Arcadia Hotel — Restaurant in Melbourne

I was extremely disappointed with my visit to Arcadia Hotel yesterday. I made a reservation for 2 on their steak night (Wednesday). However, when we arrived, there was no staff available to attend to us or show us our table. We resorted to asking a bartender if she could help locate our table. She said we weren't on the reservation list. Another staff member walked by, asked us for our name and told us we were seated in the "back room" while pointing at it from afar. She said "You can sit here you like or go to the back room if you want, it's up to you". We went to the back room and waited there for a good 15-20 minutes. It was smelly, messy, and all the tables around us were not cleaned (see photos). No one came to take our order or even pass us a menu. Even when staff members came into the back room to serve food to other tables, they deliberately avoided eye contact with us at all cost. They pretended like they didn't see us and walked off every time we tried to get their attention. We eventually just left and went elsewhere for dinner. I'm writing this review to suggest that you make some improvements to your customer service. I understand that it can get busy and sometimes restaurants are understaffed. However, it is no excuse to treat your customers poorly. If you're fully booked, kindly let us know you're not able to take reservations past a certain number of people (like other restaurants do). It's way better than making someone come all the way there and then not attending to them. Why don't you look into hiring more people on busy nights? Or limiting the number of customers? If you get busy unexpectedly, let us know you will be with us shortly and follow through (instead of ignoring us). Maybe give us some menus first? Or take drink orders first? Anything would be better than pretending your customers are non-existent. I think the service was extremely disappointing and there is absolutely NO excuse to treat your customers with such disrespect, especially when we were only trying to give YOU business! Extremely disappointed and I hope your team incorporates some of these suggestions for your...

Hi Judy, Mark, Carlos and the team, We just wanted to send a big big thank you out to you guys. Everything was absolutely amazing. You guys went over and above to make our night run smoothly and everyone had an awesome night and are still raving about it to everyone. Firstly Carlos, you were the first person we interacted with when we came to have a look at Arcadia as a potential venue for Kyle’s Birthday. You were very approachable, happy, positive, informative and great to deal with. You showed us around the venue and we were happy to leave a deposit before we left locking in the venue for our party. You also worked at our bar on the night and you were awesome and looked after us all so well. Mark, it was a pleasure to have you support us leading up to the night and also on the night. Nothing was to much trouble for you and you accommodated all our needs as they came up. You were very attentive to our guests and contributed to everyone having a great night. A big thank you to the chefs because the food was absolutely amazing. 5+ stars all the way. Everybody loved the food and commented on how amazing it tasted and how beautiful it was presented. And lastly Judy, Thankyou so much for meeting with us and organising the run of the night. You helped us with everything we needed and worked with us when we required some changes along the way. You sorted everything out that we required from you. And it was a very nice touch when we arrived to see personalised individual place menus set out for everyone, even including Erin who had her own personal one with dietary requirements. Thank you so very much to the behind the scenes team who truly made our night unforgettable and so much so that our family and friends will be talking about for along time to come. We will be highly recommending you to others when planning future functions. Thanks guys you at Arcadia are awesome. Many Many Thanks Sally and...

Please be careful when booking a function at The Arcadia. My partner and I booked the rooftop, organised food and drinks, paid in full and had all our arrangements confirmed by an event staff member three days prior to the event, only for us to show up on the day with not one staff member knowing about our event until about half and hour after our event start time when they finally found the running sheet. They were scrambling for staff, had no signage up as promised for our guests and had not set up the rooftop for use. A few guests arrived earlier than us and were told there was no event on the rooftop. We had to place the bar chairs out ourselves, organise the music, ask for the lights to be turned on, confirm our bar tab (multiple times) and we were told the food order we had placed may not be able to be fulfilled. Regardless we proceeded with our evening and had a good night due to our friends. Later that week we emailed the events manager who we had liased with to tell him what we experienced and how disappointed we were. He eventually replied and told us that what we had experienced did not apparently happen after his discussion with the staff that were on that day and that they were in fact completely organised for our event.. I was shocked, emailed back and went into more depth of what we experienced to give him a better idea of what happened as he was not working during the time of our event. We were then promised a phone call to discuss further which we never received. We never once received an apology for their lack of organisation and communication, and they didn’t take any responsibility for their actions and mistakes. Do not book here if you want a smooth running event. Staff seem far more concerned about their own weekend plans than that of their workplace and...