Rococo Hawthorn — Restaurant in Melbourne

My fiancée and I had the worst experience at Rococo Hawthorn last night.

We had booked a table at 7:30 to celebrate our 10th anniversary. We arrived on time and were told to wait a couple of minutes - no big deal. After about 5 minutes, we were taken to our table and given menus. That’s where the service stopped. We weren’t given any water when we sat down nor did anyone come over to see if we would like a drink to start with.

The place was busy and having worked in hospitality before, I was sympathetic - but unfortunately I believe our disappointing experience was not due to stress from insufficient staffing. After around 15 minutes of no service, a waitress who had delivered food to the table next to us asked if we were okay. I said that we weren’t and that no one had attended to us and with that she walked off without a word.

We gave it another 15 minutes and after a total half an hour of no service whatsoever we decided to leave. On my way out of the restaurant, I stopped and said to the manager and a waiter that our table was free as we were leaving due to no one coming to look after us. The response was ‘Oh, okay’ no apology or attempt to stop us.

The clincher for me was that a table of four that had arrived after us, had received water and had a drink order taken within 5 minutes of their arrival. It seemed like we had been completely forgotten and were ignored by every staff member who walked past our table.

I would suggest that the business have a training session with their wait staff to improve their attentiveness to patrons. The amount of staff who walked past tables without making any eye contact or checking on the patrons was appalling - the floor manager in particular. After this awful experience we won’t be back to see if anything improves. Based on previous reviews, I can safely say it most...

Where do I start...what an absolutely awful experience for me and my friend. We booked for 5pm, this was on purpose as we are both mothers to babies and hardly ever get to leave the house yet enjoy a meal outside of our 4 walls, so thought booking early would allow us to enjoy our time together. To firstly get looked up and down on arrival as if we had intruded on their 'quiet' time - we arrived for our booking time so not sure why it was so surprising. During our very short time here, we had at least 10 visits to our table with staff taking plates, cutlery and glasses BEFORE we had even finished. We felt so incredibly rushed. We could not even finish a sentence before a staff member was rudely interrupting. After our $40 mains and $15 single glasses of wine, we wanted dessert so asked for the dessert menu. We ordered and literally seconds later someone came and slammed the bill on our table and said we MUST pay. In total confusion we mentioned we were waiting for dessert. Then came over what appeared to be the bar manager and he said we MUST leave, without getting our final course, and made a sarcastic comment about how we must not have read the email from them. We left in total disappointment and went across the road for gelato instead and talked about how we would never go back. This location is nothing like St Kilda. The food was decent and the only good thing about this experience. I personally had not eaten a meal out with a friend in at least 6 months, is this what hospitality is now???...

Good first impression overall. Ordered a chargrilled seafood and vegan brocollini pasta with a side of sweet potato fries. Unfortunately, we had to put our hands up multiple times before anyone attended to our order (and it was not a busy night when we went), and it took another 30 minutes of waiting before the food actually arrived.

The pastas were good– appreciated the use of fresh seafood rather than frozen seafood, and the dishes were all cooked to perfection. However, all the dishes were slightly under-seasoned, and the chargrilled seafood pasta was overpowered by lemon and dill, throwing off its balance. The sauce for the sweet potato fries was insufficient for the whole bowl. It was at the pricier end for what it was but I would come again only to try other dishes on their impressive menu list.

PROS: amazing ambience impressive menu with a wide variety of dishes catering to most dietary requirements fresh ingredients, all cooked perfectly

CONS: service took far too long even on average not so busy day pricey compared to other Italian restaurants flavour of some dishes...