after I finished a great dinner at Cataract I was interested in ordering a gummy shark to take away, unfortunately they don't do take away, so 2 of the staffs there recommend this Rupert & Hound to me and telling me this is the sister restaurant of Cataract they also have the gummy shark and offering take away for the food. Since it's only 900m away I decided to take the name card, and follow the staff‘s suggestion to call R&H and make an order Otw so I could do a simply pick up. None of the call was been answer, and when I finally arrived there at 20：43【Google says close at 10pm】, the gate was shut but the glass door was opened. There's a waitress standing just near the glass door and a lady with a purse who I suppose is a customer standing in between the gate and the glass door. After the lady go in, the waitress was still there, so I tried to get the attention by saying HI &hello, and after I am 100％ sure she saw me, the waitress not just ignored me, but also shut/slaps the glass door in front of me! I was totally shock by such attitude, after couple mins waiting, not one attend to me, so I decided to take a walk outside of this restaurant to see if it's my fault accidentally attend to their back door, and turned out all Other door are either shut or says not entry, so I went back to the gate where I supposed is the main entry, and took all those pictures. I could clearly see that there are at least 2 table of customers are having there food, So No matter how urgent is the waitress willing to finish the work, a sentence of 【sorry, we are closed】are the basis manner of customer service. And change the operation hour at Google！ Don't Waste the...