Hope St Radio — Restaurant in Melbourne

I’ll start with that I almost never write reviews, however our experience here was absolutely shocking. Let me preface this by saying I’ve dined here 5 times before, and it has been amazing every time, however last night was abysmal.

We arrived at 8:20 for our 8:30 seating, we obviously were a little early, so were directed to get a drink at the bar while they prepared the table and they’ll come and grab us. No worries at all, so we order a drink from the sour faced bar tender and stand on the edge of the bar where the host said to wait. Not even 5 minutes after we get our drinks, the same bartender yells “you need to move so other people can get a drink” in the most unwelcoming tone. There was not a single other person at the bar. “Go stand over there and points to the back corner”. Ok… so we move and were a bit rattled. 20 minutes go by, everyone else has been seated, it’s 8:45 now, so I saw a waitress walking past, and I asked if our table would be ready soon, I was rudely met with “I can’t help you I don’t know”

Long story short we were seated at 8:50. We are avid diners and eat out numerous times a week so understand things happen and venues can get busy, but the delivery from numerous staff was so jarring and unexpected.

Also never got any water for the table, when we asked 45 minutes in, it was as if I asked to take their first born child.

Food was the only redeeming aspect of the night, it was amazing as always.

After the rushed dinner service, at 9:45 we asked for the bill and was directed by a waitress to go to the front and pay. As we stood up a different waitress abruptly shouts “what are you doing” when explaining we were going to pay, she said “no we need to bring you the bill” ???? Again, the delivery and lack of consistency was shocking.

Unsure why there has been such a rapid and huge decline here, but based on other reviews it doesn’t seem to be an...

Service was terrible, we waited at the front for over 10 minutes to be seated (even thought we’d made a booking).. we ordered a bottle of wine which some young dude came and dumped on our table, he didn’t even pour our first glass like you’d expect from any average restaurant. The mains also took over an hour to come out and they’d forgotten what we had ordered as they had to come and ask us after an hour.

The main problem however was the music, which completely ruined our whole experience. We had a table booked at 6:30pm (very early), and the DJs on at this time were playing hectic experimental industrial/electronic music, which was being played at full volume throughout the restaurant. It was so over stimulating and never the vibe you want at a nice restaurant while enjoying a refined meal. We were almost at the point of leaving before our mains came out because it was ruining our experience that much (we couldn’t even have a conversation due to how loud it was).

The most disappointing thing about this whole experience was that I reached out directly to their team on Instagram to let them know about our experience instead of leaving a public review, in the hopes they’d take it on and value our feedback. This was not the case and their response was “We are a live radio station so presenters can play whatever they want to. Sorry you didn’t enjoy it but that’s an integral part of who we are.”

This response feels super demeaning and has lead me to leaving this public review. Had they shown a little more regard for our terrible experience, I’d of skipped leaving this review, but I think people need to know how terrible of an experience we...

Have been here around 4 times and each time I was met with rude staff. This place has racist and ageist staff. I received comments like “don’t you understand English, I said we are busy” and my guest who asked if we could be seated in a chair IF there was availability was laughed at to her face. we booked our spot at 8 pm yet our bread and butter only came at 9.45 pm and then our oysters came at 10.15 pm … at that point when the table was suppose to be returned within the 2 hr time frame our food was still not served so we cancelled the rest of the orders since we were hungry. No one came to check in on us or to serve us water or provide drinks. We had to line up ourselves at the bar to get drinks and water even though we had booked table service. If the place is that busy and understaffed a quick 3 second explanation from the waitstaff would have helped reset our expectations but no communication was provided at all. It’s the cost of living crisis, people save up money to eat out celebrating birthdays, a smile, bar minimum communication on wait times or delays would have sufficed and doesn’t take a lot of effort to do so. Note, I work in hospitality and have come from a long line of immigrant Australians who have worked in the industry - I know first hand how hard, labour intensive and stressful it is. However one can be busy and yet still hold customer service and manners. Beautiful venue, interiors, and music - clearly it’s a great place for drinks like any other established pub. However the racism and ageism is something...