The Malvern Hotel — Restaurant in Melbourne

I read the most recent reviews of this hotel/ restaurant which varied from excellent to poor. Its hard to make a judgement when the reviews are so disparate. There was though, a couple of recurring observations in the reviews being the high prices and small portion sizes. Despite these points, I made a booking for a group for a Sunday lunch. The restaurant was bright & spacious. We had three different wait staff attend our table and the service varied from attentive & cheerful, perfunctory & efficient to essentially indifferent. I guess the meals panned out similarly based on the varying comments around the table. I’ve based my review solely on the meal served to me. At $38, I ordered the ‘Duck Duo’ - seared duck breast & duck leg Massaman curry served with saffron pilaf & roasted sweet potatoes. Looking back on it, a rather odd combination. A large dinner plate arrived and it took quite me a while to take in what was in front of me. The observations I noted by other reviewers were confirmed to me - the serving was rather mean for the hefty price of $38. The duck breast consisted of three small pieces, a small bowl of the duck curry with a few shreds of leg meat, a serving spoonful of rice pilaf and perhaps five small rounds of sweet potato. The presentation was random and rather sloppy. The duck breast was over cooked & dry and the skin thick and rubbery. The shredded duck was well cooked but completely swamped by the thick yellow creamy coconut curry, which lacked depth of flavour. The accompanying rice was heavily spiced, on its own was ok but did not work with the curry. A larger serve of plain steamed rice would have been more suited to the curry. As it was, the sauce was too rich to eat with either the spiced rice or to eat on its own with the soup spoon provided. It got left behind. The ‘roasted’ sweet potatoes were bland, unseasoned and didn’t appear to be roasted as there was no browning or crispness at all. Overall a very disappointing meal based on the small portion size, presentation, execution and flavour combination. It just fell flat. I think for the price it should have been...

We have often come here for family dinners but the last few times the food has been quite ordinary. On Tuesday we were here with the family. I ordered an eye fillet (medium rare) .$55. Food came out quite late after the table had ordered. Received eye fillet and I touched to feel if it was medium rare. The first slice was well done. I requested the waitress to return to kitchen. She said it will take 25 mins to prepare again. I said that’s ok. She returned to me and said the chef has cut through the eye fillet and said it was medium rare. Then said to me I could have the plate at discount or choose another meal. Seeing as though my plate had been back and forth through restaurant I asked for a new dish. Fish n chips. Which came out fast. However upon finalising the bill we noticed they added the eye fillet at $30. Plus the fish n chips $30. I refused to pay this as I had not eaten it due to it not being cooked as requested. The chef came out and argued that it was medium rare. It took some reasonable discussions to remove the $30 eye fillet from bill. Was not impressed with the service and lack of service recovery. Staff were rude about it and unreasonable. Other meals on the table were mediocre and not flavoursome. Disappointing experience. Kitchen and chef need to relook at menu and learn to prepare steaks...

Really nice looking place clean and comfortable but sadly the service and food let it down. Now this place was not that busy with less than half of the tables occupied. From where I was sitting I could see staff having a break and hanging at the food servery yet waited in excess of 10 minutes to order another beer to the point where my colleague got up and went to the bar for more drinks. The food, I ordered the carnivores plate. The beef cheek was excellent, perfectly cooked and tasty. Pork belly, good crackle but the meat was very dry, and I mean really dry, stringy and tasteless. Lamb cutlet was tough and had no flavour. 100g steak, again tough and no flavour, a lot of sinue and not even close to 100g. No veggies or salad.

2 very small meals and 4 beers cost 128 dollars for very poor produce.

All in all a...