Sanctuary Stove Bakehouse Healesville — Restaurant in Melbourne

I walked in here the other day with my mother, who loves this place and recommended it to me.

I was very pleased with my Steak, Cheese and Bacon pie, it was quite cheesey, the meat was cooked and the pie was piping hot, just the way a pie should be. However, the hot chocolate I ordered was weaker that I expected, but as I have an extremely sweet tooth, that shouldn't affect my rating too much, as it is nigh impossible to get a hot choc the way I want.

I daresay the location is detrimental, it is based in the middle of a shopping center and has a great view of the car park and highway, not much else. The chairs are all outside of the tiny bakery and they are average at best. Inside the bakery is typical city bakery fare, a few shelves and counters and a coffee machine out back, but it is to be expected with this kind of location.

The service however, was top notch, they have gotten to know my mother's usual and even keep a tab on her because of her regular customer status, that is the sign of great customer service!

All in all, the food and service I am very pleased with, but in my opinion, the location is detrimental to the overall feel, but I can get past the look for...

Tried the banh mi/Vietnamese pork and salad roll...it was probably one of the worst I've tried unfortunately. The pork wasn't the right kind (Vietnamese/Chinese glazed BBQ pork, called Thit Xa Xiu or Char Siu is what's supposed to be in it - this was just regular old pork with a vaguely Asian seasoning). The roll wasn't very fresh either, a little stale and chewy.

And to top it all off, the place puts on a $1 surcharge for card payment for an item that's already almost $9 which is ridiculous in 2023. EFTPOS fees to merchants are never more than ~1.5% so the actual cost to them would have been only like 10 cents. Most above-board businesses just absorb that cost into their pricing and nobody notices or cares, but a $1 fee is just ripping people off. They didn't even mention it until I went to pay and saw the price was a dollar higher than what they'd just...

I'm a disability support worker. I was out with a client today visiting your shop. The service provided in the shop was lovely and very courteous at first. However, when I was choking on a piece of carrot cake, I returned to the shop and asked if I could have some water. The girl who served me seemed more worried about the cost of the cup than the fact that I was choking. I had to run to the public toilets, about 20 metres away, to get some water out of the tap. I was finding it really hard to breathe properly. I will never return to your shop again or take my clients there. That was a disgusting way to treat someone that was clearly choking. I hope you could have lived with yourself if things had...