Buster Crabb — Restaurant in Invercargill City

We’ve been here numerous times and never had a issue the staff almost bent over backwards for us but after tonight I don’t believe I’ll ever be back.. food was amazing and can never fault it, the atmosphere was nice private, but the staff on tonight where rude we waited near on 20 minutes after out mains where done to see if we’d like another drink or dessert, we never got asked if our meals where okay never got asked if we needed anything like we normally would, when the staff member was asked if he could get me a drink he acted like it was a hard task and quite frankly didn’t want to be there. I might add that it was a quite seemingly quiet night, after we finally got our Desserts and finished them. It took a further 25 minutes to ask if we where done, mean while the 3 staff that where meant to be working where rather comfortable lounging around with a glass of win, chatting. Even watched me standing at the bar waiting to pay till someone else bothered to help me out. As far as I’m concerned it’s unprofessional and quite rude. This may be a one off but it’s not on and has been enough to drive a local...

We were a table of four and ordered three starters and four mains. Only one of the starters (grilled bread) came out during a one and a half hour period. Asked wait staff several times what the issue was and they kept telling us that the food was on the grill. I don't know if I would have liked calamari that had been in the fryer or steak that had been on the grill for over an hour. There was clearly an issue with our table because other tables had been served and cleared that came in after us. We decided to walk out because we honestly had no idea what was happening.

At the end of the day this restaurant would have taken $500 from us and they lost money due to comping our drinks and one starter. I can appreciate that businesses find it hard to find experienced staff in this current climate, but communication with your customers goes a long way. An awful customer experience was had and when this was raised there was no sense of urgency or genuine care.

We went to Devil Burger after and experienced 5 star treatment for a quarter...

We travelled here from North America on Jan 3rd and only to find out most restaurants we would like to go are closed. We called Buster Crabb and was very luckily to find out it is still open. However, the restaurant is 1.7 km away from our hotel and it would take us 20 minutes to walk there. We were received by a lady called TRACY, she made it very clear that she can only keep the table for us for 5 MINUTES! After explaining to her our situation of 1.7km away, she HANG UP directly on us without any explanation.

This was incredulous and I honestly thought the line got disconnected. So I called again, after TRACY heard my voice, she HANG UP AGAIN before I could speak!

Honestly speaking, I do not understand why she can wait for 5 minutes for us but not 15 minutes. This is clearly a popular restaurant I guess and some GUESTS JUST DO NOT MATTER FOT TRACY.

In the end, my family think this restaurant is not worth visiting and we have...