Turquoise Mandurah — Restaurant in Western Australia

We went to Turquoise Cafe in Mandurah this morning for a special birthday breakfast.

I tried to email and fb message in regards to changing from the bottomless brunch to the normal menu however didn’t receive a reply. I also sent a message via the booking request form stating we wouldn’t be having the bottomless brunch and would order off the normal menu. Clearly, these messages weren’t received as when I told our initial server she was surprised and said she would ‘need to see if that’s ok with the kitchen’. Why would it be a problem? I had also asked in my messages whether there’s a kids menu, there isn’t, which significantly limits options for kids.

We placed our drinks order and a couple of things I noticed were… crushed ice in the milkshakes.. makes them hard to drink as the ice gets stuck in the straw plus waters them down the cold pressed oj doesn’t appear to be cold pressed and a generic ‘orange drink’ from the supermarket.. not even actual oj

We waited longer than I would have expected for our food order to be taken, and it wasn’t that busy. We watched the servers walk around and talk amongst themselves multiple times. When we placed our food order we asked if the blinds behind us could be pulled down as we were in the direct sun and the glass behind us was creating a green house effect and we were sweating. The girl said she would ask.. nothing happened so my husband ended up pulling them down himself. I noticed in some of the reviews the aircon has been mentioned before.. this is still a problem.

Our banana bread came out first, our daughter liked it, however, we got 4 little butter packets and all appeared to have melted at some point and solidified again, making them an odd texture and not able to be spread onto the bread. I did mention this to our waitstaff and they gave us more however they were the same.

We also ordered scrambled eggs on toast.. very underwhelming. My husband got poached eggs and bacon on toast, also underwhelming and the bacon looked and tasted to be a very cheap kind. My son and I ordered the ‘biscoff’ waffles which aren’t actually biscoff waffles ha! This was pretty much the reason we came here so we were pretty disappointed when.. the only sign of biscoff was the biscuit on top. No advertised biscoff crumb or sauce. The sauce was replaced with ‘nutella’ due to a ‘biscoff shortage’ apparently.. one of the waitstaff said sorry, your waiter should have told you.. no one has nut allergies do they? No.. but too late if they did!! There was also only one tiny dollop of canned cream on top, once spread covered the smallest amount of the waffle and basically dissolved. The waffle was both dry and also under cooked.. not sure how that was achieved! It was bland, and so disappointing. It’s the only sweet menu item, it wasn’t as advertised and it was frankly, pretty bad.

The customer service was average. One of our younger waiters didn’t seem to know the answers to our questions (is there a kids menu, do you have apple juice..) and the other waiter we interacted withs demeanor changed when I commented on the waffles.

Overall, poor customer service, average food and drinks. We won’t be back and I won’t be recommending the venue to anyone. There’s way better breakfast options in Mandurah in terms of variety and taste.

I’m not usually one to complain, in fact, I never do. I’ve worked in customer service my whole life so I do understand the pressures staff can be under, but todays experience was really poor.

I do hope the venue takes onboard the criticisms myself and others have shared as I think it could be a great little spot but as it currently stands.. it’s...

Everyone has a bad day, I'm sure we were unlucky but posting a review in case it becomes repeat behaviour. Cannot fault the servers, I feel so guilty to complain about food, so I usually just leave and not return (lesson learned sort of thing) but the food was bad enough to write a review.

We ordered 2 hours before close, and the restaurant was fairly quiet, I don't think being rushed should have been an issue, we also said to bring the food as it was ready but it all came at once.

Lamb chops, I asked how they would be cooked, they said med-rare, they arrived well done, I'm sure most of us know this is not the ideal way to eat lamb.

Bruschetta, overloaded, there is being generous and then being gluttonous, it was so huge and overwhelming on the plate I didnt even try it, because the toppings were so big the bread under was soggy, you should be able to pick up a piece and eat it, so this was not a good experience

Flavour of calamari was good, the sauce was tasty, but they were not crispy

Loaded chips tasty but nothing special

The creamed fetta was runny

My steak.. oh boy. I ordered rare, it was raw, I know you probably think the customer may be wrong/not know what is cooked but I have culinary training and I DO like raw/blue/semi seared steak, like beef tataki/Japanese food but there is no saying if the steak is correctly/safely prepared for this type of consumption. Rare should have been stringy inside with pink and lots of juice, instead it was a dark meat like you would get at the butcher, I mean, at least if it was cooked at a higher temp to allow more grill on the surface/heat I might have eaten it, but no, it was not blackened at all, and due to being undercooked there was no rendering on the fat, chewy mess.

I ordered as surf and turf, and my prawns were not peeled, so does the chef expect us to chew down on prawn shells, or get our fingers dirty to peel prawns IN sauce while our steak gets cold? Such a sensory issue so I ordered more prawns (peeled) I was disappointed to find the new prawns also had shells on them, but some effort was made, it was just not done to completion/with care

Caesar salad, basic, very saucy

Fish tacos good!

Pork sliders delicious but cold, I was going to take them home but I was so put off by everything else I couldn't even look at food anymore

I'm not sure if that's everything, I can't remember, lowkey traumatized by everything being that bad and it is also emotionally stressful to complain, I hate to be that person, I hate that the chef/owner standards put me in that position

If you are reading this please order with caution and do complain if the standards aren't there, or there is no way for the restaurant to know/improve, the staff were empathetic and helpful, so really just what a terrible chef to put the staff on the receiving end and having to send the sub par food, I feel awful for them.

Perhaps not enough competition in the area to keep turquoise on it's toes, or being in a retirement area the standards have dropped because the clientele don't have other choices.

For your staff.....

First impressions count. Waited by the please wait to be seated sign. Waitress comes up and said ‘Do you have a booking’ in an under-minded tone. Said No we didn’t. Then proceeded to say I’ll check if we have any room. From that moment we should’ve just left but the people inside seemed happy.

So we went in after she served and cashed out 2 tables spoke to another employee to show us to a table. There were 5 free tables that would sit 4 or more people. They apologised for the mess on the floor of another table and said they would be out to clean it. Took another 10mins to clean when she showed someone else to the table.

We knew what we wanted to went up to order then was told they do table service. We weren’t to know. So we ordered. 1x Banana Milkshake, 1x Berry Smoothie, 1x Milo Milkshake, 1x Iced Latte, 1x House-made Waffles, 1x Italian Breakfast and 1x Chilli Scrambled eggs. We were told they couldn’t make the thick shake they had run out of ice cream.

Waitress returned minutes later then said they couldn’t make the smoothie either… we received our food which wasn’t anything to brag about. Which was unfortunate. Half way in to our meal half of our drinks arrived. My son unfortunately knocked over his drink in which I cleaned up. I also ordered a replacement chocolate milkshake as I was told they didn’t have the ingredients to make another banana shake.

We were about to leave when the person who used her undermining tone asked how it was and I said … next question. She asked what happened and we explained. Instead of using her customer service voice she went to her blame voice. Our order from Woolies was suppose to arrive 3 hrs ago. But it still didn’t give me a reason as to where the replacement shake was and why they couldn’t seem to get their service under control. She proceeded to say didn’t your server tell you there was a back log on drinks. Again, just own it. Stop placing the blame on someone. I would understand if it was busy but inside was empty and there were 5 tables to be served outside. 3 of which had drinks.

I wouldn’t waste my time going here, the staff need an attitude adjustment. She was nice enough to remove the milkshakes off our bill in which I was happy to pay for as my son knocked it off the table but for an establishment not to have things available maybe you shouldn’t be open...