Fed Blue Mountains — Restaurant in Sydney

Food is good....thanks chef. Service is atrocious and owner very abusive and disrespectful. Hoping to have a nice family picnic but on arriving at the park, my daughter’s order was wrong.My husband drove back to rectify the order and the girl who took the order confirmed that she had written it down as my husband had detailed. They made another sandwich and my husband drove back to our picnic spot. (Because of Covid he wasn’t allowed to watch the sandwich being made to check....fair enough). Amazingly, it was wrong again!!!! Now this was a simple schnitzel sandwich with avocado, salady stuff......and on the menu. Not complicated. Not fried elephant with herring dressing and escargot! The first time it was drowned in sweet chilli sauce. This second time there was no salad at all .....just schnitzel, cheese and avocado. My husband drove back to the shop.....my daughter very upset at this point and my other child getting upset that the rest of our food was getting cold waiting for her sister’s sandwich to be sorted. Strangely we wanted to eat together as a family! When my husband returned to the cafe for the third time and explained that the order was wrong again there was no apology. The owner accused him of not ordering correctly......basically calling him a liar! He was rude, abusive and arrogant. It seemed that he made my husband wait unnecessarily long for the order to be redone. When my husband finally got the sandwich in an unmarked paper bag he, understandably, asked what was in the sandwich to check. The owner came out and yelled out “it’s what you ordered, we’re very busy here” and went inside. My husband followed him to find out what was in the sandwich not wanting to disappoint his daughter yet again. The owner told him that he got exactly what he had asked for the three times basically calling him a liar again. My husband called him to task that it was in fact their mistake and that his treatment of the situation was not acceptable. The owner then just yelled at him to get out. The owner’s abuse was not just contained to inside the cafe but also out on the street for all to hear. Clearly he is so arrogant as to think that he can be abusive to people and that they’ll still come to his cafe. We’ve had a beautiful holiday in the mountains up until then. We often holiday there and most people are kind, respectful, thoughtful and generous. I feel so sorry for his staff.

We’ll keep coming to the mountains but never go back to FED cafe! I’m sure there’s many other cafes with beautiful food in the mountains! Avoid rudeness, disrespect and arrogance.....so sour and...

I live locally, but generally I go to another Cafe in Wentworth Falls. This morning, my favourite cafe was closed, so I went to Fed again. I'm not crazy about the coffee here, so I only visit when I have to. It tastes like a cheap blend to me. Or they need to revise their machine pack down.

The service is a bit too swift, and the coffee is bitter. Otherwise, you'll enjoy it. Great aesthetic, excellent food. If you desperately want cake, then go to Schwartz's. If you need breaky, go here to Fed. If you just want coffee, then my money is on Il Postino, at the crossing.

I only took one photo, just because my coffee looked awful. That is a large flat white. Personally, I would have chucked it and started again, instead of giving it to a paying customer. Anyway, the coffee was just ok. Not amazing. Hard to love when it comes to the table like that. Later on, I saw the barista throw one of the other staff under the bus, over an order that hadn't been written down. Again, personally, I would not have wasted those 2 secs being mean about a team mate, and would have just started immediately making the errant coffee. The customer she was speaking to certainly didn't care. He just wanted his coffee.

For this, I took 1 star off what would otherwise have been a 4 star outing for me. 3 stars, Fed. (If there is a magic way of making baristas excellent at customer service, the whole industry is anxious to hear. Maybe higher pay, for a fairly demanding role? I don't know.)

Anyway, Every single other staff member was excellent the whole time I sat there, 90min.

My BLAT on rye was nice.

My tea was nice.

All the food I've ever had here...

I wrote an email stating issues but got no response so copying that here:

I’d like to raise a complaint regarding both product and service we received at your cafe today. I thought it would be better to put this in an email rather than google review which could be damaging to your business.

We went to Fed for a coffee this morning based on reviews we read online. We ordered two flat whites and the coffees were not of good standard with no foam on them at all. Please see image attached. We were going to persevere however decided we really weren’t happy and asked for them to be remade. us. When we asked for this we were challenged by one of the team members with such a terrible attitude. She has long wavy ginger hair and was wearing a white hairband. She said “flat whites shouldn’t have any foam” when we said they should have a small amount she told us we were wrong and she wouldn’t remake them without charging us. She then said she would “do research” into a what a flat white is to teach us. We asked if we could just have a refund if that was the case because we weren’t happy with them, she said no. In the end she reluctantly made us two lattes which were actually more like flat whites served in a glass.

After this the team began talking about us behind the counter which lead to a very uncomfortable experience for us. When we left we were given a hostile smirk when we said thank you.

I look forward to hearing back from you to hear how this will be addressed with the team to avoid this...