Kirks on the Esplanade — Restaurant in Melbourne

The location is amazing, the view is spectacular but let's be honest, you don't eat the view. Looking at the menu, the selection is very mouth watering. A long list of great options and when you look at the price you expect to get excellence for what you pay for. The prices are what you would expect in a high class restaurant. The service is friendly and everyone greets you with a smile which makes the experience very pleasant. What I didn't understand is that you're paying a premium to eat the food but yet need to order it as though you're in a bistro or a pub. There's no table service. I ordered a garlic pizza to start followed by the 500g rump cooked medium with a red wine jus, salad and chips. Garlic pizza arrived, not off to the best start. Very salty and just wasnt pleasant to eat. Rump arrived and it just got worse. Arrived cremated, in other words, over cooked..... wayyyy over cooked. For what I paid you'd expect the chef to know how to cook a steak. Medium means you get a nice pink middle with juices flowing through the meat making it succulent and juicy to eat. What I got was char grilled cardboard. Very dry and way over done, the "red wine jus" was straight out gravy. Had no flavour what so ever. Turn away from the meat to have some salad..... disapointed. Got dry salad with a drizzle of dressing as though they didn't have any dressing left leaving me with a very dry and old salad instead of fresh. Turn to the chips..... even worse how can you cook chips wrong? How about cooking them a little longer and make them golden and crispy instead of chunky flavorless chips. At least add salt to the chips as a bare minimum. Minimise the salt on the garlic pizza and add it to the chips. Cook the chips a little longer and the steak less. It's a shame because the meat itself is local and so the quality is exceptional but these guys don't treat it with respect by cooking it properly. Our trip to mornington, Authurs Seat and Dromana was spoilt by the quality of food being dished out and still recon they can get away with charging such ridiculous rates. Arthur's Hotel... rubbish, L'aqua.... rubbish. In the end just grab yourself a chook from IGA or Coles, you'll...

Repeat visit after a great experience 12 months ago. Requested for birthday lunch by our teen, despite living 2 hours away. Bistro staff were lovely. Bar staff were an absolute shocker!! Rude, unable to provide recommendations, one guy just sort of stalked the bar like he might throw a drink eventually. Very weird. Food was okay but we would have expected better given there were roughly 20 people in the bistro when we ordered. $39 for a plate of chips with a smattering of calamari was ridiculous. Alternatively we ordered the $185 seafood platter which came with wine, we asked to switch it out and pay the difference for the one offered and was told no way. Mussels were cold on one side of the dish and hot on the other. The platter is very large but not worth the price at all. Birthday person asked not to stay for dessert, we left for Blackbird Cafe which was like night and day in comparison. The staff could not have tried harder to be hospitable, their cake options were half the price and double the size of Kirks, they acknowledged our teen's celebration in a beautiful memorable way. Kirk's were told in our booking it was for a birthday but failed to acknowledge it at all. We thought coming back would be an even better experience but after travelling so far, paying a public holiday surcharge, spending over $400 and then having a pretty average experience - we won't be back. The view cannot make up for poor hospitality. This is a place that gets by on local love for sure, which provides no motivation for them to improve. Interesting to read the comments over the last 6 months with similar experiences and gratitude from management for the opportunity to improve. Would recommend Pt Leo estate or similar over here, better value, consistent food, hospitality is fantastic, views are...

Abhorrent customer service/relations. After taking my elderly mother to the mornington street market, looking for a late lunch, I telephoned this place at 2:42pm on 26/4/23 to see if the kitchen was still open. The friendly guy who answered the phone confirmed it was open until 9pm, so we went straight there. Upon arrival, despite noting only about 4 tables were occupied in the massive venue, we paused at the entry waiting to be seated, only to have two older female staff members walk straight past us like we were invisible, talking to a third staff member as they went. Hence, we seated ourselves at one of the dozens of free tables available. A minute later, one of the staff members who had walked straight past us (an older women with grey hair, probably in her late 60’s or early 70’s) screeched at us whilst standing 10 metres away from the other side of the room “Do you have a booking, you need a booking”. I answered “No”, to which she responded “Well, you can’t just seat yourself, didn’t you see the sign that says ‘wait to be seated’. I got up and walked across the room to where she was screaming from to have a more civil conversation, but she kept banging on about the sign, made an excuse for walking straight past us initially, made some illogical claim about us disturbing their preparation for dinner service etc., so I told her we’d leave and take our business elsewhere, which we did. No apology, no attempt to encourage us to stay. What an absolutely disgraceful performance! Needless to say, we will never be back. And to think, when i first saw her aged hagged appearance, I thought to myself - nice of the venue to hire such mature wait staff. But no, this one is well past it’s use by date and needs to be put out to...