Restaurant 1889 at The Brewery — Restaurant in Townsville City

Was super excited to try this place, managed to get a booking for Father’s Day. The online booking system for Restaurant 1889 is great!

We arrived at the restaurant and were seated at the table, and it took 20 minutes for someone to come back and take our order, with barely an apology for the wait. This is after my husband walked up to the bar to order coffees and get told that it was table service. And after trying to catch the attention of numerous waitstaff who walked straight past us and wouldn’t even look in our direction. Normally one might (reasonably?) expect to be seated, offered drinks whilst looking at the menu, not just being completely ignored for 20 minutes! I understand that the hospitality industry are experiencing staff shortages, but the fact that no one even acknowledged us after being seated should be considered poor by anyone’s standards.

Drinks arrived fairly quickly after ordering, but one of the coffees was incorrect. Two waitstaff walked past our table and we only managed to catch the attention of a third to let them know. Coffee was replaced and removed from the bill, and it was explained that their till didn’t have the right buttons so the order couldn’t be put through properly. I would think asking for non-dairy milk in a coffee is a pretty important thing to be able to communicate to the barista/kitchen? Anyway, food arrived soon after and there were no more issues.

Food was tasty! The kids meals were decently sized, everything was pretty reasonably priced too. But would I visit this place again for the menu alone? Probably not.

Considering the service was one of the worst experiences we’ve had in Townsville, I can’t recommend 1889. There are far better places in the CBD, Strand, South Townsville areas which offer great menus at a decent price point, and fabulous service.

Don’t waste your time, they certainly don’t...

Had a dinner date last Friday the 24th of Jan. We ordered the pork burnt bits, the meat player for one, onion rings and chips for sides and the blue cheese and bacon sauce. Both of us had two drinks.

The pork belly burnt bits were very good, and came with the house bbq sauce.

The main event, being the meat board that came with three selections was fairly good over all. Both briskets were nice, but the non-spicy one was full of smokey flavour, both were very tender. The pulled pork was the main let down as it was fairly dry but still good especially with sauce.

The blue cheese and bacon sauce was really good. And both side were good with thick onion rings and we'll seasoned steak cut chips. I had one of the in house brewed beers (legends lager) a beer I could certainly have again.

Overall it cost us less than $100 and both of us were full after it all. I had expected to pay over 100 for what we had got.

The waitress was also very helpful, recommending the pork bits, blue cheese sauce and opting for the meat platter for one over the one for two.

So didn't get 5 stars due to the pulled pork and the fact that we had to wait a couple minutes to be seated even though the restaurant was near empty

Definitely deserves more than a 2 star rating, the rating at the time of writing this review. A lot of people who have left reviews here are not aware of the type of restaurant it is, and had ordered things that it doesn't specialise in.

Would...

I was eating at the Smokehouse for a friends birthday dinner and the waiting staff didn’t seem to know much about their own menu. When I ordered an Irish coffee (which was on the menu, the staff didn’t seem to know what it was or if I could order it) and someone was able to help and get it for me. And even though I asked for a cold Irish coffee, I got a hot one. I wasn’t too disappointed at this point, but it wasn’t the greatest Irish Coffee at all.. to go on though, we all ordered drinks and food at 7:30pm... the drinks had to reordered about 10min later, because the order got mixed up by the staff. And the food didn’t come to us until about 8:45pm. Which is upsetting on a night that wasn’t too busy. I can’t speak on behalf of the rest of the group, but the food wasn’t the best quality at all and was a small quantity for the price that we payed. Overall, very disappointed with the service and quality of the food as well. Which is a shame, as I myself LOVE smoked food and would love to help a...