TGI Fridays — Restaurant in Melbourne

This is a mix of a generic opinion of TGIs as a franchise, as well as my experience at this specific store.

TGI fridays in general has become an overrated, overpriced mess of a restaurant with different menus from restaurant to restaurant and an overall menu that has suffered incredibly from shrinkflation.

First of all the man who greeted us was very friendly but after seating us we were left to our own devices. Nobody checked in on us to take an order which is when we noticed the QR code on the table. I’m not sure why restaurants feel that this is a better option than providing table service, as it just comes across as pure laziness on the part of the restaurant. Should point out the restaurant was not busy when we were there. We added all our meals to the app and then went to checkout only to find that there was a fee for placing the order using the app… so after receiving no service and having to organise and take the entire tables order myself, I’m then expected to pay a fee?! Yeah stuff that. What’s next? Will we have to pay to use the toilets?

On top of that, the app wouldn’t then let us use a birthday voucher that you have to have the app to even receive. It had to manually be entered to the order by a waitress. Make sense of that?!

And.. on top of that, when we then finally got a waitress to take the order we found out that some of the drinks we were about to order through the app weren’t even in stock anyway. So the app wasn’t even up to date with available stock levels.

Oh and if you think you’d like to share a platter at this restaurant, think again. For some reason they don’t offer platters and instead you have to fork out for a bunch of overpriced meals to make your own platter. Other TGIs offer platters. Don’t know why this one doesn’t.

Onto the food. I figured a meal of 12 wings and Mac and cheese balls would be more than suitable for my appetite. However the wings came to the table and looked more like they came from a pigeon. Smallest wings I have ever had, from anywhere. Some of them were not even full wings but were instead small parts of a wing. Clearly this restaurant is sourcing cheap small chickens to save money. Shrinkflation at its finest. See pics!

The mac and cheese balls are tiny too. My partners chicken strips were chewy and tough. None of our dishes were worth the price at all.

Other people on the table got burgers and they all looked good. As a result I would only recommend the burgers if you visit here.

Two of the young waitresses walked around looking like they did not want to talk to anyone and avoided eye contact at all costs when we were trying to get their attention. They also made faces at each other clearly about other customers.

I remember TGI fridays being a fun environment where the staff would sing birthday songs and joke with you. There would be pride in being part of the TGI franchise. The service would be impeccable and the food too. I would find myself full from a meal instead of walking away hungry. Unfortunately it’s gone downhill and my experience here was one of the worst dining experiences I’ve had to date.

Sorry for the scathing review but this really was rubbish. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Wouldn’t...

I am very disappointed with how the night ended. I booked a table for 24 people, we had 23 turn up. With that amount of people we obviously needed a fair amount of time to relax, enjoy our meal and some drinks. The night started off great, at 7pm when the cake was brought out we were told that we had to wrap it up because they needed the table for other people that were waiting. I was told this as I was literally cutting the cake. That meant that I didn't get to enjoy my own birthday cake and the mood changed from being happy to being on edge thinking we were going to get kicked out. This was wrong on so many levels. I frequent TGI Epping often, that's why I chose to have my birthday dinner there. I spoke to the manager the night before to confirm the booking and if there was any sort of time limit I should have been told there and then and I would have chosen another venue to dine and relax with my closest family and friends. I had elderly people there and after my guests ate their cake we were demanded to move to the other side of the bar and sit there, I had elderly people there also and there was no way they could even get on a bar stool. I expressed my opinions to the waitress that handled it, she apologised, but that didn't fix the fact that my special night was ruined. There were problems with meals not coming out and two children had to wait so so long for their hotdogs while all the other children had their meals almost finished, they were ordered at the same time. A few of my guests got told to move away from the bar when they were saying goodbye to each other and the table was not cleared once in two whole hours. They only started cleaning up our tables once they kicked us off it. We all got up, put jackets on and packed our things up, then got told after all of that we could have the table back and they've found the other group another table outside. Why didn't they do this in the first place? We spent a lot of money, hundreds and hundreds of dollars, they were happy to take our money, but not happy to be hospitable enough to keep us comfortable. This whole experience has turned me off attending one of my favourite restaurants TGI, it just doesn't have the same feel after this. There was no need for the staff to ruin my night because of mistakes on their end. I am upset, disappointed and very hurt by the experience. To add to thisi personally sent a copy directly to TGI Epping and tge feedback line, i got no response from either avenue. It's fair to say unfortunately I have not been back since...

It pains me to leave a mediocre review because I have always loved TGIF and have had some really wonderful dining experiences there in the past, but I feel it's important for other diners to know that things have changed here. The really friendly service and checking on diners to ensure all is OK with the meal is gone. It's been replaced by a hostess that makes you feel welcome while she seats you, tells you how to order using the qr code and then disappears never to be seen again. The table service we had been accustomed to in the past just did not exist this time.

Food tasted good but errors with what we ordered were disappointing (we'd paid extra for optional extras and they were missing on 3 out of 4 meals). We managed to get two fixed up but didn't bother with the third because the staff were simply too busy and it was just getting painful and a little embarrassing sending meals back to the kitchen. The fourth meal was the bruschetta pasta with prawns. 3 prawns in the whole dish and one still had a reasonable amount of shell still on it. Not sure an extra $6 for 3 prawns is good value for the diner. As for the mocktails, I don't think I'll order a $9 drink again that is 75% ice (the paper straw disintegrated within a couple of minutes because it was totally encased in ice).

On a positive note, the new location is lovely and the new seating options (in particular, the high tables) are great. It was our first time at the new venue and my whole family loved the new style of seating option and also appreciated that we were accommodated as soon as we arrived even though we did not have a reservation. The food itself came to us relatively quickly (even though the meals were not as ordered) and took no more than 20 minutes to get to the table from the time of ordering.

I apologise if this review comes across as harsh criticism, but it is honest feedback. This is the not the Friday's I used to frequent and love up to 2 years ago and was really surprised by the...