The Epicurean Red Hill — Restaurant in Melbourne

This review is about their lax attitude to allergies. Went to this restaurant on Tuesday evening with my family. We were presented with 3 menus, plant based menu, kids menu and regular menu. The plant based menu indicated in brackets 'contains nuts' below relevant dishes. I wrongly assumed that the restaurant was consistent and would apply the same care on their other menus. We ordered from the regular and kids menu. My son received his kids menu dessert (choc brownie with vanilla cream). I was shocked that the kids menu contained dessert that had nuts with no mention of this common allergen being an ingredient. In this day and age with so many kids with allergies I am surprised the restaurant would omit such life threatening information on their KIDS menu. The other 2 desserts we ordered from their regular menu (Vegan chocolate and vanilla mousse with redhill mud crumble and 'Our' Eton mess). The crumble on the mousse looked like nuts so I called a waiter over and asked if they were nuts sprinkled on top. She went and checked with the chef and then returned and confirmef the crumble was made with nuts. I asked her that given the menu did not state this, could we get the mousse without the nut topping because my daughter is anaphylactic to nuts. She was very accommodating and took the dish back to the kitchen and delivered another serve without the nut crumble. We all ate some of the mousse but we all agreed that the vanilla mousse did not have a vanilla taste. We paid our bill ($260!) And left. As we were walking out my daughter said she felt her top lip was feeling tingly and a little numb. By the time we arrived home in dromana her throat felt tight and she vomited. We called The Epicurean and asked whether it was possible that the vanilla mousse contained nuts. The lady on the phone responsed,"It is likely that the dessert had a nut in it." We administered claratyne and drove our daughter to rosebud hospital with our epipen in hand. There she received treatment for an allergic reaction.and I am happy to say that in the early ours of the morning she was released from hospital. The following morning I rang epicurean and spoke to the events manager who confirmed the dessert was made with ground cashew. ONCE AGAIN THERE WAS NO MENTION ON THE REGULAR MENU OF THE DESSERT CONTAINING NUTS! Furthermore when the dessert was returned to the kitchen and the request was made for a serve without the nut crumble, why didn't the chef or waiter flag that the actual mousse also contained nuts! Here's a simple tip Epicurean management, be consistent and reprint your regular and kids menus to include common allergens like nuts as you do on your plant based menu. Do you not think it is misleading to identify and highlight nuts on one menu and not do so on the others? By doing so, is it not reasonable for a customer to assume that if you identify dishes with nuts on one menu then any dish that does not say in brackets 'contains nuts' would be nut free? As a parent of a child whose life was endangered by the misleading actions of your restaurant I feel compelled to spread the word so that this does not happen to others. Yes I was foolish by my false sense of security and i put one child's life at risk. You on the other hand are putting hundreds of lives at risk on a daily basis. You do this by refusing to acknowledge that your inconsistency in menu information is misleading and gives customers a false sense of security.

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I was with a group of 5 altogether and we arrived at The Epicurean, eager to get some food in our stomachs. We waited at the front of the restaurant for a while, until finally a waiter attended to us and seated us on a long table with 3 others. Our order was taken soon after, and we ordered 4 pizzas to share. Not a very large or difficult order to take down, we thought there would be no issues. But alas, we sat and talked and continued to wait and wait and wait. A group of 5 adults were seated behind us, quite a while after we had been seated, but they soon received their meals and were happily eating before we had even got our pizzas. After about 40 minutes, the same waiter who took our order came up and asked ‘sorry what did you guys order?’ And we ran through our order once again and hoped that we wouldn’t have to wait another 40 minutes. Then when it had been 53 minutes we finally received our pizzas. In the end we received no compensation or discount for this slow service. Poor form. They were good and tasty, not extravagant and I don’t know if worth $30 each. But definitely good pizza and a good atmosphere overall at the restaurant. They looked slightly rushed, like a pile of olives had just been chucked onto the pizzas but I can’t deny the delicious flavours. And some of the olives still had pips, which could’ve caused some broken teeth. When we got up to pay I asked a worker where we should go to pay and she told me ‘it depends on where you were’ and ‘we should’ve received a table number from our waiter’, which we never received from the waiter, so we showed her our seat. When we went to pay we stood behind a worker and three men having casual conversation about tips and other things, for quite a few minutes. So we patiently stood there until a lady approached us asking if we needed something. But other than that, it was a good restaurant but future guests should just be aware of the potential lack of customer service and...

Beautiful venue and the food was lovely (we had the vegan margherita, vegan grazing board, and calamari) - couldn't fault the food at all. In fact, we ended up with too much food so took the left over grazing board home. I was extremely tempted by the rosemary focaccia we were seated near.

Unfortunately, the service wasn't all that flash. We waited almost 5 minutes to be acknowledged at the door (granted we arrived at 5:20pm, before opening) and had to flag someone down to ask what time they opened as we figured we must have been early. We were told "5:30" and then they walked away. No problems, we sat in the comfy couches and waited until 5:30. At 5:30, we went back to the door and waited another 5 minutes to be greeted. Not a huuuuuge deal, but we had clearly been in the building and visible for 15 minutes. We were eventually seated after the waitress dealt with a large group booking that had arrived 30 minutes early.

There were 2 vegan pizzas to choose from - we asked the young male waiter which he would recommend (mushroom or margherita - $7 or $8 price difference). He replied sarcastically with a slight eye roll and "the non-vegan one". Sure, vegan food is not to everyone's liking but plant-based eating is becoming extremely popular and a separate vegan menu is offered at Epicurean, so the staff should be able to offer a comment on the flavour of each dish. We were battling hangovers so ordered Cokes - they came with plastic straws: a) unnecessary b) plastic?! Even the local chain-owned pub with a kids play area doesn't serve them anymore. Fine if they're trying to get rid of the last of their stock, but ask if we wanted a straw.

We will return because the food was nice but for the price point and all the lovely recommendations, the service was a bit...