Ms Frankie Cremorne — Restaurant in Melbourne

IN A WORD - DELIGHTFUL! My first visit to Miss Frankie, an upmarket pasta themed restaurant on Richmond's trendy Cremorne Street. The restaurant is conveniently a short walk from Richmond Station - which is just as well given the horrendous traffic in that area in the evening peak! The restaurant has an industrial-chic decor with lots of open space and interesting wall art. Tables are well spaced and a generous size. People with mobility issues will have no problems here as its all one level even flooring. The toilets are just at the rear of the dining area and are very spacious, including and exceptionally large and well designed one that will be easy to utilise in a wheelchair. Back to the dining.... we were enthusiastically greeted on arrival and ushered to a large table. The waiter was chirpy and attentive and we we soon underway with sparkling water and a menu and drinks list to ponder. We had booked the early sitting with a requirement to be out within a couple of hours but as it is wasn't that busy the waiter told us we were welcome to stay longer of desired. There were two of us and we elected to share the cheese board. It was easily enough for two and had some very high quality cheeses and pickled vegetables. We moved on to sharing two pasta dishes - the gnocchi (served with a beef ragu) which had a very soft texture (perhaps a little too fluffy) and the ricotta tortellini which was an absolute stand-out dish. The ricotta was creamy with a delightful delicate flavour. We accompanied the pasta dishes with a fennel and orange salad (a good mix of crunchiness from the fennel and sweetness of the orange) and a green of garlic silverbeet (perfectly cooked and not a trace of grittiness that sometimes comes with this vegetable!). We had a pinot grigio and a cab sav to accompany the dishes. All up it cost the two of us $165 inclusive of four glasses of wine.. quite reasonable given the quality of the food Overall the experience was very pleasant. The noise level was low (although the restaurant wasn't particularly full when we were there). Staff are attentive and friendly without being intrusive and the dishes were very professionally served. I will definitely be back to try more of the...

The WORST Customer service I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve worked in hospitality for three years and if I had spoken and treated customers like one waitress did to us I would’ve been fired on the spot. Now I’ve been to Ms Frankie before and had a totally different experience, in fact, I’d recommended it to friends. Now I would not.

We arrived and were seated at our tables waiting for our girlfriends. We bought a few entrees and we’re having some good banter between us while we waited, the waitresses seemed really nice and all was good. We realised that our girlfriends were going to be another 15 minutes and only had an hour left at our table. It was booked after that hour at 8pm. I decided to accomodate for the waitresses and asked to be moved outside where they wouldn’t have to stress about clearing the table quickly for the next guests. When we were moved outside we were laughing and having a good time under the clear sky. I asked a waitress if we could take the umbrella out and she said yes of course. I helped her take it out and we sat back down. 5 minutes later a waitress came outside announcing that “now if I came into your house I wouldn’t fk your st up”. As a group we stared in confusion at her. She went on to say that we should’ve asked to remove the umbrella. We explained that we had asked the waitress. And she went on to suggest we’d been giving lip to multiple staff members throughout our short interactions with them (ordering olives and aranchini balls). Which we had not. We’re not the type of people to be rude or disrespectful to anyone in hospo, three out of the five of us either work or have worked in restaurants bars etc. Feeling very disrespected I decided that we wouldn’t order our main courses and went to get the bill. As I was doing so we were told to leave by multiple staff as they tried to make it look like they were kicking us out not us leaving in utter disgust. The same waitress continued to swear at my younger brother until we were outside the restaurant.

All of us collectively wanted a final night to have a nice meal before lockdown and we did not.

Appalled....

Having seen Ms Frankie explode all over Instagram I suggested it for a catch up with friends. A pasta bar in Richmond what could go wrong? Upon entry I was absolutely loving the fit out. The obligatory trending neon sign, marble table tops and gold cutlery revealed a truly modern space. I also adored the bench style seating which allowed you to observe the pasta making behind the glass panelling. Great care has been taken with the concept but they couldn’t necessarily back it up. We were placed on a makeshift cramped table and asked to be seated on a larger one. As a result we were informed it was only a 2 hour sitting which was completely fine, but there was no need for them to make us feel rushed at every stage of the evening. Our entree came out and we had ordered fries with Parmesan and truffle except when I tasted them I could detect no hint of either. Turns out they’d brought us plain ones so back they went. For mains we tried several dishes. Each was quite intense in its flavour therefore I think their sharing option would be a good idea and possibly better portion wise also. The gnocchi was well past the point of being perfectly cooked but I thoroughly enjoyed the flavours of the blue cheese and walnut one. I didn’t order this personally as I thought it would be too bold for me but it was actually quite subtle (too subtle for he who ordered it!) I had the pesto spaghetti which was definitely al dente but a little oily as an unbalanced pesto can sometimes be. The gnocchi ragu was also not a bad dish but certainly nothing special. When we got the bill we found we were charged for a dessert we didn’t order which the waitress had a bit of attitude about as we were paying. It was actually due to a bit of a language barrier with another waitress who thought we had ordered dessert when we were actually just discussing the dessert options (which were fairly limited). Overall another one of those style over substance spots. We must be pretty superficial in Melbourne though as it was...