The Lawson Grove Shop — Restaurant in Melbourne

The lack of order and professionalism, along with poor management, was evident. The food and drink were only mediocre. Here's what happened:

We arrived around 1 pm and ordered meatball pasta, meatball garlic bread, and smoked salmon Benedict. After 40 minutes, we were informed that the garlic bread was sold out, so we agreed to substitute it with a bagel. Another 20 minutes passed, and we were then told that they had run out of meatballs and pasta. By this point, we were really starving and wanted something quick, so we changed our order to scrambled eggs with a bagel. Yet another 20 minutes later, they served us a smoked salmon bagel and a chicken bagel. We decided to keep the salmon bagel but declined the chicken bagel, also informing the waitress that we no longer wanted the scrambled egg bagel. However, they weren't listening, as the scrambled egg bagel was brought to our table a few minutes later.

This showed a clear lack of professionalism. If an item is unavailable, the restaurant should inform the customer immediately after the order is placed, not after an hour of waiting! Even then, the order was incorrect. To make matters worse, when we finally began to eat, we noticed that another table, which arrived later than us, was served pasta! At the end of our meal, the waitress apologized for the items being sold out but didn’t apologize for the long wait or the incorrect order.

Overall, this was my worst dining experience in Melbourne, and I would not recommend this...

Came here today after searching for a new breakie spot. Had good reviews mostly , ordered the bene and chipotle scramble both $25 bene was minimal and chipotle scramble was FAR To spicy with no indication of this on the menu (chipotle is a mild seasoning) was no other seasoning like Salt so was just overpowering spicy and quite disgusting like the eggs were brown. Scraped off all the eggs so I left hungry after eating one piece of cheese on toast and a half palm sized pile of avo. Waitress was rude when telling her and also she hadn’t got a clue what she was doing to start with, She came to us after she had seen us come in and another girl had just seated us and tried to give us a chicken sandwich when we hadn’t even been given menus. Saw her do this on several occasions to other patrons not having a clue where food was going just randomly asking customers is this yous then calling to the other lady “where is this going” Location was fab so a real shame …….but $70 for 2 breakfasts and 2 coffees (which also she got wrong we were served 2 oat milk when my partner ordered a normal cap just no choc) very underwhelming...

The mango matcha smoothie was surprisingly good.

However, it was downhill from there. We were waiting for more than an hour for our food. Some customers started leaving. We weren't initially in a hurry, but we weren't given an update about where the food was. Past the 1 hour mark, we followed up. We were told 15 more minutes. 15 minutes went on, and we decided to settle our drinks. Turns out the food hasn't even started being prepared.

I hope this could be a learning experience for the servers to be upfront and let people know if there are any tech issues, fewer people in the kitchen. Instead, they fibbed a lot and weren't transparent. They didn't give the customers a chance to choose whether they were happy to wait, provided a truthful waiting time, or found another place.

Please respect other people's time. We know things could be hectic, and would have appreciated the courtesy of being told early on and given the...