Backlane Bar and Street Food — Restaurant in Sunshine Coast Regional

This was one of the more disappointing restaurant experiences I have had as the reviews here are pretty good, so I had high hopes. I can see based on previews reviews from this particular night and the managers' response that they had a bad evening. However, if you know you are understaffed, do NOT accept a booking of 8 people with less than an hours notice, stop accepting more customers if you aren't managing what you already have.

We had to go and ask for service multiple times as nobody came over. Then we waited around 40 minutes for the food to arrive first, and the drinks arrived either halfway through or after finishing our food. The food itself is alright, the seafood is good but the meat options we tasted were quite dry, although flavorful.

The singer was good, but it was soooo loud in there that we found ourselves having to "yell" and really couldn't communicate with the people at the other end of the table.

Finally, I think the photos here on google of the atmosphere are not very representative, as I was expecting a much "nicer" restaurant, but would say this is very casual and feels a bit badly maintained/dirty.

They did agree to take the drink of the bill that arrived after the food (and wasn't consumed). They also gave 10% of the check for some in our group. So there was some recognition on their side of how low the quality of the service was this night. However, I wish they would have respected their staff and us by sending us away when we called asking...

Last year we visited the Back Lane Bar twice and had very good experiences. This year was the complete opposite. We attended as First Table diners and identified this twice on arrival but it was ignored when bill was presented even though the booking fee had been debited to our account two days prior to our visit.The bill was for the full price. First up I ordered a beer and a bitters, lime and lemonade. The bitters drink came as straight lemonade, warm with no ice. The female waitress explained that they had run out of ice and had sent a staff member out to get some. We ordered three share meals and asked if we could order more later which she said was fine. We got our first share plate but the waitress advised that the next two meals were delayed as they were waiting on the chef (think she had gone out for ice). I ordered another drink (wine) and once our food had arrived we suggested we would order more once we ate this.

In the meantime it appears two friends of the waitress had arrived and she spent time chatting with them at the bar before walking out with them and chatting to them outside.

The other bar staff (male) was serving other guests (7 in total). We waited a while with empty drinks and our food plates clearly finished but were not offered any further service. After a while we got up and paid the bill and left.

As we left the female waitress was still chatting to her friends outside

I advised the male bar staff member of my total dissatisfaction with...

Nice cocktails and food but service needs better management and delegation.

We came here for dinner last Thursday night and when we arrived there were only 2 other tables full. Even with it being mostly empty it took us about 10 minutes to even receive a menu and another 5 before we had any water. Unfortunately, it seemed the staff were too busy bantering and hanging out.

Once we ordered the cocktails and food they came fairly quickly. However, our table was full of empty plates and drinks and no one bothered to take it. Again, the wait staff were too busy chatting. Finally a few plates were taken but half were left and all the glasses were never collected. When we wanted to order some more food the young woman imformed us it was her first day and she'd get the other staff to assist (which is totally fine) but no one came back. 5 minutes later we see the staff are again just standing around chatting. The guy who I think was the manager finally stopped chatting and came over and we ordered but it didn't seem to ever get placed. It does finally show up but only after re-ordering it.

Cocktails were excellent and the food was nice. The koftas were a bit too rare but otherwise no complaints. Calamari was very good. Wait staff seemed more interested in chatting than serving though and there isn't really an excuse when there was barely anyone there. Definitely worth another visit if the...