Brandy Creek Estate — Restaurant in Victoria

We would not recommend having your special event here... We were hesitant about booking Brandy Creek for our wedding after seeing and hearing some poor reviews, but we wanted to support a local business, so we paid a deposit in Nov 2020. We just had our wedding there on Monday the 20th Dec 2021. We got a wedding tasting, a meeting, a ceremony rehearsal on the lawn, and they gave us a free date change due to covid which was appreciated after we'd already had to move the date a couple of times. But they were shocking with answering the phone or responding to voice mail, even once restrictions eased, and don't expect replies to your emails unless you are buying/booking something, or they will not respond. When the wedding date was approaching we were wondering why we hadn't received an invoice yet. 3 days before the wedding they obviously realised that they had given us too good of a deal when we signed the contract, and tried to either add on costs, or take things away from the package, or cut us off earlier on the night. We were back and forth on the phone that day, and everytime they rang, we were waiting for the next problem. It was truly one of the worst days of my life and I actually felt like I was grieving someone's death. They did not send the invoice until 2 days before, which we had to keep chasing up, causing us a lot of hassle (and many tears from me). We almost booked Pellegrino Pizza and another venue, 2 days before, as the stress had been just so overwhelming and we felt we couldn't trust the venue to deliver. On the wedding day, the lawns were not mowed as promised for the ceremony, our drinks packages were stuffed around, and hence our guests were paying for drinks they shouldn't have had to pay for. We were not told until later that one of the popular beers we had asked for, they did not have available. Our cake was not cut on the night, which was meant to be part of our package so we had to carry it home and I had to cut it the morning after before we left to go away, so nobody got to have cake. We were meant to get churros for dessert but this was changed as well. We are owed a day spa voucher and an anniversary dinner which we doubt we will recieve now. Positives: -Stunning venue. Reception room beautifully set up with menus on plates. -Great selection of wines. -The manager and wait staff did all they could do to keep us happy on the day and were friendly with us and our guests. -The Churrasco BBQ was great and plenty of it so no one went hungry. We had awesome suppliers (photographer, videographer, band and singer) that helped make it an awesome night, and they thankfully got fed. We will return to the venue when new owners take over, or maybe when we get an apology. As a local business owner in Drouin, and between my partner and I, we know most people in Drouin, we feel it is our duty to let the public know of our bad experience. Unfortunately our wedding day is tainted because of all of this, and I am still depressed. Lucky we were able to get some nice photos, and we finally got married. The owners/directors need to communicate more with their management team and staff. Very unorganised, and money hungry. Very disappointing to have had to experience that much stress that was just unnecessary. If they had issues with the package we signed for, these money conversations should have taken place a month before, not 3 days before to stress the wedding couple out. Red flags through the whole experience leading up... We wish the lovely staff at Brandy Creek all the best and hope they are appreciated and are happy...

We attended Brandy Creek for an early lunch on a Saturday. You would think that come opening time they would have been prepped and ready to go for any and all patrons. This was not our experience. Once we arrived we waited in the unmanned wine tasting area and we had to inform the manager (at least we think that was his role) that we were there for lunch, he told us to excuse the unmade table as they had the cleaners the night before.

We were shown to a table that needed to be set whilst we were seated. We were presented with menus and left to our own thoughts. At no stage did the waitress come over, introduce herself or Brandy Creek and explain the menu. As the menu was a tapas menu it would have been helpful having some explanation around portion sizes, what each item consisted of and some general information around how many dishes would satisfy two adults. Given that this was a winery, it would have also been helpful, and to be honest expected, that a detailed description of wines and what food it paired best with given as well. None of the staff that waited on us demonstrated any polished experience that you would expect from a winery. A positive was that visually the venue is impressive, the grounds were lovely.

Wine tasting was not given as an option, it was as if they were too busy. We did decide on a glass of the bubbles Tempanillo. Of the 9 dishes that we order most were left barely eaten and it was very disappointing in the quality and size given the price per dish (photos attached to review). While the dishes looked visually appealing the taste disappointed. One of the biggest let downs were that the dishes came out at random times and there was no clear order, e.g we got the "Turkish bread and dips" with the very over dressed salad and then nothing else for 10 minutes.

The dishes we "liked" more than others were the garlic prawns, the shaved ham (glad they didn't mess with this, but seemed it came from a packet) and the Turkish bread and dips (would we call them dips? one was a pesto and aoli and the other appeared to be a chucky tomatoe sauce). The beetroot, rocket, walnut, feta and red onion salad was nice as well, although it was dressed a little too much, so much so the rocket had lost most of its taste and had gone soggy as a result.

The calamari was disgusting, still very rubbery and there wasn't very much flavour, the fried sheep's cheese was way too big, when you cut it down the middle it was about half a cm of cheese covered in 1 cm of batter. The chicken was disgusting as well, it was a chicken thigh (not my favourite cut of meat) and it was swimming in this honey and tomato/chilli gaze, burnt on the tops like it had been in the grill too long. There was a cheesecake as well at the end, now I have a sweet tooth so ill try anything, and it just tasted fake, the base was very dry and crumbly and the fake strawberry sauce sparkled like it had glitter in it.

Service wise was shocking, after we ordered our drinks, not once were we asked if we wanted another. In fact apart from serving us our food the wait staff did not approach us at all and we not visible present to grab their attention should we would have wanted to order anything else. As I mentioned there was no experience or knowledge from the staff, yet another table next to us got some form of explanation.

For the price point I would have expected better service and over all a higher quality experience.

We were booked in to the Day Spa on the Sunday and we enjoyed that very much and would visit again, completely different experience from...

WARNING DISGRACEFUL MANAGEMENT. Attended venue 11/21 for birthday celebration. Set menu of tapas came out extremely slow with at least 30min between plates, service staff appeared to be quite young and new with little restaurant training but were pleasant and doing their best, so we were not overly troubled by this. However they did end up missing a course so after asking about it the manager came to the table and stated they had “forgotten about it” and couldn’t provide it as “the chef has turned off the oven” after declining dessert (as we had a cake) we requested the course be taken off the bill. The manager then only offered a %5 discount which did not cover the missing course. When requesting a justification from the manager she became defensive and refused to revise the bill. We were then fobbed off to the poor young lady on the till, whome when we stated we weren’t happy with the bill and need to speak to someone said if we don’t pay “they will call the cops”. Absolutely ridiculous. We were then passed onto the chef who eventually came out as “it’s his call” with almost no knowledge of what was going on then tried to justify the $2.25pp discount by reciting food costs. After a painstakingly long conversation back and forth they eventually agreed to %15. Unacceptable behaviour from the manager to argue and then pass us off to junior staff. The day was already ruined BUT IT GETS WORSE!! While this was going on the others were waiting for the cake to come out (about 25min) one of the group got wind of what was happening and asked the server not to worry and we will just take it home. Little did we know that they had already cut the cake (before bringing it out to sing happy birthday) and just thrown in back in the box!! The photo below is what we saw when we arrived home to salvage the day and “sing happy birthday” . DISGRACEFUL!!

I have never experienced anything like this in my life. Sadly waited until after our experience to read the reviews. This google rating of 4.1 is completely misleading. DO NOT RECOMMEND, DO NOT TRUST THIS MANAGEMENT WITH A...