215 Queen's VENUE HIRE (EVENTS BIRTHDAY party BYO permitted ALL AGES with guardians) FUNCTION SPACE FOOD HALL (24 HR) KARAOKE — Restaurant in Melbourne

My advice to those reading reviews before going: believe the 1 star reviews!

My husband and I visited on a weeknight for a dinner on our Melbourne holiday, and were excited by the multiple glowing reviews. I've now learned that these can be bought or faked 😅

We arrived and were ushered upstairs (the waiter was kind, promptly seated us), however on the walk up, you walk past a couple of glass door freezers which show you the frozen delights you will be heated and served... We were surrounded by messy tables that hadn't been cleared and the bright lighting left too little to the imagination. We moved ourselves downstairs hoping for a more ambient atmosphere.

Oh boy were we wrong. We sat near the front of the restaurant underneath a glowing fleuro light (with about 6 flys buzzing around it) and underneath some dangling plastic plants. Behind us, the wall was falling off, and the front counter was covered in a thick layer of dust - which could have so easily been cleaned in a minute, but looked like it hadn't seen a wet rag in months. I thought to myself that if it looks this dirty in the dining area, how clean do they keep the kitchen?

We had already ordered our food upstairs so thought we'd bite the bullet and see the meal through.

First up, our cheesy garlic bread to start. Which was the frozen Coles garlic bread, broken up into 6 pieces and served with some melted cheese on top. Didn't taste bad, but felt a bit ripped off for what we paid... oh well!

But then came our mains. We ordered the Fettuccine Carbonara. My husband and I both reminisced about when we would eat microwave pasta packets back when we were in school...tasted exactly the same! 😅

Then the part that truly cemented the experience into being from an episode of 'Gordan Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares'. The salami pizza. Served piping hot, crisp, and dry, just the way that no body likes it! Believe the other reviews that say they use pre-bought frozen bases, I think that hits the nail on the head. But then it had to get worse...because life is a comedy. There was a thick black hair sitting in the cheese and curved under the base of the crust. Lovely.

We showed the piece to the waiter who offered a replacement pizza, but we asked for a refund (which was thankfully put through... but just for the pizza). When he showed the cook the pizza with the hair in it - she just laughed. Like really, laughed. Thankfully on the walk back to the hotel we found a lovely gelati place and looked over at all the gorgeous Italian restaurants lining the laneways... we had truly learned our lesson. Believe the 1...

The vibe: for us staying at Pullman on Swanston, 215 Queens Restaurants is located on Queens Street to the right after crossing Little Burke Street They're open from 5pm till 3am every day while serving a range of standard Italian food and steak options alongside some wines🍷 beers 🍻 and cocktails🍹 and a few soft drinks! The space looks a little in need of renovations but the led lights add a cool vibe to the small restaurant.

The menu is quite basic but easy to read and choose from and not too overwhelming. Was a little disappointed that the fresh made pasta wasn’t being served at the time we visited. This may not be a normal issue. Was also a little concerned and felt like our reservation wasn’t taken into consideration as we had a reservation but when we arrived they didn’t have the table ready for our reservation and ultimately a couple noticed the issue and offered move to a smaller table to solve the restaurants problem mixing up our reservation of 3, so this was a little disorganised and would recommend that they cater to their reservations better and have a little priority to this department of owning or management of a restaurant. So once the couple left the table out table wasn’t wiped clean (covid conscious should be a priory still especially for Melbourne) we finally received table water which we served ourselves and finally received napkin with fork and knife which we also had to set up ourselves.

What we ordered: • 1 x salami pizza • 2 x fettuccine creamy chicken pesto pasta • 1 x virgin mojito (random not on menu) • 1 x fruity Mocktail (random not on menu) • 1 x coke Total cost $99.50 😳 a little overpriced for the quality.

Describe food: the pizza was okay but very oily and the base was dry. The 2 chicken pesto pasta weren’t consistent, mine was more creamier then my nieces and her had more pesto then cream… odd. But it was a lovely taste but would have been much better with real pasta 🍝. The virgin mojitos was awful. Nothing like a virgin mojitos, the mint was hard and Old and just gross, absolutely no cocktail/Mocktail skills effort with that drink.

Service: the waitress was lovely and accommodating, very good customer service skills for someone in hospitality.

My favourite thing about the place:

1. the vibe with the led bar.
2. The customer service.

Still a decent place to eat in...

This is without exaggeration the worst restaurant I have ever ate at. I am an extremely unfussy eater, but this experience left me fuming.

We ordered the following: Chicken wings which were dry and had a plastic like texture Vegetarian fettuccini which was extremely bland. Like I mean offensively bland and tasteless. Even salt and pepper didn’t salvage it. Olives, anchovies and ham pizza. The crust was absolutely terrible like some frozen thing bought from Aldi. The pizza wasn’t even cut properly so we had to use a knife and fork to pull it apart. Kimchi fried rice. This was $25 for a bowl the size of my fist. It also tasted so boring and salty. I am certain I could have made it myself way better. Chicken schnitzel. We waited soooo long for this. I mean close to about 40 minutes. When it finally arrived the schnitzel was half warm and half cold.

We ended up not buying any drinks because of how ridiculously expensive they were. $9 for a regular 375ml can of Coke. I would have been surprised even if it was $6. But $9 is absolutely insane. Also the cups we got the water in were really dirty.

Besides the food, the service was non-existent. Didn’t know that restaurants expect us to go and get our own cutlery and serviettes…

Ordering was also a pain. We ordered through the QR code which was missing half the photos of the food. Also the QR code menu had more items on it than the paper menu which is a little strange. But the most ridiculous thing was that ordering in person for some reason incurs a 15% service fee. Maybe that’s why we didn’t receive our cutlery and serviettes because we paid via the QR code and didn’t pay the service fee…

I like to always see the positive in any bad situation so I will say the following. The restaurant is located within walking distance to a few McDonald’s which we went to afterwards. The Maccas was a three Michelin star restaurant compared to this place…

Before the owner responds saying something like we ate everything so why are we complaining. We just flew in from Sydney and hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch at least 7 hours ago.

I’m still mad, but at the same time I feel like this place is not even a real restaurant and more like a front for something shady so can’t blame them for making...