The Pancake Parlour — Restaurant in Melbourne

Terrible experience! Used to love going to pancake parlour for a great quality meal. Not today. We had to wait to be seated while multiple staff could be seen standing around and talking. We were asked to order via the app, not a problem at first, but it malfunctioned more than once and was not easy to use, we had to ask staff for assistance which seemed to be an inconvenience for them. Our food arrived; the drink for our 2 year old was in a glass, rather than a plastic or child safe option and we had to ask for a straw. Our food were rediculously small portions, especially compared to the last time we attended, for the price of a full meal each "meal" fitted onto the size of a side dish plate, safe to say the pancakes were the size of pikelets. The adult meals were the same size as the kids meal. The kids meal ordered was advertised as having blue berries in the pancake but nowhere in the pancake nor anything in the meal was there any blueberries. We had to ask for cutlery because we weren't given any even after our food arrived. The menues and the table were sticky upon our arrival to the table. The staff were obvserved throughout our time in the establishment to stand around talking and not working, even when customers were waiting to be served and even coming to the front counter to ask for assistance at their table. The manager was not in uniform. Some customers were not walked to their table upon arriving, the staff just pointed them towards the table, even though it was not a busy night. Staff were seen to roll their eyes and sigh at customers and the attitude was not welcoming at all, if anything it was unproffessional and distracting. We left still hungry, even after eating everything from a supposed adult sized portions. This was such a disappointing evening, especially considering the normal standard experienced previously...

I dined in just to have a coffee (no food) with my partner when the restaurant wasn't busy. The waitress said kindly that we can order via the QR code OR through her and we said we will use the QR code. We ordered one small coffee and one large mug of coffee. The order went through, payment was made and I got my receipt via email. After we waited about 30-40 minutes and watched more people come in and get served meals straight away we thought we should ask a waiter about our two coffees that still hadn't arrived. He apologised and let us know that online orders aren't working / there are problems with it. We understood it was out of their control but thought it was strange that nobody came to let us know this until we waited a long time and then chose to ask someone ourselves. He was nice and went to check/fix our order and put it through again for us. When our coffees finally came, we received two small coffees but I paid for one large and one small. My partner told them that one was supposed to be large and then we waited again. Afterwards, we were finally served the correct order. I feel that if there was better communication between the staff members about the issue that was happening with the codes, and better communication between the staff and their customers, we wouldn't have had to wait so long with no idea what was happening, someone might have let us know that the code is playing up and we would have happily ordered through a waitress/waiter. If my payment didn't go through via the code already then we probably would have gone somewhere else because our order was very small and not worth the...

Back in the good old days before the world went completely mad and people weren't charged for breathing oxygen, coming here and getting the 2-for-1 short stack and a Swiss Mountain Malt for under $20 was actually an enjoyable, if not slightly overpriced even back then, meal. Now it's $9.90 for a half-pint Swiss Mountain Malt and $16.90 for a short stack which is outrageous no matter how anyone tries to spin it. Milk and flour are two products that actually haven't drastically gone up in price yet the prices here have risen astronomically, all the while the serving sizes have reduced. Oh, and the $1.50 surcharge for lactose-free milk is downright insulting, especially when they're already charging $5.00 for a small coffee. Even the best cafes with world-renowned coffee don't charge that much for alternative milks. To top all this off, you'll pay extra if you want to pay already exorbitant prices by eating there on a weekend as there's now a surcharge for that, and the service is overall mediocre at best. One time we ordered through Menulog, and my $13.50 drink wasn't delivered. I phoned the restaurant to basically get a "not our problem, lol, request a refund through the delivery provider." Never got our money back. Needless to say, our trips here are a thing...