The Foreigner Café Ivanhoe — Restaurant in Melbourne

Service, experience and quality of food are a 0.

I've been going to the Foreigner on and off since they opened, but today was a new low.

Attempted to call ahead to place an order for take away. A staff member answered the phone, and once they heard I wanted to place an order hung up on me.

"That's odd" I thought, maybe we just got disconnected. So I call again, this time they answer the phone, and then place the phone on the counter. I can hear the staff working around the phone at the till, deaf to my calls. I wait about a minute thinking maybe they were dealing with a customer, but eventually I get the picture and hang up. I wait another minute then attempt to call, and the line is engaged. Clearly don't want to take my order.

"That's alright" I think, maybe they're very busy and can't take a phone order at the moment, I give them the benefit of the doubt and started driving over to place an order in person.

To my shock when I arrive, they have 3 tables in and 4 staff members on. Clearly too much for them to handle a phone order. I enter and a gentlemen greets me (sounded an awful lot like the gentlemen who had answered the phone and subsequently hung up on me). I ask him if the number I had called was the correct one, he says yes, looking slightly sheepish at this point as it may have dawned on him that I was the caller. I then explained what happened, and he tried to convince me that perhaps the line was busy.

Im sorry, did I imagine the hello from the other end of the line? The sounds of staff going about their business while I wasted my time waiting on the line?

I place my order, and begin the long wait for my food and coffee (the wait I was trying to avoid by calling ahead).

A good 15 minutes later ( I ordered a coffee and a toastie) my order arrives. I thank the staff member and ask quickly to confirm that they do in fact take phone orders. She says yes of course. Shocker, I wouldn't have guessed they did after this experience.

To top it all off, the Ham and Cheese toastie I ordered had come with unordered tomato.

So seeing as Foreigner staff seemingly don't want to take my order and do their best to cover it up, I won't be coming back to the foreigner again. It's long decline has hit rock bottom. Absolutely...

Edit: And look at the response. Zero responsibility. Terrible.

Absolutely terrible service, still cannot believe how rude the waiter was.

When we arrived we were seated on the large communal table. When the waiter (the guy with the man bun) approached us to take our coffee order, we said that we were actually wanting food, not drinks. He then said (with attitude mind you) something to the effect of... "Well, actually there are people in front of you so if you don't want coffees I'm going to take their order first". I have never heard this before.... but this was just the start!

When he came back to take our food order, I asked for the burger, to which he replied (again with attitude) "Ahh which burger? Beef burger? Veggie Burger? which burger?????". Sorry for not immediately knowing there was multiple burgers matey!!

We then asked for glasses for the bottle of water on our table (we had been seated for 10 minutes at this point). He said "the glasses are in the dishwasher" and walked away. A minute later he came back with one... then another 5 minutes later. One of us was left without a glass. He then placed two glasses in front of people next to us so (assuming the dishwasher was done) I asked for another glass to which he replied "I told you, the glasses are in the dishwasher".

He was absolutely horrible. Will...

We visited The Foreigner for lunch with friends who have live nearby and I liked the fun interior and the menu certainly intrigued but I was less than impressed with the service. Had to practically flag someone down to refill our water and after about 30 minutes we realised everyone had their food except us including those who had arrived well after us.

The waitress then came over and said there had been a mix up with our order (I’m assuming it didn’t get put through properly) and they would try to rush it out. I enjoyed my dish which was a generous serve but when we went to pay another staff member asked me how everything was so I was honest and said good except for the long wait and she kind of attempted to deny it had happened as she claimed the food was put through immediately when she checked the system.

I said well I had a 1pm reservation and as you can see from the photo I took of my dish when it came out it is stamped 1.49pm so she then offered to remove one coffee from the bill which I suppose...