Wooden Barrel Restaurant — Restaurant in Overstrand Local Municipality

The food took over an hour to arrive and when it did it looked so disappointing, the server was kind though, I ordered a burger which cost 150 rand and it looked like something that shouldn’t cost more than 60 rand, the cheese on the burger looked like something no one should put in their mouth and the pasta my girlfriend had was overcooked and the sauce tasted worse than some cheap store bought bolognaise sauce which for 130 rand is completely unacceptable. The chicken strips were okay but nothing to rave about and at the 120 rand price it was ridiculous. There was a leak in the ceiling next to where we were sitting as well. I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone especially because there’s other restaurants in the area like Char’d grill and bar that served us amazing burgers for cheaper than the one I had here. I’m never going to eat here again and I seriously don’t recommend anyone else to waste a meal and their money on this horrible food.

Replying to the owners comments: I’m a big burger guy and I can say for certain what I had was not a 180 gram patty first of all, secondly I said the sauce was worse than a store bought bolognaise sauce not that it was bolognaise. I left a tip because the server we had was very kind and I didn’t complain about the food to her as it isn’t her fault it was as bad as it was. If you look below my name you will see that this is my first ever review because I do not typically review places I eat at, my girlfriend usually does that. BUT this time I was so incredibly disappointed with the food and the price of the food that I wrote my first ever review on a restaurant before I even left the place because I couldn’t get over how bad it was. I am not just slandering your restaurant for fun, it has genuinely been the worst non fast food burger I’ve had in YEARS. And you as the owner attacking me based on my experience just solidifies that I’m going to recommend everyone I know not to ever eat at your restaurant. To anyone reading this go eat at Charr’d Grill and wine bar nearby, the service there is great and their food is amazing, our server Bianca served us twice when we went there and both times we were amazingly pleased with the food and even bought some of their signature sauce to take home. Wooden barrel is seriously the bottom of the barrel in the area and for the amount they charge the burgers and pasta are bad and not worth it. I can’t speak on the seafood as I didn’t have any but like I said I’m never going back so I guess...

Before I begin sharing my review, I noticed that while going through all your responses to reviews, there were numerous excuses from the management and owner. So, I'm quite eager to hear your explanation this time.

Today, a few friends joined me at Wooden Barrel. We sat down and after about 15 minutes, we decided to order drinks, which arrived promptly. Following that, we proceeded to order breakfast, and unfortunately, it turned into a complete disaster. We placed our orders and then waited and waited. An hour and 15 minutes passed, and still, no food was served. Suddenly, the food started arriving, but with several issues. Three breakfast orders were missing, two breakfasts had eggs that were barely cooked, and we received raw pork sausages. We promptly sent back the breakfasts with the raw eggs and sausages. However, when the breakfasts were brought back after a 25-minute wait, the eggs were still raw. We sent it back again, and this time, they simply flipped the eggs over (who flips sunny-side-up eggs?). To make matters worse, we were still waiting for two more orders, and nearly two hours had passed.

Upon paying, the manager offered a discount for three of the breakfasts. However, that does not address the fundamental issue your restaurant has. This was one of the worst experiences I've had in terms of both service and food quality.

To add insult to injury, when bringing up these problems to the manager, their response was that they would personally fix it, and it was only their second day on the job.

I apologize for being blunt, but as the manager, one should be capable of performing their job to the best of their ability, which clearly was not the case here. In conclusion, I will never return to this establishment. It provided the worst service, almost on par with the quality of service from Eskom. The waiters exhibited horrible attitudes and offered a multitude of excuses, and the food was barely 10% of what it should be.

Save your time and avoid visiting a place like this. I struggle to comprehend how you can still operate and keep your doors open with such low quality and service. This doesn't appear to be an isolated incident based on other reviews I've read.

My advice: Stay away from...

We sat down for some drinks and a meal on Saturday 10 Aug. It was a beautiful morning, so we were seated outside. This was during the popular Whale festival so all the restaurants and bistros were extremely busy. Understandably we were going to have to wait a while for whatever we ordered. The waiter gave us the main menu plus the drinks menu. He was friendly and we ordered our drinks and got it fairly quickly. But then as we started to order the mains, he advised us to rather not eat anything as he observed the kitchen to be extremely busy and that we would have to wait at least 40min to be served whatever we order. This was a bit of an anti climax as it was my husband's birthday and we really wanted to enjoy a nice brunch. But we were kind of starving by that time as we had to skip breakfast that morning. We were kind of wondering why he did not bring this up sooner so that we could order just after receiving our drinks. But non the less we thanked him for the heads up and decided to rather pay the bill and leave. I went inside to pay and saw that the place was completely empty inside. All the patrons we seated outside. I could not help to wonder why a restaurant would have a certain amount of tables inside and outside if it is not capable of serving those tables timeously and had to literally advise patrons not to order food if they are not prepared to wait a long time? Also not even all the tables had customers. Just the outside ones! So... We my husband's birthday brunch ended up being KFC inside the bakkie at the look out...