The Local Shed Cafe — Restaurant in Sydney

If I could give a 0 star I would have. Totally unprofessional customer service by the old lady(I guess she is the owner). We went there by 11.20 & was told by a girl at the front that they would start serving lunch only by 12 (and that in the meantime we can order some coffees) as the old lady intervened n told that they can take the food order by 11.45. We decided to stay as it was a 20 min wait and ordered drinks for us both. At 11.45 as I waived at the staff, the same girl comes & tells us they can only take order by 12 as she said initially. Upon asking that the old lady mentioned it’s 11.45 she said she will send her to our table. The old lady approached & told us unapologetically that it’d be at 12 they can take the food order. When I checked that she mentioned 11.45, she said the chef has a delay in kitchen no apology whatsoever and she started taking her pressure & frustration on me. I calmly told her that had she been realistic we could’ve gone to find another cafe by 11.20 itself as we were pretty hungry. Now comes the highlight she tells us it’s only 15 mins & that we wouldn’t die by then if we didn’t have our food. It was so appalling and pathetic customer service. Honestly I have never experienced such horrible customer service like this anywhere! Will never ever go there again & wouldn’t recommend 👎🏼 (P.S: I couldn’t reply to the rude owner lady’s comment below so editing my review to add a reply to her. Although the rude owner lady wasn’t apologetic she told us not to pay for the drinks as a compensation for our wait time and started removing the menu cards from our table while we were still sitting on the table, which was very rude besides her racist attitude & rude remark that we wouldn’t die if we waited for 15 mins. I don’t think anyone in the hospitality industry would talk like that to a customer. We were very calm with her staff (again she is trying to pile complaints on us to hide her rudeness). Pls feel free to check other reviews marking this lady’s rudeness. She is now coming & replying to my review saying we didn’t pay for our drinks. I haven’t come across such a cheap person. I...

Look I don't like giving places bad reviews but this is more of a warning to others to get them to print your bill out and check it thoroughly. I've been here several times and the food and service has been pretty good but my last visit was disappointing. I went with a friend so we split our bill at the end. The bill was printed out and to my shock there was a charge of $9 extra on top of my meal for gluten free bread ( I'm an actual Coeliac). When I questioned, I'm pretty sure the owner, she said I don't know how that happened as it's only $2 extra and called the waitress over that served us to tell her that she made a mistake. Well the confusing bit was, why was that charge even an option to chose on the register? Also i don't drink coffee so I'll only ever order hot chocolate. Not sure about anyone else but hot chocolates are meant to be hot which most of the time they aren't. So when I dine in I always ask for it to be extra hot and in a takeaway cup as it stays hotter longer. Well that was another sneaky charge an extra $1 for a take away cup. I've never had that before so I didn't think to check the menu if it was even on there. It would have been nice if the waitstaff gave me the heads-up when they took my order as I would have had a dine in cup. I understand businesses are trying to recover from covid but I felt like they were being sneaky and dishonest and just trying to rip customers off. Makes me wonder all the other times I've gone there and been charged $9 extra for gluten free bread and just paid it. Won't be going back, unless I'm invited by friends or family as their choice of cafe and if so I'll always ask for a print out...

To be honest, I would have given 5 starts if we didn’t wait for over an hour for the food with 2 kids complaining in the background - admittedly it was the day before Mother’s Day’s day, so it was extra busy, and the owner did give us all a free drink.

The food was beautiful, it was very well made. Flavourful and gorgeous looking. Calamari was soft, lamb curry was cooked to perfection, burgers felt gourmet, and definitely loved the melted cheeses. Drinks were great too.

Atmosphere was great with some nice music, especially on a warmish winter day it’s practically perfect.

Only problem, as I said, was the speed. We arrived at 11 and was given breakfast menu, ordered at 11:20 and the owner said they can’t take breakfast order anymore, gave us lunch menu at 11:30, we tried order straight away and was told we gotta wait a little bit, meanwhile we haven’t even got drinks down. Finally ordered lunch at 11:40, but food didn’t arrive till like 12:25pm. My kids have started going crazy at that point, and when I asked about food at 12:15 we were told the food hasn’t even started yet. By all measure, I felt very ready and justified to give a 1 star.

But - the food was genuinely good. The owner did apologise. We did get a few complementary drinks. It was a busy day before Mother’s Day. So here we are, just 1 star short of a perfect score.

Will come again. We enjoyed it. I look forward to the next visit and hopefully the food will come quickly so I can give that 1...