General Public Dingley — Restaurant in Melbourne

Came here to celebrate my birthday with a few friends and we mostly had a good night, we did encounter some issues though which I will get to. First of all the food was delicious! We tried the Brisket Ragu papadelle, beef sliders, steak sandwich, bacon Burger and 2 pizzas. Everything was great I must say. The pizzas tasted extra good. I've also had a super tasty and beautiful looking drink, the special K! It was honestly so good. One problem was that none of the servers knew which time the kitchen closed. I needed to know as I had one person come around later due to work but still wanted dinner, asked 3 different people and got 3 different responses. Luckily once my friend arrived food was still available but it was like a 50/50 chance. The staff was all very friendly but some seemed like they should do some more training. During dinner I ordered another drink via the QR Code and it was forgotten about. My partner enquired after waiting for about 25 mins at the bar and they hadn't even started making it at that point. We started dinner at 7 pm and had a bowling lane booked for 8.30 pm. Came to the bowling counter at 8.20 but waited around for 5-10 mins for someone to show up behind the counter. Then I was told by a female employee our booking was at 8.10 pm (which is incorrect), I showed them the confirmation email clearly stating I had booked for 8.30 pm. We were offered to either take a spot at 9.50 pm which did not suit us or to start now but our time would be cut short as they have another group starting at 9 pm. Considering I paid $75 for 5 people I was not happy being told instead of 50 mins we can now only have 25 mins now due to their mistake, not ours. We wanted (part of) our money back or for them to sort our their mess and to let us play our whole game. A male employee (manager?) joined and said we can do our whole game and he will sort out the rest. If my partner hadn't spoken up we simply would have been ripped off which I don't appreciate. I understand that technical mistakes happen but the way the situation was attempted to be sort out by the female employee was not appropriate. The rest of our night was fine, played a fair bit of arcade games and headed home at 11. The card system for the arcade games definitely wasn't explained well enough while purchasing, didn't realise that some of the card options won't allow you to collect tickets. I'd say this place is ok for all ages but there's definitely a tendency to a very young crowd. I do like this place due to its variety of entertainment but I'm certainly put off by the service...

We had a function booked here yesterday for my daughters baptism and it was absolutely awful.

Our original booking was for 1:45 but my husband came in the day before the function to ask Krishna if we could bring our booking forward to 1:30, he said this was no problem.

When we came in to see Krishna about about booking 3 months ago, we spoke at length about the space we needed as our booking was for 30 people. We booked two long tables at the back, two round tables for the kids and two tall tables to display our cakes. Again, Krishna said this was no problem and would be organised.

We arrived yesterday at 1:30 and had to wait at the front in the doorway with all the kids in the freezing cold because people were at our table still. After 5 minutes we just came through to wait near the pool tables and we were told our tables were getting cleaned for us. We were seated at 1:45 at the two long tables at the back, half of us had to stand because the two round tables for the kids weren't there and there were no other tables free. The two tall tables we asked for also weren't there and we had to ask staff to bring them around for us. When I asked the staff why we didn't have all our seats they said that when my husband came in the day before to drop the cakes off he said we only needed the two tables at the back and rearranged everything else, this is simply untrue.

The food was nice until I went to eat a piece of chicken that had hair on it just to make things even better.

All in all, the day was an absolute shambles and really upsetting. I feel like I wasted a lot of time organising a function that would have been the exact same as if we had just walked in with no booking at all. My guests had to spend a lot of time waiting on tables to free up so we could get the table space we needed and originally asked for.

We will never set foot in this place again, and there are a lot of kids parties that will now never be had here because of the way things have been dealt with. Honestly, they were lucky we paid the tab...

Arrived at 3:30 (without booking) to bowl with my 2 children ( 5 & 8 ) and was served by a very polite young lady who booked us in the only free lane. We started bowling and within minutes the next lane (with opposing couch) was occupied by a party consisting of 3 Dads and at least 8 young boys.

No worries right?

Problem was only 1 Dad had any social etiquette at all. We all know that lazy/clueless parents will always exist which is why there needs to be some level of supervision/duty of care by the business.

The boys were standing in our lane, sitting on our couch and eating ice-cream while sitting/laying on the ball machine. At one point one of the Dads stood in our lane to watch his kid and I had to ask him to move.

I had to ask several times for the kids to move off our couch/out of our lane/off the ball machine and clearly that’s not anyone’s idea of a good time.

How one of my/these kids wasn’t hurt is a miracle. Further, leaving this to be sorted out by frustrated parents is a recipe for disaster.

1 star each given for the young man and young lady who served us on the way in and out.

0 out of 5 for the business’s lack of supervision/care of what’s happening in the bowling lanes. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Regarding your reply:... We will look into potentially moving our furniture to avoid future disappointment...

Really? Where would you move it?

Nothing wrong with the set up - same as every alley on earth.

Just needs some/any degree of supervision from the business and a duty of care to not overbook lanes. I failed to mention the lane behind us also had another 10+ people bowling who also spilled onto our...