Holmesglen Institute's ZEST Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

We know dining at this type of restaurant can be a hit and miss, as the restaurant is operated by students in training. But we still left feeling very disappointed.

The experience was weird because there wasn’t much service. We were not able to pick the food from the menu. In fact, the waitress did not give us a menu or take our orders. So we sat for thirty minutes wondering if anyone was going to speak with us about the menu. When the food was served, no one explained what the food was. Not really sure how this minimal level of service helped train the students. Nobody confirmed with us if there we had any dietary requirements.

The actual food was a bit meh. We couldn’t finish the desserts.

It ended up costing $50 a person (plus $6 for parking). Not...

Lovely customer service from the students, you can see they are still learning, but they are trying their best.

Tables and cutleries are beautifully set up. The presentations of the food look amazing, seasoning was great.

There are still some areas of improvement like waiters don’t know the menus well; overcooked steak and completely melted sorbet served.

But of course you would expect some mistakes as all of the chefs and waiters are students and they are still learning.

Dishes and drinks are very cheap as well.

Don’t be surprised if the students don’t know everything about the menu and the dishes are not cooked perfectly, they are learning and we are paying a very good price.

5 star for the lovely students and...

Novel dining experience where student's training in hospitality, practice cooking and serving as if in a restaurant. We have visited twice, once for a la carte dining a year ago, which was fantastic, and yesterday for $40 3 course meals. The food was tasty and looked pretty when presented on the plates. It was a very slow process ( started at 12:15, we didn't leave til 4)but the dining area's decor looked professional and the table was set well. Our student server this time was obviously newly enrolled and very inexperienced, but the supervisor was rude to him and embarassed him a few times in front of clients- which we didn't like. At payment time- we found we had been overcharged $78 and it took quite a while to...