Hunter Lane Cafe — Restaurant in Melbourne

Visited here 24/08/2019 around 11:30AM.

Food Quality: Ordered Smashes Avo with some bacon and I ordered Chilli Eggs with two juices. Never got our food so not even sure how to rate this. The only thing that actually arrived was our juices with no straws. When we looked around, every other table that had juice had straws...

Service: Where do I begin? I read a review on google that mentioned that "food comes out slow but worth the wait" so after ordering we waited. And waited. And waited. But after seeing another table that came in after us received their food first we started to get suspicious and checked the time. The reason why we were getting restless and super hangry was that 45 minutes had passed. Waved a waitress over who happened to be the one who took our order. She said she will go back and checked and came back to inform us that "our order got lost and never made it to the kitchen". Re-took our orders, then came back and said, "honestly it's not even worth the wait, but the kitchen has so many orders that we can't make yours. I'm sorry. You won't be charged for your drinks or anything". She did this whilst stroking my back. Another remark was "I'm so sorry, there's a lack of staff at the moment...although that's no excuse".

Pricing, Location and Ambiance/Atmosphere: No comment due to the overwhelming fury at the service.

Conclusion: Honestly unsure where to begin: ・We (patrons) were already seated for 45 minutes. Are you saying you can not even prioritize our orders above those who just came in? Clearly the direction of her response was to get us to leave, because anything else we order would be behind everyone else and they "can't" make ours. So obviously, we leave. ・The order was lost? You took our bloody order! Not the other waitress or the waiter, you! ・Clearly the place just wanted to get rid of us. Honestly, I felt so disrespected, also being a first timer here. Ruined our lunch date honestly. Taking into account my anxiety, it made me feel awful for even picking this place for our lunch date and I could not stop apologizing to my partner. When I asked my partner how hungry he was as we drove to Preston Market instead, he replied "you know when you get so hungry that you just can't feel anything anymore?" This breaks my heart. ・If it is soo busy, then the floor manager should manage the pace of patrons and ensure to relay information from the kitchen to patrons. It is rude to make patrons wait without checking up on them, and unprofessional to not even bring their order out 45 minutes after they placed an order. Inform them if dishes will come out slowly. Visit them once in a while rather than running around. And obviously if your response is "we are running around because we have things to attend to" then hire more floor staff. ・Lastly, please keep your hands and feet to yourself. I did not think it was professional to start rubbing my back as you apologize.

And for those who care, we went to Preston market. My partner and I shared pizza, chips and chicken and Indian curry with rice for our brunch and topped it off with...

An impressive cafe. It’s not without its faults but otherwise there’s lots to like here.

The cafe occupies a bright modern space directly across from the new Rosanna station which is huge. It’s a cinch to get here by public transport. This is a nice space for sure. Modern and well set out. I particularly liked the bar area looking back at the station and the charging points for phones.

Maybe I’m getting cranky as I get older but unchilled table water annoys me more and more these days. The water was delivered quickly When we arrived but it was quite warm. Chilled still water is the minimum for any serious cafe these days, in my view. Best practice is to offer complimentary bottomless still water. In days where anyone can buy a soda fountain and make their own sparkling water, top shelf cafes need to offer it as a standard, I reckon.

I had a long black to start. The coffee was ok but not exceptional. I next ordered the brekkie board for my brunch. The price seemed a little steep and I did toss up whether it was a bit too much. It wasn’t too much. The dish is exceptional. For a start, it looks fantastic. A visual delight when you first see it. I’m not sure I could fault anything with it, unless that it’s slightly awkward to eat. But who cares when the food is this good. The chia pudding was beautiful. The Chia was soft but still with a bit of give. Outstanding flavour with beautiful textures from the slightly firm chia seeds and the various seeds and nuts in the bowl. Gorgeous to look at well with strawberries, blueberries, passion fruit and various edible flowers. This is food of a very high order. This was only one small bit of the board though. The rest of the dish was lovely too, the sourdough, the seed encrusted avocado, bacon, cherry tomatoes, haloumi, beetroot purée, dukka encrusted egg (which was cooked perfectly), beautiful button mushrooms, a seed covered orange and all sitting on a lovely sea of greens. Add to this some super tasty freshly squeezed orange juice that comes as part of the dish and you’ve got something very very exciting. It’s such an enjoyable dish. Forget the big brekkie. The brekkie board is the go.

The world’s most beautiful woman had the corn and haloumi fritters. These were very good too. This is a very attractive dish. It tastes good too. The red cabbage coleslaw balanced the meal beautifully.

Service was ok throughout depending on the server. Overall cost was reasonable too. This cafe was impressive. It’ll be interesting to see over time how it compares to others...

Visited Hunter Lane yesterday at approx 2.15pm to have a quick catch up with a friend. Upon entering we first made sure it was still okay to go in and were told kitchen is already closed, to which we responded it's fine because we only wanted coffee. When we had confirmation it was okay, we proceeded to sit down.

We ordered coffee and also a muffin to share and it was all fine. Coffee wasn't anything to write home about but it didn't matter too much.

We noticed staff were cleaning and thought it strange as we had checked beforehand and everywhere we looked (Instagram, Google) said they're open until 3.30.

Not long after being served what we ordered, we were given our bill, and of course we understood it was our cue to wrap up. This was still fine, many other places do this as well and we promptly started to get going. We were told to take our time, we had 5 minutes. However 2 minutes after saying this the staff came back out and said, 'sorry, but you have to go' and THEN saying that oh yea we close earlier now as we don't get as many customers due to Covid.

Fully understand that they made the decision to close earlier, especially due to Covid but when it was not made clear from the start, coupled with the rather rude delivery of the message, it was very disappointing and frankly, simply poor customer service...

Attached are some screenshots re closing times, both showed they were due to close at 3.30pm on a...