Casa de Playa — Restaurant in Melbourne

If I could rate this as a zero - I would. Worst experience in a restaurant EVER. Felt so bad for my bro who was celebrating his bday there cos he said it was a great place. And because we went in expecting it to be, we were however left extremely disappointed. I hyped up everyone about how amazing the Paella would be (as I generally always get this dish in other restaurants and this was not great... at all...you can probs see where I am heading in this post)

Terrible service by one of the servers (Miss Attitude) was downright rude when I asked her why the prawns were missing from the $48 Paella (supposedly shared between 2 people and it may seem petty to some but prawns are expensive, the meal was expensive and who would like paying for something that comes half done?!) .... so apparently it was a mistake.... Which was the same "mistake" made to 3 other Paellas in our group. And so when they FINALLY brought the "prawns" out they were head shells and about 1 and a half each per person! (They must've eaten the rest ..... and for a shared dish, it couldn't be evenly shared. It was that bad that it was inconsistent. Some Paellas has 3 muscles and some had 5 and some had muscle shells with no muscle in it)

Who in their right mind would spend that amount of money on burnt rice with leftover prawn heads, shells and barely any flavour... Us... Because 4 out of 5 of the main meals were not even available... Funnily only the rib eye (the expensive one) was the only one left.

We then cancelled 2 Paellas because we had others who ordered them too but had to wait over an hr for their food .. but Miss Attitude with the rude Service came out with them still even after saying that she would cancel them for us - so we called the Manager.

The Manager then came out and we told him that we weren't impressed etc and so he told us that they would cover the cost for the Paellas and that dessert and drinks were on them ... Which took another 40-50 mins to come out btw.

Everything was fine after that and we went and paid for the other food we had ordered only to find out that it had already been paid for.... So technically we double paid them and they didn't tell us this. (Probably trying to make up for the Paellas they said we were going to remove from the bill)

I wasn't going to post this after talking to the Manager cos he was great but because of the whole payment thing and that one server chic being extremely rude the entire time - it has made this place a big no-no on my list.

If you want to waste your time and your money, go...

Thank God I don’t live in Mornington because there would now be one less place I’d consider eating.

Being a waitress and pass master myself, I understand the importance of main meals arriving at the table at the same time, even more so when there’s only two people. However, at Casa de Playa three nights ago, my and my partner’s meals were served 20-25 minutes apart. Having only ordered two tacos, I finished my meal quite quickly and my plate was cleared about 10 minutes before his meal even arrived.

If that wasn’t already disappointing enough, it took awhile for our order to be even taken because the waitress (who seemed to be working our section) seemed to be prioritising seating people instead.

While our mains were enjoyable (the lamb taco especially), I’d definitely swap the chocolate sauce served with my churros with chocolate sauce served at San Churro, which I know sells for a fraction of the price.

Finally, I chose this place while down visiting the Peninsula because of it’s allergy friendly menu. However, upon clarifying with a waiter (who actually seemed to be a manager of sorts) whether the steak was gluten and dairy free, he seemed to have no idea. He said that maybe the mushroom sauce might have dairy in it but when the meal came to the table, it was quite obvious that there was no mushroom sauce but just field mushrooms. To top it off, this waiter joked that my partner should share my churros with me if I’d let him, completely forgetting he was gluten and dairy free.

In all honesty, this is the first bad review I’ve ever written but considering nothing was taken off our bill and no sincere apology was offered, I felt there...

Have to give my hat off to the waitress we had, fantastic service and she went above and beyond to care for us during service and was immensely understanding of my partner's nut allergy.

Drink selection was good, with a selection of tap beers, wines, bottled beer and cocktails. We only had a pot of the tap Peroni, so i can't comment on the quality of the other drinks on offer.

Food was, for the most part, fantastic. The highlight of the meal being the pulled pork "cigar" which was presented intelligently and uniquely. The chorizo and pickled green chili was a well balanced dish, with a nice amount of savouriness from the decent serving of chorizo and tangy acidity from the pickled chili, however the salsa Verde wasn't too prominent on the palate. The piquillo and manchego croquettes were good due to the molten manchego core and a crunchy outside without being too greasy, however it was lacking a strong counterpoint to its creaminess. Both the pork and charred chicken tacos were the most disappointing part of the meal, but that doesn't mean they were at all bad. Whilst the meat was excellent, the creamy sauces were applied a little too liberally and didn't add much to the dish in terms of flavour. Personally a stronger sauce and some cheese would've gone a long way to improving these dishes.

Overall, Casa da Playa is a wonderful tapas restaurant, and strikes a good balance between a casual and fancy dining experience. Service was quick from the kitchen save for the final chicken tacos, and the excellent service of our waitress deserves to...