Smith + Daughters — Restaurant in Melbourne

My partner and I visited smith & daughters on a Saturday night for our anniversary dinner.

overall, my partner and I were a bit disappointed. Don’t get me wrong - the meals that were good - were deliiicious, however we just didn’t feel it lived up to the “hype” that smith and daughters tends to get among vegans and non vegans alike. It just wasn’t a complete experience, and things were just missing little touches. We were confused that some dishes were Mediterranean, some American, some African (?) so our plates were just a mesh of all these different distinct flavours. We also felt that for the price tag it has, it doesn’t really compare to other vegan “feed me” options around Melbourne, such as Patsy’s, rice paper scissors, SHU etc.

We ordered the 4 course meal and 2 cocktails. Our cocktails were watered down a lot and came after the first course had already been served, which is fine but it would have been nice to have them before hand. First course was great - especially loved the mushroom skewers!

Second course we were served beans & rice and gumbo which were both quite plain and overly salty. Rice was undercooked, beans were tasteless, gumbo tasted like gravox and only had 1 piece of sausage in there. So disappointing.

Lucky the third course to redeemed the dining experience, however our plates still had the salty gravy taste from the previous course. Mac & cheese and the mushroom schnitzel thing were delicious and generous in size, and it definitely screamed “smith and daughters” with the mock meats & recreation of classic non vegan recipes. I wanted more of this!!

The dessert was the star, we had the brownie. Absolutely divine, sticky, salty, rich + fluffy. Would go back for that.

Our waiting staff were all really lovely but just some little things we noticed took away from the smoothness of the night, such as clumsiness when collecting plates or just not collecting and replacing dirty plates at all. Also just delays when asking if we wanted to order more drinks while we were waiting for our food etc. We also saw a waiter sitting down at the empty table next to us when taking another tables order, which seemed really lazy. We were also there for almost 3 hours due to long wait times, and we felt this was just a bit too long.

Ambience in there alright, a little bit cold and just needs some more cosiness. I think to really go all out on the goth theme, there just needs to be a bit more work to really get there.

If I were to recommend to a friend, which I probably wouldn’t, I would say to go on a weeknight when it’s less busy, and order a la carte. We would have been better off doing this to avoid so many beans haha. I really wanted this to be a great dining experience but we were let down. The food just doesn’t match the price tag or the reputation...

I'm not one to leave reviews but I really feel I need to on this occasion. After not managing to get a booking on our last two trips to Melbourne, my partner and I finally made it here this time.

We had such high hopes for the place and thought the menu looked amazing. The service and atmosphere were both great (hence the 2 stars) and we were quickly talked into getting the 4 course menu, as it was an opportunity to try more dishes. I'm gluten-free and we were told everything would be.

Overall, the food was underwhelming. Almost all of the dishes that we actually ate were bland and there was a lot of fried food, which left us feeling uncomfortably full very quickly. The fried tomatoes were tasteless, black eyed pea fritters were over fried, fell apart when you cut them, tasteless, and crunchy. We ate beans to start, and beans for the next course - both of which were massively lacking flavour, the plantain was badly cooked, and the rice had hard crunchy bits in it. One of the meals wasn't gluten free (the gumbo), so my partner ate it and really didn't enjoy the fake prawns.

We were completely stuffed after the second course and couldn't believe we still had mains and dessert to go. We had to ask for the food to stop coming out as we had already overeaten.

The food kept coming out anyway, which was uncomfortable and we had to scrape it into boxes to takeaway. We weren't served the collard greens until too late on in the meal (and they were cold), and the salad was the very last thing to come out before the dessert.

A chef should understand the energy content of their dishes and plate up portion sizes accordingly. We were given enough food for 4-5 people. Additionally, if negative feedback is given at the time, it should be dealt with. Leaving with boxes of food that we don't want and paying in full for pretty rubbish food ruined our evening.

We won't be coming back and hope this review, and other recent negative reviews, help you to consider making changes...

Leeks and the Rigatoni were the favourites.

This place has great potential and really needs work on the execution. (Which I hate to say because I’m a big fan!)

We were in at 7 on a weeknight so they didn’t need to flip the table, but we felt really rushed.. I asked the food to come out, specifically “as slow as possible” and we ordered 6 dishes + drinks. The first 3 were out genuinely within 5 mins, before the drinks and the next 3 arrived before we’d even finished those… All on the table before 7:30pm for a 7pm booking.. Why.. :/ I really wanted to have time to breathe, chat, enjoy ourselves, anticipate the next dishes and have a few more drinks.. Not have to sort of scoff the food before it went cold, which it did.

Speaking of.. the inside of the croquettes and the inside of the hash were both a little cold upon arrival.. The hash is maybe too thick because the outside texture is perfect but there’s over a solid inch of soft grey potato inside.

It would have been better service to send two dishes at a time, not three, with a break in between.. Especially since we asked for slow service. It definitely wasn’t busy enough to rush us out or quiet enough to need to shut the kitchen after our food was sent. The people on the set menu nearby looked like their food was paced nicely and were still getting dishes after us.

The pomelo collins cocktail was seriously underwhelming. I think it was going for subtle but the flavours weren’t identifiable which they should be for $25. Was like slightly sweet fizzy water. Nice ice though.

Anywayyyy. Still a fan and had a nice time with my partner but it just really wasn’t perfect in a number of ways that could be easily improved.

As someone else said, lighting could use some more diffusion...