Benzina Cantina — Restaurant in Melbourne

After no response to my private message on the 30th Jan I’m now posting publicly.

I would like to make a formal complaint and bring to your attention my families experience while dining in your Preston restaurant.

I booked in advance for my sons 13th birthday dinner on the 16th January for 15 people. When we arrived we were seated outside on two bar tables which gave us limited room and was dangerous for the children and my elderly grandmother.

I ordered a cocktail where I was given a jug of it instead of a glass and had to tell the waitress to take it back as I was not going to pay for it.

As the seating was inappropriate, I asked for the waitresses to move us to a bigger table once another group had left, which was fine.

Then, after a gust of wind, an umbrella that was incorrectly anchored fell onto my sisters back and onto my mother’s head. I had to help them. I had to move the umbrella. My sister later showed me a bruise to her back and my mother was cut on her head. My mother also suffered from headaches following the event. Not once did any of your team come to ask my mother or sister if they were ok or fill out an incident report. A report in which is required by law in conjunction with the WHS Act. At the time of the event, my sister screamed and my mother held her head in her hands. They both showed signs of injury. It is your duty of care to ensure your venue is safe and posses no risk to injury or health. You failed to provide this basic standard.

Furthermore, our orders were not taken down correctly and we were produced with multiple plates we did not order. My son, did not receive the meal he had ordered either. He ended up eating the food only because he was extremely hungry and could not wait any longer.

Lastly, upon receipt, Additional meals and drinks that we did not have were added to our order. I had to go through the order and advise the cashier on how to calculate and amend. Even after fixing that up, the cashier tried charging us an additional $120 on top of our order.

All in all it was a very bad experience. I think that your atmosphere is great! I love how your restaurant presents aesthetically and the cocktail I had was amazing, however the service, lack of communication and empathy was not good.

It was meant to be a very special night for my son and it just...

Mixed thoughts on Benzina Cantina. Really cool concept and great location. That's about the good stuff I can think of from our visit.

Myself, wife and our 3 year old son visited on a Sunday afternoon. The place was busy but not crazy so we thought it would be easy enough to drop in for a quick drink.

We were greeted as soon as we walked in which was nice, it seemed a priority for him to seat us, but as we were only there for a quick drink we were happy to sit outside or lean against a table. This seemed impossible for him to help us with as most of the tables were reserved for a later time. This seemed silly as it meant so many tables were empty as guests were due to arrive within the hour or so.

We were then watched by the staff at the bar for a good 5 minutes without being served (we were standing right at the bar so it was odd no service was being offered). Eventually one staff member made someone aware that we might be waiting, even then the staff were happy to finish what they were doing before even asking what we would like.

We wandered outside after getting served and found an unreserved table tucked away in the corner. It had only two chairs so I found a spare, checked with the people sitting there if it was free and took it. The staff member who greeted us saw me taking it over to our table and stopped me saying I couldn't have the chair as it was reserved for a group arriving in 40 minutes. You must be kidding! This guy knew we would be there for only a short period of time, yet thought it was more important to have an empty chair for someone arriving in 40 minutes than to allow someone there right then to use it.

Common sense and courtesy didn't seem to be in place on the day we visited.

The reason I have given two stars and not less??? Right across the street is Kisses for Chaos which saved our afternoon. The complete opposite experience. Staff were friendly. We could sit wherever we wanted with no issues. No waiting or awkward encounters. Better range of drinks. Better food.

Thanks to Kisses for a...

Came here for drinks and food with friends only to be disappointed by the lack of communication by staff. We were running late for our booking as one of our party ran into car trouble, we tried calling twice but no answer. We ordered 2 margaritas and a watermelon margarita, 2 lots of nachos one with beef, only to be served 2 lots of plain nachos and was told “no beef” then about 5 mins later the beef nachos were served to us. Food was fine wasn’t something to go wow about. Our party member that was here before us ordered a cocktail and it took 45 minutes to get to him. We picked at the food and waited for our drinks. 45 mins later one of our party got the watermelon margarita and it was undrinkable, we asked about the regular margaritas and was told they ran out of lemons so they had to get more. In the end we waited another 20 minutes for our first round of drinks to only go in cancelling them and paying for what we ordered initially.

I understand that sometimes when under pressure in the service industry things can get lost in communication, but it was us constantly asking where our drinks were constantly following up, it was especially frustrating seeing wait staff standing and talking instead of communicating with us “hey sorry about the wait we ran out of lemons”. I don’t expect anything free and I know we are still coming out of lockdown but it wasn’t a great experience for all. In my opinion I won’t be back...