Two Buoys — Restaurant in Melbourne

Visited Sunday night date night with hubby. Staff very friendly and we were welcomed inside and seated right away despite not having a reservation. Immediately fell in love with the olde-ship style decor and atmosphere. It was cold out, but warm and cosy in the bar, dim lighting creating a very chilled vibe. Facing the street, my gaze drawn to the Canary island palm tree, festoon lights and bay - as if the parked cars and street disappeared from view, we could have been on a tropical island! Staff promptly took our orders with a smile. Being huge cocktail fans we appreciated the original flavors and quirky names, such as 'The Job Keeper'. We also tried 'Frosty Fruit', 'That's Not Appropriate' and 'Lets Go to Bondi'. All the cocktails were professionally made, well balance and beautifully presented. For our meals, hubby ordered the Barramundi on bed of fennel, hubby enjoyed thoroughly. I ordered half a dozen oysters, came with assorted toppings; salmon roe, caviar, red wine vinegar, finger lime - well shucked and very fresh. Think I would have preferred to choose just one topping, simple - not a criticism, just how my taste works. I also had the jackfruit sliders, with house made BBQ sauce. These were a little plain, nothing a little salt wouldn't have fixed (my fault I was too lazy to ask for it). We were happy to leave a well deserved tip as staff were excellent. Loved, loved, loved this dining experience, highly recommend and...

Overall, not worth the money. They are essentially trying to be one of the trendy Melbourne spots but are falling dramatically short. Our main observations: Food was surprisingly average. I like chilli but almost everything was laced with it and didn’t really have much flavor beyond that. The prawns and calamari were tasteless and the sliders we had could have been much better. Everything was very overpriced. You need to spend some pretty serious coin here to get a feed. A ‘bowl’ of chips was $9… for about 9 chips. We expected that it would be pricey but expected a bit more for our dollar (especially when the taste wasn’t even very good). The atmosphere was trying to be trendy but ended up being pretty awful. The place was so dark we could barely read the menus (I actually had to read it out loud to my dad). The music was very loud so we asked them to turn it down a little, which they did for a little while before turning it back up. The choice of music was also awful for the setting… “Turn Down for What” is fine for a club but isn’t the best choice for a dinner setting.

On the plus side, the staff were friendly and helpful, if not a little forceful.

Overall, wouldn’t go back and wouldn’t recommend. If you’re expecting a chic tapas bar like you might find in the City, you’ll probably be...

Really disappointing experience. We ordered saganaki to start which was very nice. We went on to order mains, my husband ordered a 400g steak on a sizzling plate. This was quite $$$ in itself. The steak that came out was roughly 200g (we order steak everywhere we go so we know the cuts and sizes well). The steak was average in taste but again it wasn't 400g. We made the mistake of not questioning it at the time and assumed they got it wrong and wrote down the 200g. Once the bill came, we were charged for the 400g. When we questioned it, the waitress said she thinks they gave us the 200g but would check with the kitchen. She then proceeded to come back and say it was the 400g steak. We questioned this again and she said that we'd still need to pay the 400g and after the restaurant closes they will check the cameras to see what size was brought out....We were quite taken back by this. The waitress then said she'll take my number down and once they check the cameras she'll call me back and we could arrange something then. I was very puzzled at the service, I've never really experienced that. We just paid the full amount, didn't bother giving our details and left. Pretty poor customer service...