Chai Shai Fitzroy — Restaurant in Melbourne

DO NOT VISIT!!!! ❌ DO YOUSELF A FAVOUR AND DO NOT GO HERE ❌ Worst experience ever.. Well where do I start? We went for acoustic night that was supposed to start at 7 pm, we reached there at 6.45pm and they started the event at 8 pm without any explanation of delay or an apology.. Forget about apologising, the Singer told me why you want the event to start on time, are you getting late for something?? I was shocked with his remark 😠 String sing the singer doesn’t know how to treat his audience.. Average singer, extremely rude and disrespectful towards the audience.. and the worst part that the organisers do not take any criticism against the Singer… they made our evening complete unpleasant.. food was pathetic and quantity was way too small.. it’s an absolutely overly priced restaurant.. overall we regret going for the acoustic singer String sing’s night.. we spoiled our Saturday night.. Don’t recommend ☹️ P.S. You can clearly see their horrendous customer service with their response to my concern👇 Hope they realise how many customers they have already lost and will be losing with this extremely unacceptable bad attitude towards their valuable customer.. No wonder there are so many bad reviews.. Highly disappointed 👎 Google reviews are there for a reason. It is everyone’s right to post their experience at Chai Shai. If you cannot take constructive feedback well, and trying to threaten your customers with defamation case to shut them down, is absolutely ridiculous. I was not at all disrupting neither I used any abusive words so be careful with what allegation you are putting here. Instead of writing all this here, venue host could have simply apologised when I was speaking to her that night and avoided all this. It would have made the situation bit better. but venue host was least interested listening to my concerns. Hence, this review was posted. Anyway this is total time waste for me to comment any further here so Good luck and keep up with your “UTMOST RESPECTFUL CUSTOMER...

With very sad heart and 3 bad experiences in past 2 months i had to come to conclusion and a decision to stop coming here for a chai. As the name of the place ‘chai shai’, quality of chai is getting lower and lower. In past i had very good experience but today, i had the worst experience.

Me and my friend usually come here for chai pe charcha (a meet and greet). Today as we entered, we made clear that we want freshly made chai (as last time we had experience of same tea getting served as an event was going on) and still got the same chai as last time. We ordered kadak chai just to have a different and FRESHLY made chai, still got normal (made for everyone and ready-made masala chai).

We made clear 3 times about what we want and still got what we wanted to avoid.

(1) We asked to dine in (2) They got us a table inside (3) Got served in takeaway cups ( idk if that was on purpose or a sarcastic denial).

After taking the first sip, i was sure this is not what we ordered as i could taste diff notes in taste and as it got a bit less hot, it started giving bitter tasted which a tea (chai) will never have.

If we wanted machine made or this kind of quick made tea, we would have gone to dropout chaiwala, at least they own what they say and do.

I literally asked my friend to put the cups down and leave immediately as it was not worth the time nor the money. But we still PAID THE BILL.

I gave less ratings in atmosphere as they prioritised event at hand first rather thn normal experience of people who come for authentic experience of a chai place.

Last but not least, i wanted to give negative feedback on service as the lady who took our order was very rude and mean. As well as the lady who served us (she was nice and tried her best to communicate with us no doubt in that) but was not able to provide smooth experience.

I have lost my all hope for this place. Hope this detailed review helps them who want a great experience (even as little as sharing a tea over a...

The space and its social media appearance is a classic case of Jekyll and Hyde. We went to this place after recommendations from a few friends, especially related to live music events and general ambience of food with speciality in Chai. To our utter disappointment it offered us nothing of the aforementioned things and was a pretty deadbeat experience. The chai, especially the soy chai was very bad and the milk chai was really not “Chai your way” as it felt like none of the instructions were followed. The outdoor sitting was unavailable as none of the heaters had gas on a terribly cold night. We sat in chairs near the reception which had restraunt’s stuff on chairs and tables. The food (charged at $16/chat plate) was average at best and frozen samosa fried on the spot was burnt. Only Nankhatai and Parle G biscuit were fine. However, really disappointed at being offered just 1 Parle G biscuit with Chai as in a true Indian chai tradition the mini-packs bring that nostalgic feeling better.

To be honest, we were vouching for this place and were hoping it to turn out better and guess that anticipation made us feel even more disappointed. 😞

I am hoping that it would be a better place at least ambience-wise on event days, but today the place was totally dead with a very run down feel of sitting in someone’s back office of a warehouse. It was very difficult to locate it too (for first time visitor) as there was no light even on the signboard of the cafe in a completely dark street.

I have seen the reply of the cafe to the other reviews and found it nothing but a very defensive excuse mission with little to none acknowledgement of the issues. I really hope that this feedback will be taken up constructively and look forward to a better experience in future. This place has a great potential but average food and service and below average chai quality is stopping it...