The Chase Hotel — Restaurant in Melbourne

3 Strikes And You Are Out Chase Pub

We have for years, patronised the Chase Hotel. A meal and drinks at least once a week, sometimes twice. We bring family and friends for meals when they visit. My wife loves her football and likes to watch it on the big screen over a meal.

Some months ago on two occasions, we had lunch at the Chase pub with a group of friends. When my wife ordered our meal, for some reason, we did not know why, the lady taking the order (a woman of around 60 years old with blonde hair) demanded to see my wife's seniour's card, in an off-hand, rough, demanding manner. My wife is 76 years old, she's hardly trying to deceive anyone over a seniors meal. On the first occasion, the woman realising that my wife was with a group of friends who were aged from their 60's to late 80's, also demanded to see their seniors cards as well. The 2nd occasion, she only demanded to see my wife's seniors card. My wife, who is Chinese, was quietly offended but said nothing. She said quietly to me "Why when I am with a group of elderly white Australians, it's like she singled me out because I am Chinese."

This 3rd occasion was yesterday.

At around 3pm, my wife booked table 26 where there is a good position to watch the semi-final on the big screen, for 6:30pm. She also booked the same table for 5:30pm for the next night, Saturday, as we were bringing a friend.

When she arrived at 6:30pm she was directed to a different table right up under the big screen and to the left, making it awkward to get a good view of the screen.

My wife said "No, this is not the table, look in your reservations book." To which the staff member (a woman of around 60 years old with blond hair) said "We changed it because someone booked earlier, but it was not put in the book, so we gave that table to them instead." There was no apology, just a forthright attitude that this is the way it is, and that's that.

I arrived about 10-15 minutes later and noticed that table 26 was vacant. My wife told me what happened, and I suggested that she go and ask the staff member now that those people had left, could we now have the table. Which she did.

The staff member flatly said "No! You booked the table you are on." Normally, we let things like this slide, because everyone makes mistakes sometimes. But this seemed very unreasonable, and was now the third occasion that this staff member was just plain rude.

I then went to the counter and asked the staff member if we could have now have table 26, as there was no one sitting at it. The response was a flat "No!" Thinking back, I do not know why we didn't just move to the table, as there was no one sitting at it.

I then quietly and firmly asked "You mean, we booked table 26 but were removed from it, because apparently, someone had booked it earlier. And now that it is free, we still cannot have it?"

As we were talking, a lady took the table 26 and sat down. She heard us talking and came to the counter and said to me "Sorry, did I take your table.." The staff member cut her off saying "No, that table was free, you are fine." The unflinching staff member then began to say that the out-of-the-way table we were given, was the table we booked, completely contradicting what she has said earlier.

What, so it was free for someone else, but not for the people who had booked it earlier in the day and were asking about it when no one was sitting there?

As you can imagine, I was really not happy about this woman's attitude. Not only did hotel staff make a mistake in the booking, and this woman gave no apology for it; but while the table was free, we were told we could not sit at the table we had booked.

If that is how my wife is going to be treated, obviously we have taken our...

I have a very mixed review about this place, half positive and half negative. First the positives: this place is stashed in the corner of the top level at forest hill shopping centre and is easy to find. Place has a decent sized pokie room and betting facilities, along with a clean bathroom and smokers area outside. Most of the staff and security team are nice and friendly and very accommodating.

I have been coming for a while now for the pokie room and have never visited the bistro but tonight my partner and my parents (plus me) decided we would try to dine in. Booking process was easy, so that was all good. Staff were nice and accomodating too. However, the food.. don’t get me started 😭. We ordered 3 chicken parmas, a steak, garlic bread and prawns. (+ a lemon curd cake for dessert which was delicious!!!).

The garlic bread and prawns were great, however the parmas were dry and not tasty at all. I left mine behind because I couldn’t even eat it. Sauce wasn’t nice, ham was tough to chew and the salad had no flavouring/sauce. My partner got the steak and we had to send it back to the kitchen because it was as tough as leather, we got it replaced and it was still not great and left behind, the quality was not there. The chef said it was due to the quality of meat they had received. We ended up speaking to a lovely girl in the bar about potentially getting a refund or compensation because we left half our meals behind (and spent a lot of money.. around $170, for the food, dessert and drinks) but management could only offer a round of drinks or desserts (which we already had). So I am a little dissatisfied and disappointed in how this was handled and that we were not offered something more. I love coming to this place but unfortunately it will not be...

The staff here are completely USELESS! When you stand directly in front of them, with your money in your hand, they just look at you, ignore you and walk off. You stand there for 5-10mins waiting for them to serve you, all the while trying to get their attention and when you do finally get it they tell you things like ‘hey I’ve just come back from the kitchen and I was busy’ even though you’ve watched them stand in front of you doing nothing.

I went with friends and over half of us were ignored throughout the night while ordering at the bar. The staff are not switched on at all and look at you with blank vacant expressions. Clearly whoever is hiring here is just as bad. Zero customer service skills!! The girl in the glasses and shirt hair act like she’s miles away, the old guy with the short black hair looks right through people as it they weren’t there and the small mousy blonde girl is either new or has an inferior personality as she looks at you and runs away to do something else.

None of us will be going back here. Sadly it just proves that you can renovate a building but you can’t renovate the staff.

Save your time and money and go to Hungry Jacks instead. At least they’re well mannered and acknowledge...