Steam Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

Along with the relatively new Del Posto 2409, Steam is the classiest of Rye's restaurants, and it is a survivor in an area of fickle patronage and high turnover. I'm not sure how long Steam has been in Rye, but it must be close to ten years.

It's a popular place, and rightly so. The decor is something straight out of the inner city: very clean and modernist with plenty of metal and grey. There's a long bar to one side, and a tank with oysters on display is a nice touch.

The food here is all about pan-Asian share plates. There's influences from all over: Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and so on. Yep, we're talking pan-Asian fusion, which I love and feel is becoming Australia's national cuisine.

The food is generally very good with strong flavours, good quality fresh ingredients, nice presentation, all evidence of skillful and assured technique in the kitchen. The trick here is to order a large range of small and large share plates so that you sample a variety of flavours and textures.

My one criticism of Steam, and the reason why it's not getting five stars--service. We were a party of eight who decided to choose one of the set menus. This should make it easier for the kitchen. Despite this, it took a full hour from when we were seated until the first dish hit the table. I'm sorry, but at a good restaurant that's not cheap (I wouldn't call steam expensive, but it's up there), that's just too long. Yes, it was busy; yes, it was a public holiday, but that's no excuse. Steam is well established and has experienced plenty of busy times. I began to get concerned when it took them a long time to take our drink order, and then the drinks took even longer to arrive. It wasn't that they were under-staffed--I counter five wait staff--our table simply didn't seem to get the attention we needed, despite being a prominent table of eight. Astute and alert wait staff who are constantly aware of the needs of each table are worth gold in the competitive dining market, and I'm afraid our most recent experience at Steam was very disappointing in this regard.

Let me add that when we did manage to get the attention of the wait staff, they were very friendly, and the woman who I assume was the head honcho was terrific, but those interminable waits for food and drink were disappointing.

Fix this up, Steam, and you've got a five star restaurant, because everything else...

Small serves, long wait time & fish with bone!

They currently only have set menus so my partner and I ordered the one with $45 per person ($90 for 2ppl) which is supposed to be 3 small plates, 1 large plate and 1 desert. Our booking was 6pm but it was already 7pm when we received the 3rd small plate which was soggy fried squid (we finished eating the first two small plates in 5mins as they were so small). Not only us but other customers were also waiting for food for ages and we were all starving. But no apologies for the delay or any complimentary food from the restaurant.

Then when we received a “large plate” of barramundi at 7:30, which was supposed to be a main course, I thought it was their mistake and even asked a waitress if the dish was supposed to be for 2 people as it was such a tiny fillet of fish, and the actual plate was even smaller than other “small plate” dishes although it’s called a “large plate” (and the barramundi was even smaller than the piece of desert which came at last actually).

And when I first bit the fish, I found a very thick bone in my mouth. You don’t serve fish fillet with bone in a restaurant, especially without warning. So I complained to the waitress who passed my message to the “chef” but the chef said “it was unfortunate” and they didn’t even send our barramundi back to the kitchen! Really??? How rude! No apologies nor replacement, just “unfortunate”. What a joke.

Anyway each serve was so small but since they only had set menus, we couldn’t add any food or order other than rice (not that we would or wanted to). So we spent $126 for 2 people including two drinks and were still starving (and I’m tiny), and sadly we had to spend 2 hours in the restaurant as food was sooo slow. If you spent $45 for food for one person plus 2 hours in the venue, you would expect to be full not starving.

The food itself wasn’t great either. I’m Japanese and we could and should do much better if you want to claim it “Asian food” and charge customers that much.

Waitresses were all friendly but seemed like most of them were new and not sure what their menus were.

Very overrated and over priced restaurant! And the table and plates were so dusty and I had to wipe them when we seated at the table. Self service/cleaning required but they still charged us $126! How...

Absolutely Appalling. Don't waste your money or time.

We dined as a group of 5 (1 vegetarian in the group). We were seated and left with menus, we had to ask to order drinks, which then took a good 20 minutes to arrive. During that time we viewed the menu and decided upon our entrees and main to share as a group.

When the wait staff returned and tried to order, every dish we wanted 'wasnt available'. We were only then told half the menu wasn't available owing to an issue in the kitchen. This should have been explained upon being seated. Alternative options were ordered, only to them be told the pork dishes weren't available either. Absolute joke, half the set menu was not available. We finally settled on our order from a now very limited menu. We were forced to order extra meals to cater for our vegetarian guest, at extra cost. Well, it was 65 minutes before the 1st entree arrived and no vegetarian. It was another 30 minutes before the next entree arrived and no vegetarian yet. We had to 'beg' the staff to bring our vegetarian guest some food, as it's now 2.5 hours and no food.

We had to flag staff down to try order another round of drinks, not once did they proactively offer drinks. Staff didn't clear empty glasses, had the staff tried harder clearing empties and offering another round our group would have drank a lot more and spent a lot more. (their loss)

Vegetarian entree was a bowl of inedible salty tofu soup, beyond salty. The mains were served close to 3 hours after initially being seated.

Wait staff appeared disinterested, one poor girl was trying to make up for the attitude of the other two staff. Funnily enough, it was noticed that the table of two beside us were receiving prompt attention and service....

Overall, food was good but not spectacular. Service appalling. Menu options, non existent as half the menu 'not available' or sold out already (at 7pm) Couldn't even order a cocktail as they'd ran out of strawberries!

Overall, Would not recommend this venue!

Also, the vegetarian was required to pay the set menu price, despite not eating any of the set menu of the other 4 guests and having to order additional...