Mama Manoush — Restaurant in Melbourne

This is from my visit back in 2015 which i reviewed then on TripAdvisor but felt warranted to post it on here too after a friend's recent bad dining experience...

"waited months to come again and wished we didn't"

This was the second time we dined here, party of six, both times on voucher deals. First time was in september 2014, we did the lebanese banquet, all you can eat deal. Second time we did the same banquet but wasn't all you can eat. Bad service galore, and started from when we were seated. Thank God i tell you we're not a tipping nation, so i can live with bad service, but 15 minutes to come and ask for our drinks? Tap water wasn't even offered, and the place wasn't exactly busting busy either. The amount of food was piss poor to put it even politely!! We got more food in the first session of all you can eat, for the same amount of people, than what we got this time round. Smaller portions of salads, and the rice would barely have been enough for two, maybe three people... CHILDREN!! We saw a couple of tables doing the same banquet with only four people as paying diners and they clearly were getting larger portions of salad, rice and even their bowls of dips were larger, plus a couple of bread, whereas we were brought one bread between the six of us, and waited ages for more bread to be brought. As well, the other diners had their banquets brought out all at once whereas ours were brought as individual single dishes with long waiting time between each dish. Dessert was a joke and came almost 20 minutes later, and the tea/coffee? Never came. We walked out in the end and i don't think anyone even realised. I have no problem with the bad service, i don't have to tip so that's fine!! I just don't like being treated as a lesser customer and given less product just because i have purchased the same menu item on a deal as a cheaper price. If you're not going to serve the same amount of food to your customers as full paying customers then don't bother selling these deals.

Refund requested, and received from the...

EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS....THANK YOU

I organised a Surprise 50th Birthday for my wife on Sat 2nd November.

From the moment I made my booking with Anthony (approximately 2 months prior) I had regular contact with him, ensuring everything would run smoothly (I had concerns like most people when planning a special occasion). Unfortunately - Anthony was unable to be there the night of our function (due to a family commitment) but still called me the morning of the Birthday Party and left me his mobile number - insisting I call him at home should I encounter any issues. Being an extremely busy weekend (Cup weekend) I had some concerns about service etc - but should never have doubted Anthony and his team wouldn't deliver.

On arrival - Yusef introduced himself as our server for the night (21 of us). Young in appearance - he is a true professional. Under his control - everything ran smoothly. We were never 'hurried' or pushed, he always checked with me as to the timing of the courses, managed to serve drinks to the guests in a timely fashion (and we had a full bar) - brought out the Birthday cake with lit candles right on queue - then served it individually to guests....he made our night a success.

As for the food....AMAZING. We could not fault 1 dish of the banquet. Everything tasted delicious and served hot as required. Hard to pinpoint anyone dish as they were all fantastic (although Kibbeh is my personal favourite). They even catered for one of our group with special needs. We had a lot of left over food which was packaged up and put to good use - I don't know how anyone could say they were still hungry after the banquet.

So all in all a huge success. Such a busy night, other guests seemed to have the same service and experience we did. With such an important occasion - so many venues miss the mark. The team here at Mama's actually made the night...

Went with family & friends on a a Saturday night, the venue was packed. We had banquet for adults & kids meals for the kids.

The served our soup, dips & all our banquet entrees while the kids got nothing, so we ended up kids eating the adults entrees as they are hungry while we ended up with kids meal which we didn’t want, despite our complaints, no solution were offered.

Lentils Soup: it was so yummy and we enjoyed it.

Dips: trio of dips were high quality & great start.

Chicken wings: so delicious & quite big.

Cheese cigar: it wasn’t bad but definitely needs improvement, I’ve tasted much better than this.

Makanek ( Lebanese sausage ): it was one of the best Lebanese sausage I ever had.

Kibkabet: second best ever tasted in Australia.

2 micro sizes of fries, the fries was crispy, under seasoned, way small portion for 5 banquet.

Tabouli Salad: very fresh salad with perfect dressing.

Fatoush Salad: very fresh with perfect dressing, however I didn’t like the concept of a massive piece of fried bread on top, usually it comes as shredded pieces of fried beard to add more crunch and texture for the salad.

Lamb skewers: it was perfect, 10 out of 10, cooked & marinated to perfection.

Chicken skewers: even though I’m not a big fan of chicken, that was so yummy & cooked perfectly.

Riz AlJaj: it was delicious, different & the best I ever tasted in Melbourne.

Kanafeh for dessert: it was nice way to end that meal, it tasted yummy, not too sweet & went on different level with...