Ezra Next Door — Restaurant in Melbourne

I rarely have to write bad reviews and give 1 star unless I have been utterly disappointed by the service or food. My husband and 2 children made a 9.45am booking for Mother's Day this morning. We waited 50 minutes for our food and watched other customers turn up and get their food before us. No staff bothered to come and check on us after our order but I believe they should have been aware of our lack of food as they were bringing food to the tables on either side of us. I finally asked a waitress where was our food as it has been over 45 minutes and she said she would check on it. She proceeded to talk to another waiter and they both had puzzled looks on their faces. She did not come back to let us know what had happened. So, after waiting another 10 minutes my husband went inside to see what the heck was going on as by this time we were getting close to an hour and were told it would be 5 minutes away. 20 minutes later still nothing and I pulled up another waiter and vented my frustration. Someone else came back and told us meals were coming. I finally got my tiny side bowl of mushrooms and one child got her kids box (which included a tiny toasted cheese and vegemite sandwich when it said fresh 🫣 PLUS at the start of our order we had asked if they could do a cheese toasty for our other child and were told 'no, not possible 🧐'). Our other child was so hungry and upset and crying almost as it was supposed to be our Mother's Day breakfast and she was starving. I was starving! Husband went inside again and they finally said the order got lost somewhere, whist the staff were pleasant and the Manager did seem apologetic, she focused mainly on the fact that they had to try and make more hollandaise sauce and were struggling with this recipe and were no longer going to offer this. Not our problem! Don’t offer it on the menu if you cannot service it and they could have offered something else at anytime during the one hour wait or initial realisation our order was forgotton! They were not busy, probably 50% capacity. I am a business owner and I feel due to the lack of professional resolve I had to write this review. If our concern was handled differently instead of finding excuses I would have accepted to given the cafe a 2nd chance. It is all about the resolve...

I realise they were busy, but the wait for our food was excessive, teamed with getting our drinks 1/2 hour before our food arrived. The French Toast bordered on being hilarious - 1 piece of bread, with half a strawberry (my friend had french toast too, and she got the other half of the strawberry), 1 raspberry, 4 blueberries and 1/4 teaspoon of rhubarb dust with some flavoured creamery, and we paid $24 for it. We won't be bothering again - I want the other half of my 🍓!

Update - Should have listened to myself and not gone back. Only now reading through my receipts for the end of last year and comparing to the bank statement, when I found a 'discrepancy' with Ezra. Our bill came to $148.28 which inc the weekend surcharge, yeh ok, but the statement reads...

This is an unfortunate update to the 5 star review left in Jan 24, following which we attended weekly and were equally impressed with food, drinks and service.

This week we discovered the lunch menu has changed dramatically to one lacking in imagination and vegetarian options - not even a vegetarian salad and the favourite vegetable juice gone. The explanation - chefs have changed, but, evidently, not for the better. Very disappointing! A new gnocchi dish sounded good, but not for $38 Service is still reasonably good, although we did have to fetch our own menus for the first time there.

5 Star Review Jan 24: First time customers and very impressed with imaginative food and excellent customer service by genuinely...