Raumati Social Club — Restaurant in Wellington

Call me a coffee snob and I’ll call you unfair. Like the millions of us, all I want when I walk into a café is to have my dream coffee put down in front of me. If it happens once, that’s four stars right there; if it happens a second time, I’m already up to five. So already I'm a happy chappie at RSC. But wait, there’s more. As its handle rightly suggests, Raumati Social Club is a true local institution. If it happens that I'm bowling up Transmission Gully to meet old friends, this is the venue I want to hang out in. RSC is smart and welcoming, with a tidy, cheering, airy but also cozy laid-backness—an ambience that feels exactly right at the height of summer and in the depths of winter alike.

Now as can happen even in the best of joints, there was a minor glitch with my burger: the wrong burger showed up at my table, followed not a minute later, by the right one! For this very small error, a member of staff offered me a generous part-refund which I could not possibly have accepted. Then it turned that I’d gone and lost a fancy pen down the back of the seating at the rear of the café. And right there, in an instant, was another member of staff, more than five hours into a busy shift, helping me, with humour and kindness to fish the thing out! Talk...

Great food, fantastic coffee but... Held off writing a poor review for a while in the hope we'd just visited on 'off' days with new staff... However there constantly seems to be new wait staff. On Friday our meal order was taken and totally forgotten about. Manager was apologetic and offered our coffees on the house which was a lovely gesture although the reasoning that it was 'busy' was far from true with only five tables in and no takeaway queue. The waiter who'd taken our order was nowhere to be seen. In recent months we've also had very long waits for food (without a heads up that the kitchen was particularly busy), mix ups with orders, and even been sent away from the counter when ordering there yet not had wait staff come to our table to take our order as promised. I really hope the summer months bring some consistency. We'll still keep visiting as we do love place but sadly it's no longer somewhere to visit for a quick bite as you'll never know when it...

We had a booking for brunch yesterday (Sunday) and were told on arrival that they were short-staffed. Before our orders were taken, the manager announced to the whole cafe that they were only working from the lunch menu, even though it was only around 11.20am. We gave our orders to the very pleasant waitress and waited for about half an hour for our food to arrive. While we were eating, we were astounded to see people who arrived after us being served with items from the brunch menu. When we queried why this was with the manager, he basically shrugged and said sorry I stuffed up the time and thought brunch service was over. Didn't offer us anything else in way of apology. We didn't enjoy the burgers we had as they're overpriced for what they are. We don't think...