Boronia Hotel — Restaurant in Melbourne

Boronia Hotel - you used to be a good night out for the family. Nothing fancy, but just nice decent food, decent prices and serving sizes. You were “reliable”. That seems to have gone, with poor food service, poor communication (honesty trumps an empty apology any day), mundane flavours and just an overall flat experience. All of your staff were friendly and polite, and this is probably the only compliment I can give from our experience last night.

Dined at 6pm on a Thursday. Place was maybe 1/4 full, so not busy at all which is assumed to be good for a quieter evening and no long wait on orders. We ordered, and food starts to arrive within 10min which is nice.

Not good was complete forgetting a kids meal - a Hawaiian pizza.

After 25min I followed up, to be told, “so sorry, it won’t be a sec”. I asked what was actually happening - has it been forgotten or is it just still cooking and almost ready?so I could tell my already upset child a realistic answer. “It has been forgotten”, was the response. Glad I asked. So it won’t be ready in a sec, because if I say that to my 9yo he will assume it will be arriving in a minute or so, like anyone else would. They’ll need to start cooking one now, so 10min at least? Yes probably around that long was the response.

Waited another 25min, and upon following up was given more apologies, a refund and “it’s just coming now”. There was also another customer following up on a missing meal.

Then out comes a kids pizza with just pineapple and cheese on it. Seriously? A Hawaiian pizza is a basic pizza, how does it take 25min for a replacement meal which should be prioritised, and you forget to put ham on it as well? It’s not even a special, it’s a permanent part of your menu.

So 50 minutes for a basic kids pizza which was first forgot then missing critical ingredients, on a very quiet night with low patronage.

The rest of the food was ok, but mostly just ok.

Chicken Parma was overcooked and tough all around the edges, accompanying house salad was just bland.

My son got the kids steak, at least this was cooked appropriately (requested med-rare). Concerningly the default is “well done” unless you ask for otherwise , so with a 180g porterhouse this ends up like a leather boot. We discovered this the hard way the previous time we came.

“Kids free icecream” with kids meal isn’t really a serve of dessert, it feels more a thimble full with some topping. We tried to consume this whilst waiting for the pizza, in the hopes of cheering up my 9yo enough to survive an emotional meltdown until his pizza arrived. It had the opposite effect. I know shrinkflation is rife, but this just came across as almost insulting, why bother offering it? Served in a container the size of a 1/2 measuring cup (125ml), so approx 100ml of soft serve if you’re lucky.

We went home early before anyone else could have dessert, cooked a frozen pizza, and went out for icecream at Augustus to try finish the night on a good note.

I doubt we’ll be back in a while if at all, hopefully things...

Having 3 young kids Boronia hotel is one of 2 locals that we attend multiple times per year celebrating birthdays with 20+ people in family friendly centre with a kids playground to keep them happy and busy.

The kids enjoy it. The playground could do with some upgrades but keeps the kids busy enough for an hour before/after dinner. Gets pretty hectic though on Thursday - Sunday nights with some pretty rough kids and crowds. Wouldn’t hurt to have staff patrol and set some expectations from time to time. Don’t spend your money on the round about claw machine though as they have set the win ratio far too low and you’ll burn $50 with perfect grabs every time and still not win a prize.

Food is always hit and miss. We all order a range of menu items, I particularly have had most of them. My most recent visit I had the Parma. Wasn’t impressed. Was lukewarm on arrival and the cheese wasn’t really cooked much on top. Could go another 3-4 mins in the oven for sure to really melt that cheese and give it a nice golden brown on top.

Portion sizes are mid range. I think you get what you pay for and am happy with the lot.

Service is a little slow. Don't think I’ve ever had our tables cleared while we are still there. Most recent visit on a quiet Monday I put the finished dishes on the table next to us and still after an hour they were not cleared. I asked staff for a knife and plates for the cake which came out shortly after. Interesting choice providing a steak knife to cut the cake. I mean it worked but not my go to. She didn’t think to bring out spoons or forks to go with it and when she dropped it off she didn’t clear any of the existing dishes and just walked off. Never go back to the kitchen empty handed!!

Anyway, it’s a local hub for us and we will continue to go birthday after birthday. At no time have I ever been blown away with a 5 star day, and neither for anything that would warrant a 3 star. I think the ratings on this are pretty accurate giving it a...

Unfortunately this is the second time we have been here for dinner and we were all dissspointed in our meals. We booked as their kids play area is great but obviously extremely noisy and over crowded. We even had a large table of people celebrating a 50th birthday in the same area! It was steak night and we though well ok and you know that when their is a special not to be overly expectant. It was $25 dollar steak night meal, there were 4 ordered but not one was done to the request of how would you like your steak cooked. It is pointless asking if it comes out overcooked. We ordered medium rare as you know sometimes they can be a little over. but they were well done.It was pointless complaining because 1 they were extremely well booked, for a wednesday night and 2 it was edible and what would they do any way?? (We had to clear our own plates) there was not enough staff on the night. The chicken parma was great, you cant really stuff it up? A friend has the Beef stirfry but she struggled to find the beef and vegetables, the carbonara was ok, just loys of spaghetti in a cream sauce. My daughter was looking forward to the $45 300g rump steak but that was a shocker. It can out with chat potatoes that were supposed to be roasted with rosmary, lots of salt not rosemary. The plate was literally all roasted chat potatoes, some broccolini that looked like it was a garnish but you could not see the steak. It was supposed to be medium rare but it was well and truly done, i think they forgot about it and it wasnt 300g. it was the size of a playing card. so very dissapointed and embarrased to have to pay so much but unfortunately there was no staff to get their attention to complain about this meal. all in all the kids play area is great, but just...