Good Times — Restaurant in Melbourne

TERRIBLE FOOD, EVEN WORSE SERVICE!

Our experience was soured by the foul attitude of the host. We arrived late to a booking due to traffic, so we understood we might lose our table due to this and were happy to go elsewhere. The host offered us 2 options: keep the same indoor table with a 1 hour limit, or move outside to a different table. We spent about $90-$100 on food.

Before half of our food had even arrived to our table (around 45 mins), we were told we had to leave because they needed the table back. I tried to gain some clarity with the host, as we had moved tables to avoid the time limit, however she was quite rude and confrontational when responding to a simple question. She said every table has a time limit, said that we should already know this - we didn’t as this was our first time dining here and she definitely did not inform us of this. We were allocated to a share table, so she pointed at a sticky note with seating times, however that wasn’t visible to us as another family had their pasta bowl on top of it.

I feel like your staff shouldn’t resort to passive aggressiveness about us not knowing the 1.5 hour time limit as it was never made aware to us. Shifting the blame and responsibility on us to know is just unprofessional and rude. Then we were forced to move to another table if we wanted to finish eating - I had not even received my pasta at this point.

The pasta was AVG. And they were served 40 minutes apart. We ordered 2 of the same pastas - however one was ok and the other was bland, it seemed like it lacked one of the key ingredients (crème fraiche).

The food is cheap but the quality is still not worth the low price tag.

The left 2 bowls are the same pasta pictured below. Our third pasta was also extremely dry. We ended not eating most of it (the photo below is what we left behind). The garlic bread with sauce and...

📍Good Times, Fitzroy North

If you want an affordable bowl of pasta that is tasty, this is where to come. We were spoilt for choice with options here, so it was perfect when we all shared 4 pastas, and means I can give you the run down on them all!!

Firstly, we have the pesto special. This was sooo yum. It had goats cheese as well and I am a sucker for tagliatelle. Would definitely recommend

We also had the creamy walnut. I loved the crunch of the walnut and the sauce was tasty, but it was veryyy creamy. I think having a whole bowl of this would be sickening, but I’m not a massive cream lover.

Next we have the garlic bread with sugo. Yummmmm absolutely loved this. I am a sucker for sugo. The sugo itself was relatively simple, not mind blowing, but yum.

Next we have the cavalo de nero, which comes with Tuscan kale, pumpkin and pine nuts. I am an avid fan of pine nuts in pasta and think it was the hero of this dish, adds extra texture and flavour.

Finally, we had the calabrese, which had Italian sausage and olives. I think the level of spice in this was perfect, there was a little kick but it was still enjoyable. However some of the others thought it was too spicy, so beware.

All the pasta dishes we had ranged from $13-19 and they were great sizes. You can also get pasta starting from $9 here, which is absolutely unheard of.

The tables are squished together here, but I love the energy that that brings, with lots of people gathering to have a hearty meal. We sat outside in the courtyard, which was really cute, but walking through the inside it was sooo hot on a warm night. The staff weren’t the nicest here. I didn’t expect great service given that it’s an inexpensive place, but still would prefer not to have staff be rude.

Overall 3.7...

ORDERED: Banquet for 2! ($29.00 each) 🧀 Cheese board 🥪 Garlic bread 🥗 Rocket fennel salad 🧀 Mozzarella balls 🍝 Pasta 1: funghi: chilli, garlic, parmesan, extra virgin olive oil base 🍝 Pasta 2: creamy walnut: toasted walnut pasta, pangrattato, pecorino, black pepper 🍰 A chocolate torta caprese to share

iced long black

I paid $32.35pp here

REVIEW: 😮 Good Times in Fitzroy North has incredible pricing. A full blown 3 course meal for a very affordable $29pp. 🌟 The cheese board was great, with a great combination of soft and hard cheese on pepper crackers. Great to munch on as we wait for the mains. Garlic bread was solid and felt more like a toastie/panini situation. ⬆ One pasta (funghi) was definitely better than the other (creamy walnut). The funghi had this heat that I liked, and the abundance of mushrooms just made me happy. ⬇ On the other hand, creamy walnut felt gritty and harder to consume - especially in the bulk portion it was in. ✖ As my friend aptly described, it feels more like 'fast food pasta' when it came to the quality. Both seemed slightly undercooked as well.

Service was incredibly busy. They won't proactively check in on you, but will be available when you catch their eye! Their QR code didn't appear to list all the pastas available, so I ended up ordering at the cashier to get that funghi pasta.

Bookings highly encouraged here, they are PACKED. Atmosphere was a constant vibe with people coming in and out, while drawing on butcher paper...