Rick’s Place Italian & Gluten Free Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

DEAR RICK, PLEASE READ POSTS THOROUGHLY BEFORE REPLYING! My family visited Rick's place last Friday to celebrate my son's 17th birthday. We were so excited to visit a restaurant that could cater to the coeliac's in our family. Sadly the experience was not as we had hoped. Rick was incredible friendly at the outset which made us all the more happy about our choice. We told him how happy we were that he was catering to coeliacs. He listened carefully and made sure that he had our order right. Unfortunately it had taken him about 15 minutes to take our orders (including drinks) and then another long wait before food. It was an hour and a half from the time we arrived to our food arriving. Perhaps we should have ordered pasta dishes, maybe they are amazing, but the schnitzel burgers and chips and southern fried chicken were dry and I was struggling to find the eggplant in the eggplant schnitzel burger I had ordered. My very disappointed son wrote a review which was brutally honest. Rick replied, rather rudely, however it was clearly a case of mistaken identity as he suggested that the reviewer was a teacher. My son was incredibly polite that evening and I do not recall a single other diner complaining to him or any other person on our table as Rick alleged in his reply. My husband and I did explain to Rick when we paid our bill that we were disappointed with our evening. Rick did admit the meals had taken a while but seemed more defensive than actually apologetic. The friendly restauranteur that we had met at the beginning very quickly changed. At this point my husband mentioned that if he ran his classroom the way the restaurant was running that night he'd be out of a job. Like it or not that's true. I did not hear any customers asking my husband or myself to pull our heads in and yet Rick said there were "diners"- plural telling us to do so. None of our family would consider ourselves experts on running a restaurant, and as this is only the second time we have managed to go out for dinner this year due to costs and dietary requirements we're not even the most experienced customers. I cook family meals, I am no professional, but the food I dish up is better that what we were served. Perhaps Rick was under pressure but as his is the expert in running a business one would assume he would be aware of the need to put on extra staff (and capable chefs). That was not our fault. None of my family behaved like an entitled dignitary as Rick also alleged in his reply to my son. We paid $204 for 5 main meals and 6 drinks. As my husband mentioned to Rick, he is a teacher, so am I for that matter. We are not made of money so $204 is a big expenditure for us and for that money we were wanting a reasonable meal. RICK MENTIONED QUITE CORRECTLY THAT OUR PLATES WERE EMPTY. I AGREE THEY WERE. WE WERE HUNGRY, AND WE WERE PAYING $204 FOR THIS FOOD, we are not entitled dignitaries. We have raised our children to believe that we are fortunate to live in a place where we do have enough food and that it is not appropriate to waste food. I am also slightly shocked Rick saying not wanting "our type" in his restaurant. What type is that? Hard working? Honest? Wanting to celebrate our son's 17th birthday? Wanting to go out for a pleasant meal? Wanting to give me a night off in the kitchen? After the short time he spent talking to us I am slightly flabbergasted that he was able to work out what type of people we were. I certainly don't pigeonhole my students like that. I do thank Rick for wishing us good luck for our future dining experiences. We were looking for another place to visit on our rare outings but will from now on return to the Ipoh Garden Kitchen in North Essendon where they also serve gluten free, coeliac safe food in a timely manner with friendly staff and a standard of food that justifies the price tag. For others reading this post, Rick's reply to my son Jack Breen can be found amongst the other 1...

Sadly a very disappointing experience, let down by some poor decisions and communication. I feel bad as they were down some staff, but it just took waaaay too long. Entree was nice and reasonably quick (calamari), main took about 20 minutes after that - gnocchi was nice, kids meal was good, burger was okay but the chicken was a bit dry. Then it went rapidly downhill. Ordered desserts at about 6:50. Chased up on ETA at 7:30. At 8:05 I said we were going to have to go, Rick said he thought ours were ready and disappeared to chase up. Another 10 minutes later one (incorrect) dessert came out, couldn't be bothered complaining. Went up to pay afterwards, still missing a dessert. Again Rick said it was ready, ducked off for another five minutes and came back with a takeaway box of donuts. Fine, paid and left. Try one of the donuts on the way home - not even close to cooked through. Really wanted to like this place as they make a huge effort for gluten free and other dietary requirements, but seeing all the takeaway orders going out while they couldn't feed their dining room was hard to cop. Wasn't just us, other whole table basically didn't get fed at all for well over an hour. If we'd been told dessert would take anywhere near that long, or that our order hadn't started when I first checked, we would have skipped it and left happy enough. We got in at 5:45pm, ordered promptly, followed up, and we left without everything being cooked at 8:25pm. Was supposed to be a celebration for my kid, she ended up in tears cos the donuts didn't arrive and then weren't cooked - and she was too tired after all...

My family and I came here for the first time for dinner the other night and we had such an incredible evening. The atmosphere, the food, and the service was absolutely fantastic. The venue is gorgeous and had a really welcoming feel about it, and the staff were just lovely. As a coeliac it was such a delight to eat out at a restaurant where I didn't have to worry about being glutened. The fact that I had pretty much the entire menu to choose from on the menu was very exciting for me. Rick was so welcoming, kind, friendly and understanding of people with dietry requirements, and has gone above and beyond to make sure that every requirement is catered for, whether that be gluten free, dairy free, vegan, halal - even for people who are allergic/sensitive to onion and garlic. It's so amazing to be able to have a place like this one to go to where I don't feel like a burden, where I can just enjoy a delicious meal with my family. The meals themselves can't be faulted. I ordered the prawn and chorizo linguini and the rest of my family ordered cabonara and lamb shanks and we were all very happy and satisfied. Best thing of all - there was no extra charge on the gluten free swaps! I had a chance to have a really good chat with Rick and it was really obvious how much it meant to him to create a place where absolutely everyone was welcome. Thank you so much to Rick and the team for all the hard work you've put in to the restaurant, my family and I just loved it there, and we will 110% be coming back! Highly highly reccommend this restaurant.

Also thank you Rick for the delicious scones, they were...