Freddies Kitchen — Restaurant in Melbourne

We went here today for an 11:30am booking on Mother’s Day after looking at all the great reviews and seeing their wide ranged menu that would cater to my family members many dietary requirements. We showed up to a very limited menu on our tables. The girl serving us talked us through the 4 items that we had the choice of on the brekky menu and said no changes allowed. With my family members having many different dietary requirements and being plain eaters, we found it extremely difficult to actually find something we wanted to eat. For starters, there was absolutely no mention of this limited menu on their social media or website so I had no idea it would be like this; when I booked I checked out the whole menu and it looked great and had options for everyone in my family to eat. But when we arrived they wouldn’t even do a simple bacon and eggs on toast, until we told them my Mum literally wouldn’t eat anything else on the menu so they said they’ll do that for her.

We noticed on the menu it said b/fast until 11:30am yet the lady took our brekky order at 11:45 after talking us through it then came back 10 minutes later saying sorry as it’s past 11:30 we’re now only doing the lunch menu. I openly expressed my frustration with this saying I don’t understand why she took our order in the first place to come back and say we now have to choose something completely different. On the lunch side of the menu there was only 4 items that were even worse than the brekky items that none of us really wanted to choose from but we had to as we were already seated with our drinks. We waited about 40 minutes for our food and we were starving at this point after being messed around with the ordering, and when we finally saw our meals on the food pass, I saw the male worker taking videos and photos of all our food rather than hurrying up and bringing us our food that we had waited so long for. The food wasn’t anything special at all either, my Reuben sandwich that I ordered absolutely was not worth $30 for a sandwich with about 8 chips on the side, my sisters Vegan burger was bland and tasteless, the only semi decent item was my mums bacon & eggs on toast which we all would have preferred over what we got. When the other lady was clearing our plates, instead of coming around and grabbing them from us like any other hospo worker would do, she stood at the end of the table and CLAPPED AT US and said ‘plates!’ and gestured for us to pass them to her!! As a hospo worker myself, this absolutely shocked myself and my family, unbelievable. The service was slow and the waitstaff seemed to have no personality at all, no smiles or happiness. I went and paid for it all and was served by a man in a suit. I expressed my frustration with how the whole day went and I said that we were completely shocked and appalled with how it was handled - I said how there was no mention of brekky menu being only until 11:30am and he said ‘it was on the menu’ to which I explained how my frustration was that this was not advertised anywhere on their website or social media that they had a breakfast cut off time OR how they had a shockingly limited menu. If i knew this was the case, I would not have booked here and would have gone somewhere nicer with a wider menu range available on a day like today. He barely gave me any response back and I said that we will not be returning.

I planned a nice surprise brunch for our family for Mother’s Day for us to all leave disappointed after wasting $200 here, It made me feel extremely bad for my mum that this is how her day was spent. Do better.

There’s so many better places around with better service and staff, I recommend...

My own experiences here have been mediocre at best; I’ve been here with girlfriends with the kids for a coffee and babycinos. The gingerbread men were stale, but the staff were too unfriendly to approach.

They were also very unwelcoming to us and children in general {like they don’t want you to be there} and we haven’t returned after the last time.

I was particularly irate with how they treated my husband a few days ago. I will admit he did swear, which isn’t acceptable.

However, the treatment prior to that was extremely unjustified and very upsetting to hear. A Dad with his newborn and a two year old, trying to have a coffee with their (very sick) Mum in the Doctors next door.

My husband drinks one thing and one thing only - a large mocha in a takeaway cup; the same for ten years.

So imagine how frustrating it was for him that (1) he was immediately asked to leave the booth and sit at the one beside it, while holding two children (noted - the booths were exactly the same, so the excuse that ‘one was reserved’ is an odd one) (2) he was told 3 times that he ordered a latte… which he has never done in his life.

When he went to the counter to rectify this again, he was met with a smug waiter insisting he ordered a latte in a mug.

One of our neighbours and his friends were bystanders to this, and verifies that the bald waiter was outrageously out of line.

He then demanded he leave the premises.

Throwing out a Father with two babies, because your ego wouldn’t allow you to admit a mistake.

Again - he shouldn’t have swore.

However, the waiter should have been more professional and courteous to your customers very simple order, and the level of anger wouldn’t have gotten to that stage.

Extremely disappointing service.

I see every time you have a negative review, suddenly a five star review pops up....

Food is always great here, been my favourite restaurant for the last 6 years. However, they're really starting to lose their way. Every birthday we come up for dinner here. We had a surprise 25th bday for my partner a few years ago, and was absolutely amazing. In Feb this year we enquired about having our engagement party at freddies, they responded a few days later saying they would get back to us with some more details in a week's time and asked us to leave them details of numbers etc. We then organised a time and date for a chat over the phone. 10 days after the initial email, we then received the phone call on the organised day and were told they had another function booked on the night, with the phone call lasting all of 30 seconds. Now why we couldn't have been told a couple of days after the initial phone call and emails were exchanged is beyond me. To be made to wait 10+ days is fine, that's their prerogative, but to wait all that time just to say they have already been booked out is an absolute joke. It's not hard to check a book and say we're actually booked out on that night, instead of leading us on to think we were going to get the booking, as we've been asked for more details and a telephone meeting. And to rub salt in the wound, we went for dinner on my bday in Feb and ordered a freddies t shirt and were told they had to get them made up , we were never notified when they'd come in, so I phoned them up 5 weeks later and they said to come in and grab it. I went in yesterday to pick it up and my t shirt was also wrong, wrong size and there was 2 of them. I love the joint and the food, but they've lost us. Hopefully they pick up their act so they don't lose...