McKinnon Hotel — Restaurant in Melbourne

I like to think I'm a really fair reviewer but I was so so shocked at how bad this was that I was driven to submit. We visited here for a dual family birthday for Sunday lunch - 12 of us incl young kids. On arriving nobody offered us water or checked on if we wanted drinks. 15mins later I had to track a waitress down to order a drink. Wine list is obscure, small and none of the wines list what year the vintage is so you could be ordering a 2017 wine or 2013...who knows? Plus you don't even then know if it's a fair price to pay for what you're ordering. The one sparkling wine they had by the glass was undrinkable and a brand I'd not heard of. Eventually someone took our order. It took 45mins at least for our food to arrive, and we had 3 and 5 year olds that were starving and bored/restless. My daughter asked for "normal" bacon on her burger and we were told they didn't have any, as they'd smoked all their bacon that morning and that's all they had - no good for an 8 year old. Another person ordered the roast chicken (it was 12.30 on a sunday) and was told they'd run out! Very poor given that it was so early in the day and there isn't a wide choice of mains. My kids ordered the fish and chips. It honesty looked revolting as it was overcooked in very very thick batter. Just looked like a huge slab of fat on a plate - with no greens or similar on the side - just chips. For a kids meal (and the adults fish was the same), the fish was extremely pungent/fishy and had large pieces of skin/grey in it that completely put my kids off eating it. So they didn't eat anything. We were told there was new owners...the place was terrible last time we went 6 months ago so we thought we'd give it another go. I honestly think it was even worse than before, if that was at all possible. Honestly I could prepare and cook nicer food. We will never go back. And IT COST nearly $500 for lunch!!! Seriously. I will be interested to see if the owners/ new management make any effort to contact me/reply to this review. I'd like to be...

I write this review with a real sense of sadness after a real shame of an evening here. We attended an event that was very important to the organisers, who have extremely limited funds and wanted to provide a lovely evening for everyone. Instead, they were met with faces of very hungry people, who were frustrated and very let down. For $60 a head for 2 courses, it was certainly expected that there would be adequate food and service and that people would be looked after. It was quite the opposite, with very underwhelming entrees to share plopped in the middle of the table with no service utensils, so people had to pass the plates around and use their hands to serve. This was not even close to the absolutely awful "mains" that followed, which consisted of a minute amount of very strangely coloured beef that was so undercooked we all expected it to moo at any time, and an equally tiny portion of chicken, all of which was put in the middle of the table with no serving utensils again (remembering we are in a post-covid environment), with no accompaniments. So as people stared in disbelief at the undeniably ludicrously small offerings, they were embarrassed to take anything to eat, knowing there was not even close to enough to go around. In any case, where on earth do you go where tiny portions of meat are dumped in the middle of the table, with nothing beside them? Long after the tiny and tasteless morsels were gone, a salad appeared, again, tiny, and then chips followed, which again were tiny. This special night was horribly let down by an incredibly poor lack of care and attention, and a complete sham in terms of catering. The discussion at the table turned from general happy talk to people planning where to eat when they left, both bitterly and with strong intent to never return to the McKinnon Hotel. This was an appalling theft of funds in everyone's opinion and a more overt rip off no one could imagine. A total and...

This is our local, and first time coming to try the food. Unfortunately it didn’t go so well :( We were really looking forward, as we love coming for a drink here but the service, with the food was a big concern. We ordered two Parmas, the waitress brought them out and served another table with our food, that table arrived after us, and so not properly checking the table numbers. When the table realised they got the wrong food (after eating the chips off that plate) the waitress picked it up and brought it over to us (which we proceeded to tell her -no you don’t serve food that other people have been eating) My husband asked if we could please have our meals freshly served (not a big ask). After two minutes the waitress brought out one Parma and served my husband, we were suspicious as the chips were cold and also we are still waiting on another parma which she said would be 5 minutes. We came to the conclusion the chef allowed the meal that had been tossed around a few people to be served to us again. After all of this we sent to the on duty Manager and asked for a refund, which we got. As we were finishing our drinks, the two parmas arrived and we had to inform the waitress we got a refund. The food was returned. So there is lack of communication, lack of care for customers, lack of hygiene (especially from a chef) and well safe to say disappointing and quite a disgusting experience to be honest. This has actually never happened to us anywhere before, and we have ate all over the world. I know mistakes can be made, but it’s how you deal with it matters. Between the waitress, chef and on duty managers - nobody cared about...