Sandi's on Magnetic Island — Restaurant in Queensland

I have been really hesitate to leave this review. Having been waiting a few days to see if I would change my mind, but I haven't so here we are. The issue is, I don't know if this is a one off or if this place is always like this. We were there on Good Friday, so it was a public holiday, so i don't know if that is the reason why and perhaps they were short-staffed or even if it is a bigger issue than just one day and they are short staffed just in general, but here is my issue with the whole short staff dilemma. If that is what the case was, then you simply should not be accepting as many customers in. Especially when bookings are made in advance, you should only accept as many bookings for as many staff that can cater for that amount of people. We had issue of half the tables drinks coming out, but then others not coming out at all. Asking several different people about, they all say they will sort it out and nothing being done, then finally asking someone else and they finally come out. We were going to try and order more food during the night but couldn't get serviced so then decided to just move in to desserts instead, but again, after waiting awhile decided to just leave. When we went to pay the bill they couldn't even give us our own bill as the table hadn't been cleared so we had everyone's orders from the entire day on there. Unfortunately my wife went and paid while I was in the bathroom and it was only when we're were back on the bus that she told me how much she paid that I said there must have been a mistake as the amount seemed higher than it should have.

Actually in terms of the food, mine was actually ok, it wasn't amazing but wasn't bad as such. Unfortunately I can't say the same for my daughter's pizza. It literally was a small frozen pizza you by from Woolworths. By wife's wedges or not wedges by round chat potatoes cut in half. Which I didn't think was that bad, but she wasn't happy.

It also probably doesn't help that for lunch we went to a different venue just down the road and had wonderful service and amazing food, so maybe our expectations were set too high. Don't know. Anyway, I personally wouldn't go...

My partner and I spent the day at Magnetic Island yesterday and decided to have breakfast here. Breakfast was decent, I had scrambled eggs on toast, and my boyfriend had smashed avo on toast. All good so far.

We enjoyed the day and decided to come back for dinner, but unfortunately, that’s where things went downhill.

We waited around 40 minutes (if not more) for our food to arrive. My boyfriend ordered the rib fillet and when it finally came, it was cold, undercooked, and definitely not medium well like he requested. It was so rare, I think it still mooed at us. On top of that, the veggies on the side were poorly cut, thick, chunky, and just not pleasant to eat. The flavor overall wasn’t impressive.

Then came my barramundi curry. Visually, it looked great. But the rice tasted awful, it had a “fridge taste” like it had been sitting in the fridge absorbing all the bad smells. I was starving, so I tried to mix it with the curry to hide the flavor but even the curry was underwhelming, just spicy without much depth. The barramundi itself was the only saving grace.

I rarely leave negative reviews.. I usually chalk things up to a bad day. But after eating, I checked the reviews and saw that our experience wasn’t unique. Honestly, they should consider changing the chef or hiring someone with more skill, especially considering the price of the meals, which did not match the quality we received.

The only positive: the staff were lovely and very friendly and the coke zero I had. No complaints there. But sadly, we left...

Waited more than an hour and thirty minutes before we got our food.

After the initial 40 minutes we asked the waitress to check and she simply replied the chefs are busy. Understanding covid staff shortages and all we tried not to make a fuss and waited patiently.

However, after an hour of waiting we realised that the diners who arrived much later than us were being served their food while we still have not received our meals. Raised this with a waiter this time and he said he will check and reconfirmed our orders.

Twenty minutes later, the nonchalant waitress brought food out from the kitchen and gave it to another table of diners who also arrived much later than us.

Raised it with another waiter who said he’ll check and he came back some twenty or so minutes later with our order and said ‘oh they mixed up the dockets and delivered your food to other tables that’s why it took so long.’

No apologies and no attempts at any form of service recovery whatsoever was made. Found the whole experience very unprofessional and unsatisfactory.

While I can understand the distruption covid has caused the service industry and tried to be patient even after waiting the first 40 minutes, getting our orders over an hour and a half after we placed them and after other diners who arrived much later and having received zero apologies or any attempt at service recovery whatsoever when they’ve clearly messed up is plain unacceptable...