Canning River Cafe — Restaurant in Wilson

Canning River Cafe. I eat out a lot & this is a place which looks beautiful & lively from the outside the only good experience I had was waiting & ordering my food everything else was just not satisfactory. As the employee took our order she asked us which table we were sitting at and as the cafe was busy we saw a empty table and told the employee the number of the table, sat there for a total of 13 minutes as our food & drinks got dropped off to our table in 3 different occasions by an employee. We firstly got our tropical smoothie which somehow tasted like an Indian curry the berry smoothie tasted more watery and could barely taste the berries in the “very berry smoothie” our battered fish & chips then arrived which wasn’t that crunchy & was tasteless even with the tartare sauce then the rest of our food came I was enjoying the farmhouse breakfast plate when another random employee came up to me and my partner and firstly stated “did you guys know this was a reserved table” in the most rude manner before this even happened I asked that same employee if the HP sauce was BBQ & she rudely said no it’s not without even assisting me to find the BBQ sauce she then went away to talk to the customer which had the reservation which was a old Caucasian lady in which she responded it was only another person she was with, my partner & I then grabbed our plates & moved to this new seats we were arranged for so we starting eating again and all the customers around were looking at us like we did something wrong & it was embarrassing we are an interracial couple & it felt like the customers & the employee have never seen such a couple in a cafe like this so I went & asked for takeaway boxes which I was given got home & the food just was not good so just ended up feeding it to the dog, if you are a person of colour I would definitely not recommend for you to attend here, poorly organised we ordered got served at least 3 times until the reserved customer arrived and there was a problem there. I have better experience going to McDonald’s a fast food establishment then spending $93 for repulsive service. First & last time going to this place. The environment just was disgusting and has ruined my Sunday. If you are coloured please ...

Starting with the positives - The Canning River Cafe is in a superb location with a lovely view of Kent Street Weir, the river, and a lush green park. It is dog friendly and caters to children and the disabled. The building is airy and attractive.

I write this review after my 3rd and final outing to this place. The food, while reasonably priced, is passable at best and sometimes quite bad. The service is just bad. The staff themselves are generally nice enough but I've yet to see any sign of any properly trained and efficient hospitality professionals.

Today's experience came at an admittedly busy time of year but it was obvious no preparations had been made for this. Three confused, frenetic, and inefficient waiters rushed around to little effect. After being told we'd be served at our table, 20 minutes passed before we went to the counter only to be told that it was counter service only.

We had burgers and chips with iced coffees. The burger buns were verging on stale, the chips were not fresh and the garnish was a handful of rather sad looking endive leaves. The iced coffees were only mildly cold.

(Honestly, I wish I could end here but it gets worse) From the time we arrived, vacated tables had dirty plates and old food on them and many were still there as we left. Being seated as we were in the hot sun, we asked a waiter to put up a nearby umbrella - he replied that he couldn't but that he would get someone to do it, which he didn't. Then we asked a second waiter to put it up and he replied simply that he couldn't. Was I missing something? Does putting up an umbrella require a hi-vis jacket, a hard-hat and a working-at-heights ticket these days?

Oh, did I mention the well advertised variety of cakes? There was heaps of choice as long as you like Baked New York Cheesecake, and only in one flavour.

Perhaps you may think a one-star review is harsh but we gave this place three chances and it really is just pretty bad. What a shame to waste such a...

Ordered Japanese pancake which includes pork belly, the Chicken Caesar salad and brekky bagel. Ordered it online through the Bopple app. About 5 mins after, they told us they don’t have chicken or pork, so we couldn’t have the chicken salad. Didn’t ask about the pancakes yet, which includes pork. So, we ordered the fish and chips and specified that it had to be grilled not battered, to replace the chicken salad. After waiting for around 30-40 minutes (wait times go up to 1 hour on busy times and day, and this day wasn’t super busy) the waiter asked if chicken was ok for my japanese pancakes. I said that was ok, because they didn’t have pork and…chicken?? They told us they didn’t have chicken earlier but now they had it somehow. Confusing. When the food finally came, the brekky ‘bagel’ wasn’t in a bagel, just two pieces of toast, with enough chips for two people. The fish and chips came battered even though i asked for it to be grilled. 70% was batter and 30% was fish. Same with the chicken i got in my pancakes, like a mouth full of dry crumb/batter. The mix for the pancakes were raw in the middle and wet. Chips were also super bland and tasted worse than maccas chips. I was sitting undercover, but felt the spray of rain when it did sprinkle a bit. In the end, we got a $50 refund for the order even though it was over $100 because they couldn’t find the order back because of the online app. Long wait with rain bothering me for bland food that is wrong to our order?...